Prior to the America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA), prior art were either (1) prior in time to the invention and thus anticipated the invention (e.g., 102(a), (e), and (g)); or (2) more than one-year prior to the application filing date and thus raised a statutory bar (102(b)). Within this schema, the pre-AIA Section 102 included the title of “Novelty and Loss of Right” where novelty refers to anticipation and loss of right refers to the statutory bar. The AIA totally rewrote Section 102 and eliminated the notion of anticipating the invention and also altered the notion of the statutory bar. The new rules focus instead on the effective filing date of the invention create what looks a lot like the statutory bar of 102(b) (except for automatic one-year grace period). The rule is not about absolute novelty in terms of invention-date (as that term has always been used in the US) but instead about filing of an application before prior art emerges. Although this seems to fit…
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