One of the requirements for a patent to be granted is that whether it be a product or a process, it be novel. The invention should not have been anticipated.

It was held in Windsurfing v. Tabur, 1985 that ‘the notion behind anticipation is that it would be wrong to prevent a man from doing what he has lawfully done before the grant of the patent’.

In Glaverbd v. British Coal Corporation, 1994, it was held that novelty and anticipation are judged by seeing whether a patentee’s claims are capable of being equated with the information contained in a document published before the patentee makes his claims.

Section 2 (l) of the Patents Act defines a new invention as any invention or technology which has not been anticipated by publication in any document, or used in either within India or outside it, before the date of the filing of the patent application with complete specifications. That is to say, the subject matter or the invention should not belong to the public domain and it should not form part of the state of the art.