2 1. There shall be established in the Democratic Republic of Madagascar industrial property arrangements for protection by means of patents and inventors’ certificates, marks, industrial designs, trade names and for the repression of unfair competition. 2. Industrial property in Madagascar shall be administered by an industrial property agency referred to hereinafter as “the Agency.” Title I Provisions on Patents and Inventors’ Certificates Section 1 General Provisions 3. At the request of the applicant and at his discretion, the Agency shall issue patents or inventors’ certificates for patentable inventions. 4.—(1) In all types of industry, any new invention resulting from an inventive activity and that is capable of at least one industrial application shall be patentable. (2) Notwithstanding any protection subsisting in a patented invention, an improvement thereto satisfying the requirements of paragraph (1) shall also be patentable independently or in the form of a certificate of addition. 5.—(1) An invention shall be new if it does not form part of the state of the art, whereby the state of the art shall comprise everything made available to the public, at any place or at any time, by means of a written or oral description, by use or in any other way, before the date of filing of the patent application or the date of any priority validly claimed for the invention. (2) Novelty shall not be destroyed by disclosure of the invention at an officially recognized exhibition either on the national territory or in the member countries of the Paris Convention, within the six months preceding filing of a patent application or a validly claimed priority date for the invention, subject to production of a recognized certificate attesting to participation of the inventor or his successors in title at such exhibition during which the public could obtain knowledge of the object incorporating the patentable invention. (3) Novelty shall not be destroyed if disclosure results from obvious abuse in relation to the applicant or his legal predecessor. 6. To involve an inventive step, an invention may not derive obviously from either the state of the art or the normal skill of a man of the art, whether in its means, its application, the combination of means or the product that is the object thereof, or in the industrial result obtained thereby. 7. An invention shall be considered as susceptible of industrial application if it is capable of manufacture or use in any type of industry. 8.—(1) Subject to the specific regulations in respect of the subject matters listed below, applications for patents or inventors’ certificates shall not be admissible or shall be rejected where they concern: (i) inventions contrary to public policy or morality; (ii) plant or animal varieties or essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals;