Patentability - Requirements

Requirements

The patent laws usually require that, for an invention to be patentable, it must be:

• Patentable subject matter, i.e., a kind of subject-matter eligible for patent protection
• Novel (i.e. at least some aspect of it must be new)
• Non-obvious (in United States patent law) or involve an inventive step (in European patent law)
• Useful (in U.S. patent law) or be susceptible of industrial application (in European patent law)

Usually the term "patentability" only refers to "substantive" conditions, and does not refer to formal conditions such as the "sufficiency of disclosure", the "unity of invention" or the "best mode requirement".

Judging patentability is one aspect of the official examination of a patent application performed by a patent examiner and may be tested in post-grant patent litigation.

Prior to filing a patent application, inventors sometimes obtain a patentability opinion from a patent agent or patent attorney regarding whether an invention satisfies the substantive conditions of patentability.