Inventions in biotechnology and the assessment of obviousness.

One of the requirements for patentability of an invention is that the invention involves an inventive step or in other words, is not obvious. In recent years, the obviousness of inventions in biotechnology has had to be judicially considered as a consequence of new methodologies being applied in biotechnology. This paper addresses how a research worker might go about assessing whether his or her invention is obvious in the light of developments in this area of patent law.