Non-obviousness requirement in inventions that are systems and methods

[Alpha]

Hi,

Can you please give some advice with respect to the non-obviousness requirement for an invention relating to a system and method, e.g., a system and method (e.g., embodied in an application and a website) for characterizing people by their information-seeking behavior for buying property on the Internet? (the example is fictitious and I only introduce it to illustrate the point)

Thank you very much!

Kind regards,
Alpha

[Brad]

To be obvious, the initial burden in placed onto the patent examiner.  They must be able to find the same (or very similar) teachings in the prior art which could include past patents, articles, websites, etc.   They will then attempt to merge these together and make a statement that your work would be simple, routine, and odviouss to combine these.

It is then up to you (and your patent attorney) to demonstrate it is not obvious.  We have some tricks and methodologies we use to do this.