In this video by Rich Goldstein, a patent attorney, he goes into discussing the difference between novelty and non-obviousness.
For novelty, he points out that basically the definition for it is that there is nothing exactly like it in prior art. Proving non-obviousness is the challenging part however. Whatever is different about your invention from what others have done before, you need to show a sense of unexpectedness so someone in the field can witness enough of a difference where they do not come to the conclusion that the invention isn't something they would ordinarily use, but can create and utilize if they wanted too. He gives an example of child-size clothes hangers and while that may be a novel invention, manufacturers have the capability to create this invention, but they simply chose not to. In that case then, the standardization of clothes hangers makes the invention novel, but the production capabilities of individuals in the field can make the same invention if they chose to.
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