The objective unity is a phrase that we often hear about in the field of patents and is considered one of the most important conditions for an application to pass the objective examination stage and obtain a patent, as the application must have objective unity, and the patent application must include only one invention or a group of interconnected inventions that represent one general innovative concept.

If the patent application includes more than one invention, then in order for the subject matter to be unified, there must be specific structural features common to these inventions, and these features must be responsible for the distinctive qualities of the invention as a whole.

So, it is necessary to understand how to determine the availability of the objective unit:

Sometimes, the lack of subject unity can be determined directly and without conducting a search and comparison with prior art, if it is not possible to reach common technical features between the multiple inventions in a single application. In other cases, it is possible to reach special technical features common between the multiple inventions in a single application, and then it is necessary to verify whether these features are new and achieve innovative advantages or not. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a search and comparison with prior art documents to verify the availability of a common technical feature that is responsible for the addition that all inventions in the application provide to the prior art. 

• If the examiner finds, during the examination of a patent application, that there is a violation of the unity of subject matter, he must notify the interested party that the application lacks unity of subject matter and that it contains a number of inventions.

• The lack of unity of invention may be immediately apparent before consideration of the claims in relation to any prior art, or it may only become apparent, after consideration of the prior art.

• The concerned party is asked to identify one subject for protection and focus on it the protection elements.

• The request will be modified accordingly.

• If the interested party does not detail the patent application, the examination and search will be conducted on the first invention only, which includes the first independent protection element and its dependent elements.