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What Available to the Public Reaches

Written from MPEP 2152. Examination guidance, not law. Current as of 22 August 2026.

What it says

The Office reads the catch-all in section 102(a)(1) to cover a thesis in a library, a poster at a conference, a document posted on the internet, and more.

The broadest phrase in the novelty statute is otherwise available to the public, and the statute never defines it. This is where the Office says what it takes the phrase to mean.

The provision exists so that decision makers can focus on availability rather than on whether a disclosure was technically a printed publication or technically a sale. The examples given include a student thesis in a university library, a poster at a scientific meeting, and a document electronically posted on the internet.

Those are illustrations, not a list. Reading them as exhaustive gets the provision backwards, since its whole purpose is to catch what the enumerated categories miss.

On-sale activity works differently and should not be read as an instance of this. It is the exception to the availability framing rather than an example of it: a sale can bar patentability without the invention being available to anyone. Under the America Invents Act there is no geographic limitation on where the sale or offer took place. The governing two-part test asks whether the claimed invention was the subject of a commercial sale or offer not primarily for experimental purposes, and whether it was ready for patenting.

What This Does Not Decide

Whether a commit, a release, a demo or a post made something available to the public is the question this page cannot answer. It is also the question this audience arrives with, which is why it is worth saying plainly. Availability is a finding on specific facts about who could reach what, when, and under what terms.
  • It does not say whether any particular act made an invention available to the public.
  • The examples are illustrations. Treating them as the full set misreads a catch-all provision.
  • On sale is not an instance of availability. It bars patentability on its own terms and reaches sales anywhere in the world.

Educational, not legal advice. Whether any of this reaches a particular disclosure is a determination for a registered patent practitioner working from the actual facts and dates.

Sources