What is the Prior Art

Novelty is one of the essential criteria required for a patent to be granted in India. It means that the invention must be new or novel and must not have been anticipated by any published document in the world. In order to prove novelty, it must be proved that no other document in the world has any prior art relating to the subject matter of the invention.
Prior art means all the publications, presented or disclosed to the public before the date of filing of the complete specifications. It can exist by the way of oral or written disclosure. Prior Art includes not only previous patents, but also any other published materials, including scientific papers, advertisements, newspaper articles etc. Such prior art materials that are not patents are called non-patent literature or NPL.
Before the application for a patent is filed, a prior art search is of paramount importance. It will help determine the existing literature regarding the subject matter of the patent and help establish the novelty of the invention
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