The Patent Shoppe
  • Home
  • Firm Information
    • Areas of Practice
    • Firm Philosophy
    • Services and Pricing
  • Personnel
    • Patrick J. Lavender
  • Insight
  • Links
  • Contact Us

Can an invention be considered patentable if every individual component within it is a common or well-known element?

4/4/2017

 
Yes, it is the particular combination of components/elements that is relevant in this analysis.  For example, Patent #5,502,918 to Oviatt claims a mousetrap using wire, a plastic tube, and a ping-pong ball to trap a mouse. Although each individual material used is a common, well-known element (wire, plastic, a ping-pong ball), combining these elements in the particular way that Oviatt has described to form a mousetrap yielded a novel, non-obvious and ultimately patented invention.

Comments are closed.

    Insight
    ( Official Blog )

    RSS Feed

© COPYRIGHT 2015, THE PATENT SHOPPE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS WEBSITE IS PUBLISHED BY THE LAW FIRM THE PATENT SHOPPE. ITS CONTENTS ARE NOT INTENDED TO SERVE AS LEGAL ADVICE OR LEGAL OPINION. SUCH ADVICE MAY ONLY BE PROVIDED WHEN RELATED TO SPECIFIC FACT SITUATIONS THAT THE PATENT SHOPPE HAS BEEN RETAINED AS COUNSEL TO ADDRESS.