State of the art

The state of the art is a criterion for assessing Novelty of the Invention. This includes all information available to the public before the date of filing of the Patent application - which constitutes the "Prior rights" - regardless of when and where it was Disclosed. Note that it differs for novelty and Inventive step: in the former case it includes earlier patent applications, whereas this is not the case in the latter.

The public thus includes all persons not bound by secrecy.

In assessing accessibility, we need to focus on the two characteristic features of the phrase "accessible to the public": accessibility implies, firstly, that the invention is disclosed in a sufficiently complete manner to enable a person skilled in the art to carry it out, and, secondly, that the relationship of the person skilled in the art to the invention is sufficiently characterized for a theoretical acquaintance with it.

First of all, in order to incorporate the state of the art, a teaching method must be industrially accessible to the person skilled in the art, i.e. the latter must be able to reproduce this teaching method.

Secondly, the word "accessible" means that the novelty of an invention will be challenged by demonstrating the mere theoretical possibility of its access by the public prior to the filing date of the application..