To obtain a valid patent, does an inventor need to know why his invention works? Hal Wegner reminds us in his blog that the answer is “no.”

Wegner’s Writings

Going back a bit to 1911, the Supreme Court in Diamond Rubber stated:

“A patentee may be baldly empirical, seeing nothing beyond his experiments and the result ***. It is certainly not necessary that [the inventor] understand or be able to state the scientific principles underlying his invention ***.”

Diamond Rubber Co. v. Consol. Rubber Tire Co., 220 U.S. 428, 435–36 (1911) (citations omitted)

Example for Organic Chemist Inventors:

If you have invented a new compound, the new compound must be “useful.”  You may still be able to get a patent on it even if you haven’t nailed down its mechanism of action.  You may show that is useful in an enzymatic assay.  But you do not need to prove exactly how or where the molecule binds to the target enzyme.