Being Aware Of How Inventive Step Is Determined In Japan. Part 2

Various discussions have been offered by practitioners and scholars about the inventive step, but a key point is whether or not the difference from conventional patents or the prior art is large qualitatively or quantitatively.

The way the patent examination practice of JPO studies and the determines the difference, is "Whether is it difficult to configure the invention referring to the cited prior art references or not". Therefore, "the difficulty of the configuration" is the essence of the inventive step.

An element of judging the existence of "the difficulty of the configuration" in the invention is if the issue of "whether there is a remarkable effect that cannot be achieved by the conventional invention" is examined or not. This is one, but perhaps the most substantive way of thinking by the JPO.