It is, unfortunately, a relatively common occurrence to find
patent applications filed in which the inventor has discovered some
unique characteristic or property of, say, a "new"
composition they have prepared, and which they believe is worthy of
patent protection, only to later find that the purported invention
is not novel or inventive. In particular, experiments are
undertaken which yield surprising, unforeseen, or counterintuitive
results to the inventor, who then prepares and files a patent
application with much enthusiasm, only to later find that the
invention is new and surprising to them, and that another
researcher has traversed the same research path and already
published the invention. To avoid this situation occurring, it is
obviously preferable to conduct a reasonably thorough assessment of
the prior art before embarking on new research.
