What does it mean if a claim is "anticipated"?

When a claim is described as "anticipated," it indicates that the prior art—the existing body of knowledge and inventions relevant to a specific field—discloses the entire invention as claimed. This means that the claim in question is no longer considered novel because all of its elements or combination of elements are already found in a single piece of prior art.

Anticipation is a critical concept in patent law because one of the fundamental requirements for patentability is that an invention must be new. If a claim lacks novelty due to anticipation, it cannot be patented. For a claim to be anticipated, the prior art must reveal every feature of the claim in such a way that a person of ordinary skill in the art could recognize the invention without any additional inventive step.

In contrast, the other options do not accurately characterize what it means for a claim to be anticipated. A claim being published does not imply that it is anticipated; it simply means that it has been made publicly accessible. If a claim is deemed irrelevant, it does not equate to anticipation, as anticipation specifically involves direct disclosure of the claimed invention in the prior art. Lastly, claims that are overly broad may require narrowing but are not necessarily anticipated if there is no prior art that fully discloses the