There are five basic requirements for patentability: Subject matter requirement, written description, utility, novelty, non-obviousness.
The whole idea behind non-obviousness is that it taps into multiple sources of prior art and makes sure that a person with ordinary skills would not have easily thought of the invention that is trying to get patented. The key here is that it needs to be novel, and that given previous prior art, this invention should shed a new light or bring in something new.
Also, Title 35 USC Section 103 helps one to argue whether a patent is obvious or not. It says: A patent may not be obtained through the invention 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 have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.
Lastly, I just wanted to talk about the TSM test, which says that there must be a teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the prior art to combine elements in the prior art in order to find a patent obvious.
Hey Michael,
ReplyDeleteGood job on your post here. I like how your second paragraph goes over the bigger picture of obviousness, to kind of give some framework for the post. Good job on the TSM post too. The one little thing that threw me off was how you mentioned 5 elements in the first paragraph, then didn't go into any hahah. But otherwise, nice job!