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35 U.S.C. 101:
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Inventions will be granted for “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof”.
Rejections based on a lack of utility (35 U.S.C. 101) may include:
- Any substantially unaltered thing occurring in nature, for example:
- A shrimp with its head and digestive tract removed is not patentable.
- Printed matter.
- A scientific principle, divorced from any tangible structure.
- Mathematical discoveries are not patentable.
- However, the methods of using such principles and devices embodying the principles may be patentable.
In order to establish prima facie, it is not necessary that there be a suggestion or an expectation from the prior art that the claimed invention will have the same or a similar utility as one which is newly discovered by the applicant.
