Novelty under 35 U.S.C. § 102 asks whether the claimed invention was already disclosed, in a single prior art reference, before the applicant’s effective filing date.1 The analysis proceeds claim by claim and element by element.
A prior art reference anticipates a claim only if it discloses every element of that claim, either expressly or inherently, arranged as the claim requires. Missing even one element defeats an anticipation attack, though the missing element may still support an obviousness rejection under a separate section.
Novelty is a distinct inquiry from patent-eligible subject matter. For the eligibility question, see the holding in Diamond v. Chakrabarty.
35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1). ↩︎