USPTO Patent Bar Practice Exam 2025 – The Complete All-In-One Guide to Exam Success!

The correct answer is based on two critical conditions outlined in the America Invents Act (AIA) that must be satisfied to invoke the on-sale bar.

For an invention to be precluded from patentability due to being on sale, it is essential that the invention was both commercially sold or offered for sale, indicating that there was a public activity that tried to commercialize the invention. This first condition establishes a tangible commercial interest in the invention, which is behavior that brings the invention into the domain of public accessibility, thus triggering patentability concerns.

The second essential condition, which is closely tied to the first, is that the invention must have been ready for patenting. This means that the invention must have been sufficiently developed such that it could be definitively described in a patent application. Essentially, this suggests that the invention was not just in a conceptual or experimental stage, but rather it was fully developed, as evidenced by at least one of the following: the invention was reduced to practice, or it had been fully described in detail sufficient for a skilled individual to understand how to make and use it.

The combination of these two conditions—commercial activity and readiness for patenting—forms the basis of the on-sale bar under the AIA, thereby