Point of novelty is a term used in patent law to distinguish those elements or limitations in a patent claim that are conventional or known from those elements or limitations that are novel, i.e. not conventional or known. That part of the invention may also be termed its "point of departure from the prior art." The term is also applied to a patentability test--the point of novelty test--which determines patentability (usually, obviousness) by considering the point(s) of novelty after dissecting out the conventional part.
In a Jepson claim, the conventional parts of the claim elements are placed in a preamble, such as "In a grease gun comprising a cylinder enclosing a piston longitudinally movable in said cylinder, said cylinder having a nozzle at a distal end thereof," which is followed by a transitional phrase such as "the improvement comprising," which is followed by a recitation of the element or elements constituting the point of novelty, such as "said nozzle having a fluted opening at a distal end thereof."
A conceptual problem may arise in applying the point of novelty method of analysis when the elements at the point of novelty cooperate or co-act with the conventional elements or part of them in a novel way. The novel co-action is properly considered part of the point of novelty of the invention and should therefore properly be recited after the transitional phrase.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit formerly used the point of novelty test for design patents as the basis of a patent infringement analysis, but the court recently abandoned that test in Egyptian Goddess, Inc. v. Swisa, Inc. The Federal Circuit has at times criticized use of the point of novelty test in obviousness analysis, but the Supreme Court has continued to use a point of novelty test for obviousness. In Parker v. Flook the Supreme Court analyzed patent-eligibility (statutory subject matter) under a point of novelty test, citing Neilson v. Harford and O’Reilly v. Morse as authority, but in Diamond v. Diehr, the Court used the opposite approach. Then in Mayo v. Prometheus and Alice v. CLS Bank the Supreme Court went back to the test of the Flook case.
Present-day American patent law still acknowledges that some parts of a patent claim may constitute "insignificant post-solution activity". This is regarded as a kind of "point of novelty" approach, disallowed under present (Federal Circuit) patent law. To combat infringement, truly "insignificant" elements are routinely kept out of patent claims. The purpose of the patent-eligibility doctrine concerning insignificant post-solution activity, however, is that adding such limitations to a claim does not involve adding an "inventive concept" to the otherwise ineligible underlying idea.
The "contribution approach" in European patent law is similar to the American "point of novelty" approach. It is supposed to be invalid, but it is still being applied under various guises in order to avoid counter-intuitive results.