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Chapter 10
THAT’S OBVIOUSNESS!
10.1 THE REQUIREMENT FILTERS REVISITED
In Chapter 2 we introduced the main requirements that a US patent application
covering an invention needs to satisfy to issue as a valid US patent. We observed
that the requirements operate as a series of lters through which a patent applica-
tion must pass if the USPTO is to issue the application as a patent. It should come
as no surprise that some of the lters are easier to apply than others.
Of all the requirement lters, the nonobviousness lter is arguably the hardest
lter to apply because it involves combining information from dierent sources
to assess whether a p ...