Definition of "invention" []

• The act or process of inventing: used a technique of her own invention. (noun)
• A new device, method, or process developed from study and experimentation: the phonograph, an invention attributed to Thomas Edison. (noun)
• A mental fabrication, especially a falsehood. (noun)
• Skill in inventing; inventiveness: "the invention and sweep of the staging” ( John Simon). (noun)
• Music A short composition developing a single theme contrapuntally. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The main "invention" is nothing more than a particular combination of these elements designed to speed up the breeding cycle for selected traits, in order to make the animals more commercially profitable."
• "Unfortunately the US broadened the term invention, e.g. you don't have a technical requirement like in Europe, industrial application is weakened to "useful"."
• "The 1970 Act did not exclude explicitly patents for computer related inventions, as computer technology at that point of time was relatively unknown, but the definition of the term invention itself excluded patents for computer programmes."