Prior art is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria for patentability. In most systems of patent law, prior art is generally defined as anything that is made available, or disclosed, to the public that might be relevant to a patent's claim before the effective filing date of a patent application for an invention. However, notable differences exist in how prior art is specifically defined under different national, regional, and international patent systems.
The doctrine of equivalents is a legal rule in many of the world's patent systems that allows a court to hold a party liable for patent infringement if the infringing device or process does not fall within the literal scope of a patent claim but is nevertheless equivalent to the claimed invention. In the United States, Judge Learned Hand has described its purpose as being "to temper unsparing logic and prevent an infringer from stealing the benefit of the invention."
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".
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.
The United States is considered to have the most favorable legal regime for inventors and patent owners in the world. 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 from 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.
This is a list of legal terms relating to patents and patent law. A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention claimed therein, but a territorial right to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention, granted to an inventor or their successor in rights in exchange to a public disclosure of the invention.
Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified the nonobviousness requirement in United States patent law, set forth 14 years earlier in Patent Act of 1952 and codified as 35 U.S.C. § 103.
KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the issue of obviousness as applied to patent claims.
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.
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.
Dann v. Johnston, 425 U.S. 219 (1976), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court on the patentability of a claim for a business method patent.
Sakraida v. Ag Pro Inc., 425 U.S. 273 (1976), was a unanimous 1976 Supreme Court decision holding a claimed invention obvious because it "simply arranges old elements with each performing the same function it had been known to perform, although perhaps producing a more striking result than in previous combinations."
Perfect Web Technologies, Inc. v. InfoUSA, Inc. 587 F.3d 1324, is a United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case in which the court held that a patent can be invalidated due to the obvious nature of the asserted claims. Perfect Web, an e-mail marketer, sued its competitor InfoUSA for patent infringement, claiming that InfoUSA's bulk email distribution method infringed its Patent No. 6,631,400. The district court initially found that the patent did not meet the non-obviousness requirement and was therefore invalid. On appeal, The Federal Court agreed that the patent was obvious because someone of ordinary skill could arrive at the patent claim using common sense.
Lockwood v. American Airlines, Inc., 107 F.3d 1565, was a case for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in which Lawrence B. Lockwood sued American Airlines, Inc for patent infringement for their reservation system, SABREvision. The case was first heard by the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, which ruled in favor of American Airlines, Inc. In the summary judgment for that case, the court ruled that American Airlines, Inc's SABREvision system did not infringe on U.S. Patent Re. 32,115, U.S. Patent 4,567,359, and U.S. Patent 5,309,355 held by Lockwood. Furthermore, the court ruled that the '355 patent was invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 102 and the asserted claims of the '359 patent were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 103. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld these rulings in favor of American Airlines, Inc. based on the fact that district court determined there were no genuine issues of material fact in dispute.
Stanford University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., 563 U.S. 776 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that title in a patented invention vests first in the inventor, even if the inventor is a researcher at a federally funded lab subject to the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act. The judges affirmed the common understanding of U.S. constitutional law that inventors originally own inventions they make, and contractual obligations to assign those rights to third parties are secondary.
Patent law in modern mainland China began with the promulgation of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China, in 1984. This law was modeled after patent systems of other civil law countries, particularly Germany and Japan.
Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food Machinery & Chemical Corp., 382 U.S. 172 (1965), was a 1965 decision of the United States Supreme Court that held, for the first time, that enforcement of a fraudulently procured patent violated the antitrust laws and provided a basis for a claim of treble damages if it caused a substantial anticompetitive effect.
Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 134 S.Ct. 2120 (2014), was a 2014 decision by the United States Supreme Court pertaining to the interpretation of patent claims in U.S. patents. The opinion addressed the requirement contained in 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 2 that a patent "particularly point[] out and distinctly claim[] the subject matter which the applicant regards as the invention." Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg held that a patent fails to comply with this requirement when the patent's claims, read in light of the specification and the prosecution history, "fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention." Subsequent to the Court’s decision the case was remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit which, using the new standard, declined to invalidate Biosig's patent.
In US patent law, non-obviousness is one of the requirements that an invention must meet to qualify for patentability, codified as a part of Patent Act of 1952 as 35 U.S.C. §103. An invention is not obvious if a "person having ordinary skill in the art" (PHOSITA) would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism. Since the PHOSITA standard turned to be too ambiguous in practice, the U.S. Supreme Court provided later two more useful approaches which currently control the practical analysis of non-obviousness by patent examiners and courts: Graham et al. v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City et al., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) gives guidelines of what is "non-obvious", and KSR v. Teleflex (2006) gives guidelines of what is "obvious".
