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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]
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the CLAIMED INVENTION AS A WHOLE would have been obvious BEFORE THE EFFECTIVE FILING DATE OF THE CLAIMED ...
An "invention" is obvious (and therefore ineligible for a patent) if a person of "ordinary skill" in the relevant field of technology would have thought the technology was obvious, on the filing date of the patent application. Legislatively the requirement for non-obviousness was established in the Patent Act of 1952. Specifically, 35 U.S.C ...
What matters is the objective reach of the claim. If the claim extends to what is obvious, it is invalid under §103. One of the ways in which a patent's subject matter can be proved obvious is by noting that there existed at the time of invention a known problem for which there was an obvious solution encompassed by the patent's claims.
Although the Court confirmed that non-obviousness is a question of law, it held that §103 required a determination of the following questions of fact to resolve the issue of obviousness: Scope and content of the prior art; Differences between the claimed invention and the prior art; Level of ordinary skill in the art
Thus the patentability criteria largely involves novelty, inventive step and industrial application or usability of the invention. In addition, section 3 of the Patent Act, 1970, also provides a list of non-patentable inventions for e.g. inventions that are frivolous or contrary to well established to natural laws. [8]
For a patent to be valid in Canada, the invention claimed therein needs to be new and inventive.In patent law, these requirements are known as novelty and non-obviousness.A patent cannot in theory be granted for an invention without meeting these basic requirements or at least, if a patent which does not meet these requirements is granted, it cannot later be maintained.
Patentable, statutory or patent-eligible subject matter is subject matter of an invention that is considered appropriate for patent protection in a given jurisdiction. The laws and practices of many countries stipulate that certain types of inventions should be denied patent protection.