Novelty Vs. Utility
Unlike novelty, a court will not assume that an item has utility. A utility does not need to be obvious to the user. A patented item can be shown to have utility independent of patents granted for other inventions. An application for a previously patented invention that included a use the applicant had not previously contemplated has been rejected because it was not novel.
Read more about this topic: Utility (patent)
Famous quotes containing the words novelty and/or utility:
“No man’s thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)