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Anatomy of an Invention:
Rational for Inventor
Substance of the Invention
Background Questions
> Introduction
> Title of
Invention
> Field of
Invention
> What's the
Problem?
> Prior Art
Description of Invention
> Drawings
> Text
> Adv. over Prior Art
> Innovative
Steps
> Glossary
> References
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Prior Art: Explain what you
know about solutions that already existed, before you made your
invention. The knowledge that already exists is called “prior art”,
and is either registered as a patent, or appears in a Web site, or
appears in a book or article, or is publicly revealed in some other
way. This section on Prior Art may be one paragraph up to one page
long. If you know of any patents relevant to the invention, write
the name or number of each patent, and the country of the patent. If
you know of any relevant Web sites, list them. If you know of any
other prior art, somehow indicate clearly what that prior art is. If
you know of nothing at all that is relevant, say so, or if you think
there is something relevant but do not have information to identify
the relevant prior art, say that. We need
to be clear here. All people involved in the patent application
process, including you, are legally required to cite known prior art
which is so close to your invention that the prior art may defeat
patentability or severely limit the scope of any patent we may
receive. This is called “the obligation of disclosure”. We all have
this obligation right now, in preparing the application, and we
continue to have the obligation until the Patent Office issues the
patent. So if you discover relevant prior art later, let us know
about it. |