Question

Define the term novelty. How is it important to obtain patent?

Answer 1

Novelty is a requirement for a patent claim to be patentable. An invention is not new and therefore not patentable if it was known to the public before the filing date of the patent application, or before its date of priority if the applicant claims priority of an earlier patent application. The purpose of the novelty requirement is to prevent prior art from being patented again.

For an invention, a lack of novelty matters for two main reasons:

You are unlikely to be able to obtain any worthwhile intellectual property rights(Part 5 ) for an idea that is not novel. In most cases this means that your idea will have little or no commercial value. (Exceptions include ideas that rely more for their success on skilful marketing than IPR, or where a rights owner agrees to license the IPR.)An idea that is not novel cannot legally belong to you. If someone else owns the rights to it, you risk having legal action taken against you if you try to exploit it without their permission. Nor can you claim the idea as yours even if it has no legal owner (for example, if it is an old idea).

But even if an idea is novel, novelty on its own may not mean much. For an invention to have good commercial potential, it needs to be a significant improvement on prior art.

Whether or not an invention has a significant improvement depends on many factors. Some improvements may be small in technology terms but have high commercial value.