Novelty Evaded: How to Say Nothing About Novelty in 700 Words: A Guide by IPO

Controller Emeritus
May 5
2 min read

NON-INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INDIA

Ref. No.: FER/2025/0001 Date of Dispatch: 05/05/2025

To:

The Drafting Committee

Draft CRI Guidelines Cell

Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trademarks

Boudhik Sampada Bhawan

S.M. Road, Mumbai

Subject:

Examination report under Sections 12 & 13 of the Patents Act, 1970 and the Patents Rules, 2003 – regarding Section 4.1 (Novelty) of the Draft CRI Guidelines (March 2025).

PART I: SUMMARY OF THE REPORT

Requirement	Remarks
Novelty (Section 2(1)(j))	The section on novelty restates standard doctrine without any CRI-specific nuance. No illustrative examples are provided. It does not assist examiners or applicants in assessing novelty for computer-related inventions.
Prior Art Assessment (Section 13)	Generic. Fails to engage with how novelty might manifest in data flows, code structure, or computational architecture.
Clarity (Rule 10(4)(c))	The “Seven Stambhas” test introduces confusion instead of clarity. Imported from precedent without contextual adaptation.
Definitiveness (Rule 10(5))	No clear direction on what novelty means in algorithmic, machine-learning, or distributed computing inventions.
Treatment of 3(k) Overlap	Omission of how Section 3(k) is often misused to reject novel CRI claims regardless of actual novelty.

PART II: DETAILED TECHNICAL REPORT

1. Inventive Step Contextualization

Section 4.1 replicates the seven-step novelty test from Ericsson v. Lava without tailoring it to the peculiarities of CRIs. There is no acknowledgement of domain-specific difficulties in defining novelty for software-based inventions, neural networks, or cloud infrastructure claims.

2. Lack of CRI-Specific Insight

There is no discussion on:

Emergent behaviors in algorithmic systems
Functional novelty across data pipelines
Architectural novelty in virtual machines or orchestration layers

The guidelines presume a mechanical notion of novelty incompatible with the dynamic, systemic nature of CRIs.

3. Form Over Substance

While the section advises avoiding "form over substance," it offers exactly that — formalistic restatements of old rules, without imagination, insight, or practical CRI-specific reasoning.

PART III: FORMAL REQUIREMENTS

Requirement	Comment
Structural Rewrite	Section 4.1 should be subdivided into: (a) Method claims, (b) System claims, and (c) Hybrid/Architectural claims.
Practical Examples	Must include at least 2–3 CRI claim examples with novelty assessments.
Prior Art Framework	Clarify admissibility and weight of open-source repositories, code commits, preprint archives, and StackOverflow threads.
Guidance to Examiners	Provide interpretive clarity on identifying novelty in software logic and algorithmic behavior, not just hardware interfaces.

PART IV: DOCUMENTS ON RECORD

Draft CRI Guidelines (March 2025)
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Lava (Delhi HC, 2016)
Internal examiner communications (unofficial, evasive)
About 7,000 rejected CRI claims citing "lack of novelty" with zero analysis

Digitally signed by:

Controller Emeritus (Retired Without Ever Serving)

Jurisdiction: FirstEvasionReport.com

Certified: Unexamined but Fully Sentient