The inventive step and non-obviousness reflect a general patentability requirement present in most patent laws, according to which an invention should be sufficiently inventive—i.e., non-obvious—in order to be patented. In other words, "[the] nonobviousness principle asks whether the invention is an adequate distance beyond or above the state of the art".
The expression "inventive step" is predominantly used in Europe, while the expression "non-obviousness" is predominantly used in United States patent law. The expression "inventiveness" is sometimes used as well. Although the basic principle is roughly the same, the assessment of the inventive step and non-obviousness varies from one country to another. For instance, the practice of the European Patent Office (EPO) differs from the practice in the United Kingdom.
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. The non-obviousness bar is thus a measure of what society accepts as a valuable discovery. Additional reasons for the non-obviousness requirement are providing incentives for fundamental research rather than for "incremental improvements", and minimizing the "proliferation of economically insignificant patents that are expensive to search and to license".
According to the inducement theory, "if an idea is so obvious that people in the field would develop it without much effort, then the incentives provided by the patent system may be unnecessary to generate the idea". Thus, there is a need "to develop some means of weeding out those inventions which would not be disclosed or devised but for the inducement of a patent.
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This course will cover all the aspects of product design and system engineering from learning relevant methods to the actual implementation in a hands-on practice of product development.
Students will be exposed to hands-on design problems throughout the term. They will acquire methodologies to (1) address open ended engineering problems, (2) cultivate creativity, (3) support decision
This is a collection of lectures on "structured innovation systems," codified approaches to stimulating and managing the process of innovation. Some of the systems to be covered may be Design Thinking
A utility model is a patent-like intellectual property right to protect inventions. This type of right is available in many countries but, notably, not in the United States, United Kingdom or Canada. Although a utility model is similar to a patent, it is generally cheaper to obtain and maintain, has a shorter term (generally 6 to 15 years), shorter grant lag, and less stringent patentability requirements. In some countries, it is only available for inventions in certain fields of technology and/or only for products.
Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent is the right to exclude others, for a limited time (usually, 20 years) from profiting of a patented technology without the consent of the patent-holder. Specifically, it is the right to exclude others from: making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, inducing others to infringe, applying for an FDA approval, and/or offering a product specially adapted for practice of the patent.
Novelty is one of the patentability requirement for a patent claim, whose purpose is to prevent issuing patents on known things, i.e. to prevent public knowledge from being taken away from the public domain. An invention is anticipated (i.e. not new) and therefore not patentable if it was known to the public before the priority date of the patent application. Although the concept of "novelty" in patent law appears simple and self-explanatory, this view is very far from reality.
Explores Intellectual Property Rights, patents, inventions, patent filing, and patentability criteria, emphasizing the importance of inventive step and the limitations of patents.
With widening interests in using model organisms for reverse genetic approaches and biomimmetic micro-robotics, motility phenotyping of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is expanding across a growing array of locomotive environments. One ongoing bottlene ...
This article decomposes the R&D-patent relationship at the industry level to shed light on the sources of the worldwide surge in patent applications. The empirical analysis is based on a unique data set that includes five patent indicators computed for 18 ...
2014
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The SCENIC code package has been developed to integrate self-consistently an anisotropic pressure magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium state with power absorption from Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating and with a guiding center particle distribution function for ...