To be patentable in the UK, an invention must be new and be inventive;
- to be new, the idea you claim must not have been publicly disclosed anywhere in the world either by you or by someone else prior to the date of filing your application
- to be inventive, the differences between the invention and what is known must not be obvious to a person with knowledge of that field
Pre-filing searches can help to assess whether an invention is new before significant finances are committed to the project.