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The stringency of the novelty requirement in patent law afects the pace of innovation because it afects the amount of technical information that is disclosed amongfirms. It also afects ex ante profitability of research. We compare weak and strong novelty requirements from the standpoint of social eficiency. We ask how our answer depends on the rule that determines which firm gets a patent when two firms have patents pending on the same technology. The possible rules are 'ffirst-to-invent, " which applies in the U.S., and 'ffirst-to-jile, " which applies everywhere else. 'Mansfield (1984) reports that, in a survey of R&D firms that he undertook, about 60 percent of patented products were successfully imitated within four years of patenting. These are separate requirements in the United States Code, but in practice they are often difficult to distinguish. Products of nature fail nonobviousness, although there are nuances regarding what a product nature is. For example, a purified natural substance, whose useful properties depend on purity, might not fail nonobviousness.

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