What does it mean if all claims are rejected for lacking unity of invention?
The idea is that a patent application should cover only one invention. If more than one invention is present, then the examiner will object to this requiring that an applicant deletes the multiple inventions from the application and present only one invention.
The situation that you describe where all of the claims are objected to is probably where the main claim or claims present a list of things that are independent and unrelated. An example of this is a shopping list:
I claim any one of the following:
- milk;
- bread;
- corn;
- cheese; and
- butter.
The claim covers off a variety of things that are unrelated to one another and are not linked by a common theme. In this situation, the examiner cannot determine whether your invention is the milk or the corn or any of the other items in the list.
An example of a claim that has the requisite unity character is where the elements are tied back to one inventive theme. For example:
I claim a method of modifying a milk product to be harmful to petulant superheroes by reacting a milk product with kryptonite wherein the milk product is selected from the group consisting of:
- milk;
- cheese; and
- butter.
