Non-obviousness

Non-provisional application

The "full" patent application examined by the USPTO — as opposed to a provisional application, which is a placeholder. A non-provisional application must include a complete specification, drawings (if necessary), at least one claim, and payment of the filing fee. The non-provisional is what gets examined and, if allowed, issues as a patent.

Notice of allowance

A document the USPTO sends when an examiner has determined that the claims in a patent application are allowable and a patent will be issued — once the applicant pays the issue fee. Receiving a notice of allowance means prosecution is essentially over. The applicant typically has three months to pay the issue fee.

Novelty

The requirement that an invention must be new — not previously known, used, or disclosed publicly anywhere in the world before the filing date. Under the America Invents Act (2013), the US uses a first-to-file system: the applicant who files first gets priority, regardless of who invented first. Even the inventor can destroy novelty by publicly disclosing the invention more than a year before filing.

Abstract

A brief summary (300 words or fewer) that appears at the top of every patent. The abstract describes what the invention does in general terms. Legally, it has almost no weight — courts use the claims to determine what a patent covers, not the abstract. The abstract is useful mainly for quickly scanning patents during a prior art search.

Anticipation

A legal standard for rejecting a patent claim. If every element of a claim was already disclosed in a single prior art reference — in a patent, article, or product — the claim is "anticipated" and cannot be patented. Anticipation requires a single source to contain every element; if you need two sources, it's an obviousness argument, not anticipation.

Appeal

A request to have a patent examiner's rejection reviewed by a higher authority. After receiving multiple rejections, an applicant can appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) within the USPTO, and from there to federal court. Appeals are expensive and slow, but sometimes necessary when an examiner applies the law incorrectly.