Applicants can apply for standard patents or minor patents for their inventions, and they can also apply for supplementary patents for improved inventions. The inventor or his assignee, and any person entrusted by the foreign inventor or assignee to transmit documents, whether or not he is an Australian resident, may become an applicant. Foreigners applying for patents in Australia must have a mailing address in Australia. The invention results for which a patent is applied for must be a new product or method, which can be a new idea about an article, equipment, process or method. Medical and surgical treatment methods acting on the human body, detection methods used to control a manufacturing process, simple mixtures for use in food or medicine, and methods of producing such mixtures are not patentable. In addition, inventions that contravene Australian law and are not covered by Australian patent laws are not protected by patents. However, cosmetic treatments, new drugs, botanicals and biological methods can all receive patent protection. If an invention has not been published in publications in Australia, has not been publicly used in Australia, or is otherwise known to the public before filing a patent application, then the invention meets the conditions of novelty. However, when a foreigner applies for a patent in Australia in accordance with the priority principle stipulated in the Paris Convention, if a foreign publication publishing the invention can be obtained in Australia, the invention will lose its novelty.