12696 IUPAC Gold Book - obviousness 10.1351/goldbook.12696 12696 current 1 Term associated with intellectual property wherein the latter’s patentability is assessed relative to the combination of more than one item of "prior art". To be patentable within the context of medicinal chemistry, a given compound must be: (i) novel, in that its specific arrangement of atoms has never been previously disclosed; (ii) non-obvious, in that its specific arrangement of atoms is not readily suggested to be of benefit by a person having ordinary skill in the art upon considering two or more other, previously disclosed structures; and, (iii) useful, in that it should have some benefit, the disclosure of the latter encompassing a valid "reduction to practice". patentability https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12702 PAC, 2013, 85, 1725. 'Glossary of terms used in medicinal chemistry. Part II (IUPAC Recommendations 2013)' on page 1744 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-12-11-23) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12696/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12696/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/12696/plain Citation: 'obviousness' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.12696 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-06-27T11:20:57+00:00