Prior art is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria for patentability. Wikipedia

Legal notion of information related to proving an invention's originality Wikidata

In most systems of patent law, all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality, and to which the patent application is compared to determine if it in fact describes a new invention. Wiktionary