> Is there any teaching in the prior art, as a whole, that would, not simply could, have prompted the skilled person, faced with the objective technical problem

> Is there any teaching in the prior art, as a whole, that would, not simply could, have prompted the skilled person, faced with the objective technical problem formulated when considering the technical features not disclosed by the closest prior art, to modify or adapt said closest prior art while taking account of that teaching [the teaching of the prior art, not just the teaching of the closest prior art], thereby arriving at something falling within the terms of the claims, and thus achieving what the invention achieves? > If the skilled person would have been prompted to modify the closest prior art in such a way as to arrive at something falling within the terms of the claims, then the invention does not involve an inventive step. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousn... ) It needs to be more than novel, it needs to be a reasonable leap over the existing state of the art. You shouldn't grant someone a 20+ year monopoly over an idea just because they were first to encounter a particular problem and come up with an obvious solution.