The Austrian Patent and Utility Model Laws have been amended with effect from February 1, 1999. The main changes are to permit internal priority in one form or another. Thus it is now possible for an applicant for an Austrian patent to claim priority from Austrian applications filed in the preceding twelve months and to convert a European patent application designating Austria into an Austrian utility model application. A further feature of the new law is that henceforth the "whole content approach" used to consider the prior art effect of a prior unpublished Austrian patent application on a later-filed patent application has been extended to consideration of the novelty of utility models.