Determination Of Nonobviousness: An Indian Approach

"... and in every age there come forth things that are new and have no foretelling, for they do not proceed from the past."¹

Non-obviousness of the invention is one of the three desiderata for the grant of Patent, others being novelty and industrial application. Simply put nonobvious as a patent term means that the invention shall not be obvious or apparent to a person ordinary skilled in the field relating to the invention. Basically the invention shall contain an inventive step over the prior art. It should not be mere a workshop improvement or general re-arrangement of components / features of the invention.

This test of non-obviousness is to be made with the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art i.e. having average skills, and not an expert in that technology. The test is very essential and subjective too, while deciding the inventive step the adjudicator needs to assess the "inventive step" on the scale and parameters of a person ordinarily