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An idea can be both novel and derivative at the same time.

You create idea B.

It absolutely builds upon idea A, and is in some sense derivative.

But your idea B introduces a lot of new novel concepts on top of idea A that makes it novel.

An idea can absolutely be both novel and derivative at the same time. Most of the best ideas are.

For a hypothetical example, an innovative Linux filesystem requires having the Linux OS, or similar, as a base to operate. In some sense, it is derivative of that prior work. But the new ideas extend the old ideas enough to be novel.



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