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:
“Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind, and indeed is nothing but an artificial invention to that purpose. The same may be said of allegiance, of the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners. All these are mere human contrivances for the interest of society.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)