3 ms·
Abundant prior art.
by vidar 16y ago
Abundant prior art.
- TamDenholm 16y agoCool thanks, looked that up. Seem to be a stateside only thing though.
- bobds 16y agoPrior art is definitely not just a US concept.
- hugh3 16y agoDefinitely not, it's the whole core of the idea of a patent that you can't go round patenting things which already exist. The term "prior art" might be US-specific though, other countries' patent law systems have different words for the same thing (wikipedia suggests "background art" and "state of the art").
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago>you can't go round patenting things which already exist Not strictly right but close enough, better (but still not the whole story due to US differences) would be "things which have already been made public". Prior art is the globally recognised term. It means any [relevant] disclosure prior to the priority date of the application in hand. As an ex-patent examiner (not US) I'd use "background art" to represent the general status of the field (often presented in the preamble of the specification) and "state of the art" is strictly the whole gamut of prior art disclosures. -- most jurisdictions have first to file whilst US has a "first to invent" system