Unity of invention

The patent application must have a single subject. This principle is known as unity of invention. According to EPC s Article 82 ... 

Unity of invention is required for documentary research reasons. In the United States, the requirement of unity of invention (single subject per patent application) is investigated with the greatest strictness. 

Acceptable applications and valid patents must present inventions that are novel, unobvious, and useful. They show unity of invention, teach physical means to realize the inventions and, in several respects, disclose what attorneys call the best mode of practicing them. In a typical pharmaceutical patent, the best mode may refer to the compoimd most suitable as a drug, to the best way of making it, and to the disease it treats most effectively. Patent law requires inventors to reveal the best modes without, however, necessarily emphasizing or even identifying them. Although a patent relates... 

If the patent application relates to more than one invention and the apphcant wishes to protect two or more inventions, the invention or inventions can be the subject of one or more divisional applications. The divisional application may be filed at any time before the grant of the parent application. A divisional application cannot be filed if the parent application has been withdrawn or is deemed to have been withdrawn. Lack of unity is not a cause of invalidity of a granted patent. 

When neutron losses can be reduced to the minimum, and when a fissionable isotope giving an average neutron yield per fission of substantially over two, such as U333 is used to support the reaction, conversion factors above unity may be obtained in a converter wherein U333, for 70 example, is fissioned to produce U333. This type of improved converter is known as a breeder reactor and is specifically no part of the present invention except insofar... 

If we confine ourselves to real numbers, there is no such thing as the square root of a negative number. Mathematicians have invented imaginary numbers to make up for this perceived deficiency. The imaginary unit is denoted by i and is defined to equal the square root of negative unity ... 

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