Background and Rationale
A patent grants an inventor a legally enforceable monopoly over their invention. This means that others can be legally restrained from exploiting the invention. It is not the intention of the patent system to deny anyone what they have been free to do before someone claims an invention. For example, one cannot patent the wheel, as that would exclude others from doing what they had previously been free to do. The legal test is that the invention must be something new i.e. it must possess "novelty". The invention of the wheel is not new and does not possess "novelty".
Read more about this topic: Novelty (patent)
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