Word.ws English Dictionary

reverse infringement

reverse infringement noun: a situation where a prior disclosure (such as prior art) anticipates a claimed invention, effectively rendering the prior art an infringement of the patent if the patent were valid.

Noun

reverse infringement (countable and uncountable, plural reverse infringements)

  1. A situation where a prior disclosure (such as prior art) anticipates a claimed invention, effectively rendering the prior art an infringement of the patent if the patent were valid.
    • His Honour held that the test of anticipation or want of novelty was that of reverse infringement and the guidelines in Hill v. Evans.1990, Adelaide Law Review Association (contributor), An Annual Survey of Australian Law, page 306
    • An effective way of securing the right to work is to test the invention which is the subject of a patent application by comparing the invention and the prior art and asking whether the invention would 'infringe' the prior art - a test of reverse infringement.1999, Catherine Colston, Principles of Intellectual Property Law, page 86

Forms of reverse infringement

pluralreverse infringements

Questions about reverse infringement

What does reverse infringement mean?
Reverse infringement means a situation where a prior disclosure (such as prior art) anticipates a claimed invention, effectively rendering the prior art an infringement of the patent if the patent were valid.
What part of speech is reverse infringement?
Reverse infringement is a noun.
What is the plural of reverse infringement?
The plural of reverse infringement is reverse infringements.

Words near reverse infringement in the dictionary

  1. reverse image search
  2. reverse image searches
  3. reverse implied odds
  4. reverse import
  5. reverse imports
  6. reverse infringement
  7. reverse infringements
  8. reverse intaglio
  9. reverse intaglios
  10. reverse integration
  11. reverse isekai

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reverse infringement (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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Cite this entry: “reverse infringement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reverse_infringement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.