Word.ws English Dictionary

person of ordinary skill in the art

person of ordinary skill in the art noun: in United States patent law, the hypothetical individual whose likely knowledge determines whether an improvement on existing technology would be obvious, and therefore not patentable.

Noun

person of ordinary skill in the art (plural persons of ordinary skill in the art or people of ordinary skill in the art)

  1. (US) In United States patent law, the hypothetical individual whose likely knowledge determines whether an improvement on existing technology would be obvious, and therefore not patentable.

Forms of person of ordinary skill in the art

pluralpersons of ordinary skill in the art
pluralpeople of ordinary skill in the art
alternative formperson having ordinary skill in the art
alternative formPOSITA

Questions about person of ordinary skill in the art

What does person of ordinary skill in the art mean?
Person of ordinary skill in the art means in United States patent law, the hypothetical individual whose likely knowledge determines whether an improvement on existing technology would be obvious, and therefore not patentable.
What part of speech is person of ordinary skill in the art?
Person of ordinary skill in the art is a noun.
What is the plural of person of ordinary skill in the art?
The plural of person of ordinary skill in the art is persons of ordinary skill in the art.

Words near person of ordinary skill in the art in the dictionary

  1. person from Porlock
  2. person having ordinary skill in the art
  3. person in the street
  4. person in the streets
  5. person of interest
  6. person of ordinary skill in the art
  7. person under train
  8. person unknown
  9. person up
  10. person-day
  11. person-days

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: person of ordinary skill in the art (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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