Trilateral Project 24.1-Biotechnology 193

Where a group of inventions is claimed in one application, the requirement of unity of invention is only fulfilled when there is a technical relationship among those inventions involving one or more of the same or corresponding special technical features. The expression "special technical features" means those features which define a contribution which each of the claimed inventions considered as a whole makes over the prior art. Thus a novel, non-obvious feature has to be common to all inventions claimed. In order to determine whether there is unity of invention within a group of inventions, it often has to be considered what the contribution of the invention over the prior art is.