PERSONAL VIEW RELATED TO ANTICIPATION AND OBVIOUSNESS | WEEK #5

Hi everybody!

This blog post will cover my personal views related to anticipation and obviousness. We learned a great deal about this in class, and I found the topic to be particularly interesting. In class, we learned that there are three main requirements for a patent to be approved:

1. Usefulness
• In order for a patent to be useful, it must meet a need or solve a problem
• The patent must fill a current or anticipated need
• A useful patent can be "reduced to practice", operated, or enabled (i.e. it can be built and function)
• A useful patent can be an improvement on an already existing patent
2. Novelty (Relates to anticipation)
• Anticipation occurs when a single piece of prior art practices all of the elements of a single claim
• A novel patent has not been published or implemented before
• Ways around justifying a seemingly un-novel patent
• If the structure is known, are the elements used in a new way?
• If the function is known, is there a new problem to solve?
3. Non-obviousness (Relates to obviousness)
• A patent can be rejected if it is obvious, meaning that a Person having Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) defines it to be that way
• The patent must not be trivial or insignificant - it must serve a specific function
• The example we discussed in class was the bottle cap color example

I have included a video below created by an actual patent attorney that talks about anticipation and obviousness:

http://beemlaw.cmi-demo.com/video-gallery/three-common-rejections-of-patents

Thus, a patent can be rejected if it does not satisfy one of the aforementioned criteria (i.e. it is obvious or anticipated).

In the beverage sleeve examples I analyzed in my previous post, it was clear that many of these patents were similar but were able to functionally differentiate their claims, which is why they all were approved. Thus, although many of the patents attempted to solve the same problem, the technologies through which they did so varied widely. For example, while some patents described reusable sleeves while others described disposable ones. Some sleeves were customizable while others were not. Some sleeves gave beverage temperature readings, while others were composed of better material for insulation. At the end, none of the patents were obvious because every change served a functional purpose. None of the patents were un-novel because they did not infringe on the claims of others. Finally, all of the patents were useful because they met a need and solved a problem, even if it was by adding an improvement to an already existing patent.