According to the second and third paragraphs of Article 22 of the Patent Law, novelty and creativity are defined as follows:
Novelty means that the invention or utility model does not belong to the prior art; No unit or individual filed an application for the same invention or utility model with the administrative department for patent in the State Council before the filing date, and it was recorded in the patent application documents published or announced after the filing date.
Creativity means that compared with the prior art, the invention has outstanding substantive features and remarkable progress, and the utility model has substantive features and progress.
According to the patent examination guide 20 10, judging novelty should be based on these two principles:
1. The same invention or utility model
Step 2 compare separately
In your question, whether the former case affects the novelty of the new application depends on whether the former case and the new application belong to the same invention or utility model. Compared with the former case, the new application lacks technical features. C. If the technical features are dispensable, then the new application is essentially the same as the former case, and the new application is not novel at this time. If C is a very important technical feature and new applications can solve different technical problems without C, then this new application is.
Similarly, judging creativity is more complicated according to the provisions of Patent Examination Guide 20 10. Generally, it is carried out in three steps. First, determine the closest existing technology. Because there is only the former situation and new application in this topic, the closest existing technology is the former situation, followed by determining the practical problems to be solved by the new application, and finally judging whether the new application is obvious to the technicians in this field.
In the three-step method, if the second step determines that the technical problems to be solved in the new application are the same as the previous one, the possibility of creativity is relatively low, but it does not rule out the possibility of creativity. For example, the absence of c will bring unexpected results.
The third step is to judge whether it is obvious or not. Generally, it will be considered whether the technicians in this field will think that different cases have different judgment standards and there is no constant procedure.
To sum up, there is no standard answer as far as the information you give is concerned. Specific problems need to be judged by giving more information in practice. The above are just general principles and methods of judgment.