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In US patent law, non-obviousness is one of the requirements that an invention must meet to qualify for patentability, codified as a part of Patent Act of 1952 as 35 U.S.C. §103. An invention is not obvious if a " person having ordinary skill in the art " (PHOSITA) would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by ...
The purpose of the inventive step, or non-obviousness, requirement is to avoid granting patents for inventions which only follow from "normal product design and development", to achieve a proper balance between the incentive provided by the patent system, namely encouraging innovation, and its social cost, namely conferring temporary monopolies. [4]
The SCOTUS under William O. Douglas developed case law on non-obviousness (see flash of genius) and subject matter eligibility to limit proliferation of weak patents. 1952. Fifth Patent Act codified US patent law into Title 35 of the U.S. Code including previous case law on non-obviousness. 1980.
Useful (in U.S. patent law) or be susceptible of industrial application (in European patent law [1]) Usually the term " patentability " only refers to the four aforementioned "substantive" conditions, and does not refer to formal conditions such as the " sufficiency of disclosure ", the " unity of invention " or the " best mode requirement ".
The non-obviousness criterion can be easily met if a claim is based on a discovery of new natural phenomenon/principle/law. In the patentable subject matter analysis, however, this "discovery" is assumed to be prior art, and an "additional inventive concept" must be present in the claim.
35 U.S.C. 103 Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter. (a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would ...
The Patent Act of 1952 clarified and simplified existing U.S. patent law. It also effected substantive changes, including the codification of the requirement for non-obviousness [1] [2] and the judicial doctrine of contributory infringement. [3] As amended, it is codified in Title 35 of the United States Code.
In United States patent law, the doctrine of inherency holds that, under certain circumstances, prior art may be relied upon not only for what it expressly teaches, but also for what is inherent therein, i.e., what necessarily flows from the express teachings. [1] For a patent claim to be valid, its subject-matter must be novel and non-obvious.