Novelty (patent)

Novelty is one of the patentability requirements 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. Some of the most contentious questions of novelty comprise:

  1. inventor's own prior disclosures (only a few countries provide a grace period, most notably, 1 year in the US);
  2. new uses of known things, such as pharmaceuticals;
  3. a broader question of (2) is inherent anticipation;
  4. patenting things, which are newly discovered in (or isolated from) nature (see Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.) This question overlaps with patentable subject matter.
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