Originally Posted by
Gary cw
Going back to the patent it would not have been approved as a patent if it already existed.
This is misleading: a patent can be approved for something that already exists; it is not a statement of originality. What you may mean is that a patent would not have been approved if it had already been patented. Even then, this is not entirely true: I can patent the use of something as a toothpaste but it could be patented by someone else for a different function.