What is creativity and what are the requirements for creativity in patent application?

the criteria for judging creativity are as follows. Creative judgment itself is a subjective judgment, of course, there are ambiguous situations. In the patent law at home and abroad, the criteria for judging creativity are qualitative descriptions, and there is no completely objective quantitative criteria. The current patent judgment methods in various countries can only make the judgment criteria as objective as possible. Therefore, in the process of patent examination, the grasp of creativity depends largely on the subjective judgment of the examiner. However, the examiner's subjective judgment is based on the understanding of technical scheme and patent law, and then some judgment method is adopted, so to some extent, creative judgment method is the embodiment of judgment standard. If the judgment method adopted by the examiner cannot objectively reflect the creative height of an invention, it will be very unfavorable to the development of the patent system. In order to eliminate the subjective elements in creative judgment as much as possible, many countries have summed up a set of effective judgment methods in their patent practice for many years. For example, the United States stipulated the standard of creative non-obviousness for the first time in its patent law revised in 1952, which added Article 13: "Although an invention has not been similarly disclosed or recorded as stipulated in Article 12 of this law, if the difference between the subject matter of the invention for patent protection and the existing technology makes it obvious to ordinary technicians in the field to which the subject matter belongs, the invention as a whole cannot be patented. Patentability is not denied because of the way the invention is made. " In 1966, the US Supreme Court made a judicial interpretation of the application of Article 13 in the judgment of Graham v. John Deere CO, which was recognized by the US Patent and Trademark Office, and summarized the four elements of Graham: the scope and content of existing technology; The difference between the existing technology and the examined claim; General technical level in the corresponding field; Auxiliary considerations, including business success, long-term desire to solve the needs, the failure of others, etc. ",and require the examiner to conduct creative review according to this standard. The examination guide of the European Patent Office stipulates that in order to objectively and predictably judge whether there is an invention step, the examiner should adopt the so-called "problem-scheme method", also known as "three-step method": the first step is to determine "the closest existing technology"; The second step is to determine the "objective technical problems" to be solved; Step 3, consider whether the applied invention is obvious to those skilled in the art from the point of view of the closest existing technology and objective technical problems. When China introduced the patent system from foreign countries, it also absorbed the western countries' judgment methods on creativity, and made appropriate modifications in combination with China's actual situation. At present, the judgment method of patent creativity is the "three-step method" proposed in the 21 edition of the Examination Guide. The so-called "three-step method" is introduced in detail in 3.2.1.1 Section, Chapter 4, Part II of the 21 Review Guide, namely: (1) determining the closest existing technology, (2) determining the distinguishing features of the invention and the technical problems actually solved by the invention, and (3) judging whether the claimed invention is obvious to the technicians in this field. It is true that this judgment method is simple and clear, and it is a set of reasonable and creative judgment methods summarized by Chinese patent workers on the basis of consulting the patent work experience of developed countries for hundreds of years and combining the reality of China's patent work. The spirit of this judgment method is basically the same as that of the mainstream judgment methods in the world. In the process of patent examination in China, this method has been widely used and made great achievements.