Person Having Ordinary Skill in The Art

A person having ordinary skill in the art is a legal fiction defined in the Patent Act of the United States. The PHOSITA is a test of "obviousness" which is one of the largest gray areas in patent law.

A patent may not be obtained though the invention ... if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.

Read more about Person Having Ordinary Skill In The Art:  Elsewhere

Famous quotes containing the words person, ordinary, skill and/or art:

    The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
    Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    Even in ordinary speech we call a person unreasonable whose outlook is narrow, who is conscious of one thing only at a time, and who is consequently the prey of his own caprice, whilst we describe a person as reasonable whose outlook is comprehensive, who is capable of looking at more than one side of a question and of grasping a number of details as parts of a whole.
    G. Dawes Hicks (1862–1941)

    We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if we believed in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great- hearted men.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Andy passes through things, but so do we. He sat down and had a talk with me. “You gotta decide what you want to do. Do you want to keep just playing museums from now on and the art festivals? Or do you want to start moving into other areas? Lou, don’t you think you should think about it?” So I thought about it, and I fired him.
    Lou Reed (b. 1944)