How to Invent and Protect Your Invention: A Guide to Patents for Scientists and Engineers

3.3 PATENTABLE CREATIVITY

Humans need words to think, and without words we struggle to define a concept. While scientific and artistic creativity may be similar, as many authors on creativity have postulated, for this discussion I searched for a word or expression that would describe specifically the kind of technical creativity that spawns patents. There are many kinds of creativities (artistic, business, political, teaching, advertising, culinary, etc.), but I wish to focus here only on the unique brand of creativity that produces patents. However, despite my sifting through the voluminous literature on creativity (with a professional scientific librarian's help, I might add), I could not find an appropriate expression that connects creativity and patents.

To resolve this conundrum, I propose the term patentable creativity to describe the kind of technological breakthrough creativity that leads to patents. For a working definition I propose: Patentable creativity is the capacity of the prepared mind to recognize and satisfy a need in a new, useful, and unobvious manner for society's benefit. The first part of this definition covers the mental--intellectual input of the inventor, whereas the second half connects it to the requirements of patent law.

Patentable creativity includes the whole spectrum of creativity, starting with truly pioneering patents (e.g. the telephone, airplane, or penicillin) that have profoundly changed society, and ending with incremental or run-of-the-mill ...