3. What are the limits of prior art in relation to the novelty of an invention?

As we saw earlier, French law and the EPC define prior art as everything that has been made available to the public before the filing date of the patent application by written or oral description, use or any other means.

We thus have a very extensive state of the art (everything that has been made accessible by any means) which corresponds to an absolute conception of novelty.

However, it could have been otherwise. Some countries exclude from prior art, or have in the past excluded from prior art, certain types of disclosure under certain conditions.

For example, the law of a given country might stipulate that an oral disclosure or prior use cannot be included in the state of the art if it took place abroad. Such a limitation of the state of the art (or relativization of the concept of novelty) may be justified if...