Novelty is a requirement for a patent claim to be patentable. An invention is not new and therefore not patentable if it was known to the public before the filing date of the patent application, or before its date of priority if the applicant claims priority of an earlier patent application. The purpose of the novelty requirement is to prevent prior art from being patented again.
Within the context of a national or multilateral body of law, an invention is patentable if it meets the relevant legal conditions to be granted a patent. By extension, patentability also refers to the substantive conditions that must be met for a patent to be held valid.
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".
Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc., 525 U.S. 55 (1998), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that determined what constituted being "on sale" for the purposes of barring the grant of a patent for an invention.
Graver Tank & Manufacturing Co. v. Linde Air Products Co., 339 U.S. 605 (1950), was an important United States Supreme Court decision in the area of patent law, establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, and explaining how and when it was to be used.
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 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.
Egbert v. Lippmann, 104 U.S. 333 (1881), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that public use of an invention bars the patenting of it. The Court's ruling was colored by its view that the inventor had forfeited his right to patent the invention by "sleeping on his rights" while others commercialized the technology.
Rowell v. Lindsay, 113 U.S. 97 (1885), was a bill brought by the appellants, John S. Rowell and Ira Rowell, the plaintiffs in the circuit court. The bill was in equity against Edmund J. Lindsay and William Lindsay, the appellees, to restrain the infringement of reissued letters patent No. 2,909, dated March 31, 1868, granted to the plaintiffs for 'a new and improved cultivator.
Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. 248 (1851), was a United States Supreme Court decision credited with introducing into United States patent law the concept of non-obviousness as a patentability requirement, as well as stating the applicable legal standard for determining its presence or absence in a claimed invention.
California Artificial Stone Paving Co. v. Molitor, 113 U.S. 609 (1885), involved a bill that was filed by the appellant against the appellee complaining that the latter was infringing on a letters patent granted to one John J. Schillinger, and which had been assigned for the State of California to the complainant.
Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57 (1969), is a 1969 decision of the United States Supreme Court on the legal standard governing the obviousness of claimed inventions. It stands for the proposition that, when old elements are combined in a way such that they do not interact in a novel, unobvious way, then the resulting combination is obvious and therefore unpatentable.
Netscape Communications Corp. v. Konrad, 295 F.3d 1315, was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It affirmed that public use or commercialization of an invention more than one year prior to the filing date will cost the inventor his patent rights. The inventor in this case was Allan M. Konrad, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employee who devised and implemented a method for accessing and searching data objects stored on a remote computer. Netscape moved to invalidate Konrad's patents in U.S. district court immediately after Konrad filed a patent infringement suit against Netscape customers. The district court concluded that Konrad's patents were invalid because they did not meet the public-use and on-sale bar eligibility criteria of 35 U.S.C. § 102b. In particular, the district court found that Konrad (1) placed his invention in the public domain by demonstrating it to others without a confidentiality agreement and (2) tried to sell it to other legal entities, both more than one year before he filed for the patent. The appeals court, upon review, affirmed the district court decision for the same reasons.
A patent holder in Canada has the exclusive right, privilege and liberty to making, constructing, using and selling the invention for the term of the patent, from the time the patent is granted. Any person who does any of these acts in relation to an invention without permission of the patent owner is liable for patent infringement.
Nicolson pavement, alternatively spelled "Nicholson" and denominated wooden block pavement and wood block pavement, is a road surface material consisting of wooden blocks. Samuel Nicolson invented it in the mid-19th century. Wooden block pavement has since become unfavored because of its poor surface quality and high cost of maintenance.
Evans v. Jordan, 13 U.S. 199 (1815), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that someone who had copied a patented invention after the patent had expired, and before the patent was restored by a private bill, would be liable for damages for patent infringement for any use continuing after the patent was restored. It was the second published Supreme Court decision on patent law, and the first of four Supreme Court cases dealing with the Oliver Evans flour mill patent. Like other Supreme Court patent cases prior to Evans v. Eaton, however, this case did not deal with substantive patent law, but only with issues of statutory construction and infringement liability.
Evans v. Eaton, 16 U.S. 454 (1818), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a patent disclosing an improved method of manufacture by means of several different improved machines should be construed to claim both the method and the improvements to the machines, but not to include the machines apart from the inventor's improvements.
Evans v. Eaton, 20 U.S. 356 (1822), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, chiefly, that a patent on an improved machine must clearly describe how the machine differs from the prior art.
United States v. Bell Telephone Co., 167 U.S. 224 (1897), is an 1897 decision of the United States Supreme Court that held that the United States lacked standing to challenge the validity of its issued patents “on the mere ground of error of judgment” in issuing them. The United States had standing to seek to invalidate patents, however, on grounds of fraudulent procurement and also as a defense to a charge of patent infringement. The decision operated for many decades as a bar to government efforts to seek invalidation of patents that it considered spurious until the Supreme Court limited Bell Telephone, first to a limited extent in United States v. United States Gypsum Co., and then more broadly in United States v. Glaxo Group Ltd.
Rubber-Tip Pencil Co. v. Howard, 87 U.S. 498 (1874), is an 1874 decision of the United States Supreme Court concerning the patent eligibility of abstract ideas. As explained below in the Subsequent developments section, it is intermediate in the development of that aspect of patent law from Neilson v Harford, through O'Reilly v. Morse, to Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., and then to Parker v. Flook, Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l.
