I for Inventive Step (or Inventive Level)

I for Inventive Step (or Inventive Level) – i.e. the second, after novelty, patentability condition assessed by patent office experts during the substantive assessment of the submitted patent application. The inventive level is assessed taking into account a hypothetical person skilled in the art by answering several questions: defining the nearest state of the art (i.e. documents that reveal the most common features with the claimed invention, or solve the same technical problem), indicating the differences between the solution and the nearest state of the art, defining the objective technical problem solved by the invention, determining the technical effect, and determining whether the claimed invention, against the closest prior art and the outlined technical problem, would be apparent to one skilled in the art. The inventive level may be assessed on the basis of several documents, and only documents published (available in the state of the art) before the date of the patent application are taken into account when assessing this premise.