How to Invent and Protect Your Invention: A Guide to Patents for Scientists and Engineers

3.1 ON THE DEFINITION OF CREATIVITY

A legally protectable invention (i.e., a patent) is arguably among the most precious products of human creativity. This is particularly true if the invention is a pioneering one that matures into an important innovation and leads to the betterment of the human condition.

But how do we define creativity, most often associated with the activity of inventing, to the satisfaction of a scientist or engineer? Webster's definition (creativity = creative ability; artistic or intellectual inventiveness) is not much help.

Creativity is an enormously large and complex subject, the analysis of which keeps hundreds of specialized scholars busy. There are countless books, treatises, scholarly articles, and even journals (e.g., Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior) on the subject. A query on Google on “What is creativity?” yielded over 130,000 hits. According to Wikipedia, there are over a hundred definitions of creativity and a multitude of theories describing it. No surprise here for the scientist or engineer: Since creativity cannot be measured, it defies definition.

While we cannot define creativity, we know that it exists and we know when we encounter it. The situation is similar to that confronted by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who, similarly, found it difficult to define the word “pornography.” He eventually abandoned the effort and simply opined: “I know it when I see it.”

Surprisingly, none of the many definitions ...