State of the art

The state of the art, in patent law, is the set of published ideas for a given domain. Any idea that is part of the state of the art is called a piece of prior art.

What can be used as prior art?

Some examples:

• ads
• marketing materials
• manuals
• conference proceedings discussing the idea
• source code
• ...many other things...

That's the best aswner of all time! JMHO

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• How to read patents and gather prior art
• Prior-art database
• What is patentable
• First-to-file or first-to-invent
• Invalid patents remain unchallenged
• Invalidating harmful patents

External links

• How to Find Prior Art Tutorial, audio and slides, by Dan Ravicher
• State of the art, Wikipedia
• The Relevance of Invention Date in Patent Prosecution (six parts), March 2010, Patently-O
• Peer-to-patents tutorial list: Learn about prior art
• the IP.com prior-art database - check: I think this is used by the USPTO. Right?