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.
Famous quotes containing the words unity of, unity and/or invention:
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“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)
“His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)