Patent

It was established law that the approach to the assessment of obviousness would be to: (i) identify the notional person skilled in the art and identify the relevant common general knowledge of that person; (ii) identify the inventive concept of the claim in question or, if that could not readily be done, construe it; (iii) identify what, if any, differences would exist between the matter cited as forming part of the ‘state of the art’ and the inventive concept of the claim or the claim as it had been construed; and (iv) consider whether viewed without any knowledge of the alleged invention as had been claimed, had those differences constituted steps which would have been obvious to the person skilled in the art or had they required any degree of invention.