Proposed criteria for the detection of invention in engineering design

This study is concerned with the search for criteria that could be applied to judge designs for invention content. Established methods for the rating of design quality (value) are explored. A hierarchy of system characteristics is proposed that should be helpful when the system value is assessed by various parties, i.e. by the investor, the designer, the producer, the user and society. Various existing definitions for invention, design, innovation and related concepts are considered and consolidated. The differential contribution, which is the difference between system achieved and previous state-of-the-art projected value, is introduced as a measure of invention gain. Various necessary and sufficient, and necessary only, criteria for invention are proposed. A brief analysis of a number of well-known designs leads to the induction that invention could be detected via the presence of at least one added, removed or altered system parameter, if such a parameter(s) causes a positive differential contribution, with respect to prior generations of the particular system type.