In most patent laws, unity of invention is a formal administrative requirement that must be met by a patent application to become a granted patent. Basically, a patent application can relate only to one invention or a group of closely related inventions. The purpose of this requirement is administrative, as well as financial. That is, the requirement serves to preclude the option of filing one patent application for several inventions, while paying only one set of fees (filing fee, search fee, examination fee, renewal fees, and so on). Unity of invention also makes the classification of patent documents easier.
When a patent application is objected to on the ground of a lack of unity, it may be still considered for patent protection, unlike in the case where the invention is found to be lacking novelty. A divisional application can usually be filed for the second invention, and for the further inventions, if any. Alternatively, a patent prosecutor may make a technical argument that there is unity of invention.
Other articles related to "unity of invention, invention, inventions, of inventions":
... patent law, applications that claim more than one distinct invention may be subject to restriction to a single invention, and the applicant may prosecute the remaining invention(s) by filing a ... A "restriction requirement" will typically present the different inventions based on the claims within the application, and the applicant may elect which invention he would prosecute ...
... A requirement that a patent application can relate only to one invention (or to a group of inventions so linked as to form a single general inventive concept, see for instance Unity of invention under the ...
Famous quotes containing the words unity of, invention and/or unity:
“As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Out of countless memories, invention selects a few that become “the story of my life.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Art expresses the one, or the same by the different. Thought seeks to know unity in unity; poetry to show it by variety; that is, always by an object or symbol.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)