State of the art
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The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. It also refers to the level of development (as of a device, procedure, process, technique, or science) reached at any particular time as a result of the latest methodologies employed.
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[edit] Origin
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The earliest use of the term "state of the art" documented by the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to 1910 from an engineering manual by Henry Harrison Suplee (1856-post 1943), an engineering graduate (University Of Pennsylvania, 1876), entitled Gas Turbine: progress in the design and construction of turbines operated by gases of combustion. The relevant passage reads: "In the present state of the art this is all that can be done."
[edit] Patent law
In the context of European and Australian patent law, the term "state of the art" is a concept used in the process of assessing and asserting novelty and inventive step,[1] and is a synonym of the expression "prior art". In the European Patent Convention (EPC), "[the] state of the art shall be held to comprise everything made available to the public by means of a written or oral description, by use, or in any other way, before the date of filing of the European patent application" according to Article 54(2) EPC. Due account should be taken of Article 54(3) EPC as well, but merely for the examination of novelty.
The expression "background art" is also used in certain legal provisions, such as Rule 42(1)(b) and(c) EPC (previously Rule 27(1)(b) and (c) EPC 1973), and has the same meaning.[2]
[edit] History
The origin of the concept of "state of the art" mainly [3] took place in the beginning of the twentieth century [3]. Although scientists and literary people who worked on different art-related subjects had already done some sort of work, real application of the concept behind this term was in a book on gas turbines published in 1910 [3]. The term "state of the art" was first used in literary work and over time its usage increased in all fields where art has a significant role.[4] In this relation it has been quoted by the author that "Although eighteenth century writers did not use the term, there was indeed in existence a collection of scientific and engineering knowledge and expertise that can be identified as the state of the art for that time." [4] In the earlier writings and the literary work of 19th century, there is no evidence of use of the term ‘state of the art’.[4] It can be considered as a recently coined concept as it was not used anymore to provide a description of information and practices.[4] For the time, the concept of state of the art can be used for the inclusion of new knowledge and expertise in the present world.[4]
[edit] Definitions
The concept of “State of the Art” is defined as, “The level of knowledge and development achieved in a technique, science”.[5] According to this definition, the state of the art is basically a unique art including the specific knowledge of the people who provide a particular unique framework. There are several synonyms of the phrase “State of the art” such as advancement, stylish, artistic work, modern and several other words and phrases. In other words, the “State of the art is defined as, the incorporation of new ideas and the most up to date knowledge in order to make advancements in the already existing knowledge”.[5] According to this definition, State of the art is the process with which a new unique idea is incorporated in any field of technology, literature and architecture. In general language, state of the art is defined as the development of new techniques and procedures by expert people in a particular field.[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Under the European Patent Convention: Article 54 EPC and Article 56 EPC.
- ^ Decision T 11/82 of 15 April 1983 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office
- ^ a b c [1],
- ^ a b c d e Anderson, John (1999). A history of aerodynamics and its impact on flying machines. Cape Town: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-66955-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=1OeCJFJY3ZYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ a b c Ide, Nancy; Jean Veronis (1984). "Word Sense Disambiguation: The State of the Art". Computational Linguistics 24 (1). http://sites.univ-provence.fr/~veronis/pdf/1998wsd.pdf. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
