Does my idea have to be “good”?

• The general standards for evaluating whether or not a particular invention is worthy of patent protection are:
  • that the structure of the invention be “novel”, i.e., new and unique, no one else has done it before; and
  • that the invention not be an obvious modification of whatever has been done before.
• These standards are set out in Sections 102 and 103 of Title 35 of the United States Code.
• There is no percentage rule as to how different an invention must be in order to be worthy of protection. Generally speaking, if an invention produces a non-obvious advantage or accomplishes a specific result in a non-obvious way, the invention is likely to be patentable.

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