Patent Obviousness

Proving Meaningful Differences Between Inventions

Assuming that you can prove that your invention is "new", the invention still might be unpatentable. Even if the subject matter you are attempting to patent is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be "obvious." In other words, the subject matter of the patent application must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one color for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable because they are "obvious."

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