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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 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 have been OBVIOUS AT THE TIME THE INVENTION WAS MADE to a person having ...
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 ...
Patentable material must be synthetic, meaning that anything natural cannot be patented. For example, minerals, materials, genes, facts, organisms, and biological processes cannot be patented, but if someone were to apply an inventive, non-obvious, step to them to synthesize something new, the result could be patentable.
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.
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]
The non-patent literature includes especially scientific papers used as prior art to show that an invention claimed in a patent or patent application was known or obvious before the filing of the application. Also abbreviated "NPL".
However, it provides in Article 52(2) EPC a non-exhaustive list of what are not to be regarded as inventions, and therefore not patentable subject matter: The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the meaning of paragraph 1: (a) discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods; (b) aesthetic creations;