Absolute novelty

Novelty is essential to patentability and is well-defined in the respective patent laws of at least the United States of America, the European Patent Convention (EPC) [1], Japan, and other jurisdictions. Nothing can be patentable that is not new. Although novelty is basic to patentability, different concepts of novelty exist throughout the different patent systems in the world. The most straightforward is that of absolute novelty , which is applied by the European Patent Convention in Art. 54 ... 

The different definitions of novelty in these important patent systems have far-reaching consequences. An invention may be novel according to U.S. law, even if it lacks absolute novelty as applied by the EPC. For example, if an inventor describes the invention in a printed publication, he must apply for a patent in the United States before one year (according to 102 (b)) has passed - otherwise any right to a U.S. patent is lost. In contrast, the inventor must file his patent application on the publication date, at the latest, if he wants to secure patent protection under the European Patent Convention and the national patent laws of many other countries. 

It s helpful to understand that because the applicants are claiming the compound with further limitations, the absolute novelty of the compound (by itself) is not a prerequisite to the absolute novelty of the claim. Claim 13 is directed to a process that involves using the compound as a component to effect a particular end, and claim 14 describes a composition including a certain ratio of the claimed substance together with another additive selected from a list of possible components. 

An invention possesses novelty when the technical knowledge for which the patent protection is sought is not included in the state of the art. Not in the state of the art is usually defined as all the information not available to the public, in any form of disclosure - oral, written, digitized, use/ exploitation, among others - at the time of filing the patent application. Absolute novelty is adopted by most countries, meaning that which has not been disclosed anywhere in the world. 

The synthesis of the models shown above acquired additional meaning from the absolute novelty of the stereochemistry problems which became available to experimental studies. While it is premature to make definite suggestions about the peculiarities of the chemistry of compounds having topological bonds, the uniqueness of their structure seems to guarantee that a number of non-trivial phenomena, such as unusual chelating properties, regulated catalytic activity, etc., will be discovered in this field. ... 

The concept of absolute novelty at the filing date of the patent application is now to be found in practically all patent laws, with the exception however, as said before, of the law of the United States. 

Several differences between U.S. patent law and the patent law of almost every foreign country also significantly affect patent strategy, especially the determination of when to file a patent application in the United States. Some of the most important of these include the rules for determining priority and the requirement of "absolute novelty" essentially everywhere except the United States. These differences are discussed next. 

The need for monitoring and controlling technical information does not end with the filing of the initial patent application. Disclosures relating to an invention claimed in an earlier patent application may also contain information concerning new inventions or improvements of the earlier claimed invention, which may be the subject of later filed applications. In addition, control of the disclosure of inventions contained in a patent application may allow for filing patent applications in countries requiring absolute novelty after expiration of the convention year, should that become necessary or desirable. Failures to file... 

Except for the United States, most other countries require absolute novelty. A written description, public use, or offer of sale that... 

The U.S. patent system differs in a number of ways from many other national patent systems. Some of these differences are discussed above, including patentable subject matter, priority of invention, and absolute novelty. 

Modem readers can hardly imagine the absolute novelty of those findings and the embarrassing inadequacy of vast sectors of the chemical community to assess or even understand them. As a matter of fact, until 1954 it was largely believed that stereoregular polymers can only have natural origin (as can be read in the motivation of the Nobel Prize to Natta [25]). That the world was just not ready is demonstrated... 

Most critics would acknowledge that Paris ceased to be the center of cutting-edge art and literature after i960. This mantle passed to New York with the rise of abstract expressionism, pop art, and postmodernism, and to hundreds of smaller capitals of the newly consecrated world literature. Indeed, one could argue that the idea of a single capital or center lost its importance after the decline of modernism once radical innovation and the quest to produce absolute novelty ceased to be the point, and writers and artists no longer needed immediate access to the latest trends. 

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