Word of the Month for October 2017: Novelty

Picture it.  You've been dreaming of a contraption for years and having just received a B.S. degree in engineering, you finally understand that that contraption is a new mousetrap.  A mousetrap? Really!?! Well, some people dream of mousetraps, some dream of flying.  Tomato, tomaaaaato.

So, you build the mousetrap and submit for a new patent. Yeah, that's what you do - because you need to protect your dream.  Turns out, your dream mousetrap isn't so dreamy since the patent office declines your patent request because it wasn't novel enough.

Wait, not novel?  What does it mean that a thing is "novel?" Well, as it turns out, according to Black's Law Dictionary, NOVELTY is defined as:

Trade secrets.  The newness of information that is generally unused or unknown and that gives its owner a competitive advantage in a business field. Patents. Newness of an invention both in form and in function of performance; the strict statutory requirement that this originality be demonstrated before an invention is patentable. 35 USCA 102

Oh, well, back to the drawing board, right?  The thing with mousetraps is that there are lots of designs.  In fact, there are over 4400 patents filed for different kinds of mousetraps that all do the same thing - kill mice. So, as it goes with mousetraps, there isn't a whole lot of novel ideas if they all do the same thing, right?

Such was the discussion I had with an enterprising person who came to our library.  Seems person was looking to develop a new type of fuel intake for a car and needed to know the law on patents and the process of getting a patent. Notwithstanding the millions of patents on car parts on file in the patent office, person was determined to plow ahead.  So I lead him over to our intellectual property section to show him:

• Lipscomb's Walker on Patents (Bancroft-Whitney)
• Moy's Walker on Patents (TR)
• Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (TR)
• Inventing & Patenting Sourcebook (Gale Publishing)
• How to Make Patent Drawings (Nolo Press)
• The Inventor's Notebook (Nolo Press)

While Emerson may have never actually said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door," if you ever do come up with something novel, don't hesitate to unleash it on the world (who will then try to copy you and steal your ideas.  Yeah, humans are pretty funky that way.)