To obtain an International Patent of a food supplement it has to be a fully original product and no other application of a patent must ever been made for the specific product before, any other place in the world.

A major criterion is that a food supplement has gone through a Clinical Study performed at a university hospital and is tested on healthy people and documented safe in use.

The EU-directive has the same criteria for a patent as in Norway. The reason for this is overdosing of vitamins and minerals that have been quite common in many food supplements, with misfortunate side effects as a result. It will not be legal to sell any food supplements, which does not fulfil these demands of the EU after January 1st 2005.