Friday, March 13, 2015

Non-Obviousness Description

This blog and the following three will be in regard to Patent Obviousness/Non-obviousness. 
Non-obviousness is one of the examination points in getting a patent approved and published. Non-obvious is in relation to other inventions that have been known in the past. The invention must contain a difference that must be non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the field of the invention. This basically means that the new invention is compared to the prior art and checked whether the differences between the two would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art or technology referenced.

If a matching prior art lies within two or more previous inventions, this prior art search result will be considered obvious. Once declared obvious, the patent will not be approved. However, it is still possible to overcome obviousness rejection of the invention with help of the practitioner.

A good example I thought was in a video I saw titled Novelty and Non-Obviousness. The speaker gave the example of a coat hanger of smaller size for children’s clothing. Although this could be considered a novel invention as it fits perfectly for children’s clothing, it is not novel because manufactures know they can make the hanger smaller, however have chosen upon a standardized size on which to make them. 


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