The person having ordinary skill in the art (often abbreviated PHOSITA in the United States), is a legal fiction found in many patent laws throughout the world. This fictional person is considered to have the normal skills and knowledge in a particular technical field, without being a genius. He or she mainly serves as a reference for determining whether an invention is non-obvious or not (in US patent law), or does involve an inventive step or not (in European patent laws). If it would have been obvious for this fictional person to come up with the invention while starting from the prior art, then the particular invention is considered not patentable.