In most patent laws, unity of invention is a formal administrative requirement that must be met by a patent application in order to proceed to grant. Basically a patent application can relate only to one invention or a group of closely related inventions. The purpose of this provision is administrative, and in particular financial, i.e. it serves to limit the possibility to file one patent application for several inventions while paying only one set of fees (filing fee, search fee, examination fee, renewal fees and so on). Unity of invention also makes the classification of patent documents easier. A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally maximum 20 years from the filing date, depending on extension). ... Law (a loanword from Old Norse lag), in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow... A patent application is a request filed before a patent office in which an applicant applies for a patent for an invention. ... In music, an invention is a short composition with two or three part counterpoint. ...

At least under European patent practice and case law, lack of unity (of invention) can appear either "a priori", i.e. before taking into account the prior art, or "a posteriori", i.e. after having taken into account the prior art. An a posteriori lack of unity usually results from a lack of novelty or inventive step of the subject-matter of one independent claim. The European Patent Convention (EPC) or Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973 is a legal text instituting the European Patent Organisation and the system according to which European patents are granted. ... Case law - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... A priori is a Latin phrase meaning from the former or less literally before experience. In much of the modern Western tradition, the term a priori is considered to mean propositional knowledge that can be had without, or prior to, experience. ... Prior art or state of the art is all information that has been disclosed to the public in any form before a given date. ... Empirical or a posteriori knowledge is propositional knowledge obtained by experience. ... Novelty is a patentability test, according to which an invention is not patentable if it was already known before the date of filing, or before the date of priority if a priority is claimed, of the patent application. ... The inventive step is a patentability requirement present in most European patent laws, and in particular in the European Patent Convention (EPC). ... Patent claims define the extent of the protection conferred by a patent, in technical terms. ...

When a patent application is objected to on the ground of a lack of unity, patent protection is not ruled out, as it would be the case if the invention was found to be lacking novelty. A divisional application can usually be filed for the second invention, and for the further inventions if any. A continuing patent application is a patent application which follows an original patent application. ...

See also

• Patentability
• Novelty
• Inventive step
• Industrial application
• Sufficiency of disclosure

The patentability comprises the conditions that must be met for an invention to be granted a patent, and by extension it also refers to the substantive conditions that must be met for a patent to be held valid. ... Novelty is a patentability test, according to which an invention is not patentable if it was already known before the date of filing, or before the date of priority if a priority is claimed, of the patent application. ... The inventive step is a patentability requirement present in most European patent laws, and in particular in the European Patent Convention (EPC). ... Sufficiency of disclosure refers to the legal requirement that the description of an invention in a patent contain specific information about the invention. ...

External links

• Article 82 (http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/ar82.html#A82), Rule 29 (http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/r29.html#R29) and Rule 30 (http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/epc/e/r30.html#R30) of the European Patent Convention (EPC)