KSR International v. Teleflex (On Petition for Certiorari)
Like that little blue engine
This case takes a direct assault on the Federal Circuit’s longstanding obviousness jurisprudence that requires some explicit reason as to why one of ordinary skill in the art would have known to combine two or more references to solve a particular problem. The question presented reads as follows:
Whether a claimed invention can be “obvious,” and therefore unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 103(a), without proof of some “teaching, suggestion, or motivation” to modify or combine the prior art in the manner claimed.
The statute in question, 35 U.S.C. 103(a) is not so specific. Rather, the statute requires that a patent be denied if
the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
35 U.S.C. 103(a). The Solicitor General’s brief, filed last week, sees the disjunct between the CAFC rule, Section 103(a), and prior Supreme Court decisions such as Graham. In a blunt rebuke, the SG argues that “the Federal Circuit’s teaching-suggestion-motivation test extends patent protection to non-innovative combinations of familiar elements.” Rather, the SG argues for a return to the broad factors outlined in Graham for determining the level of one of ordinary skill in the art: “the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue, and the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.”
The SG’s support for certiorari is rare in patent cases and is often the most cherished of a petitioner’s amici.
Notes: Of course, most inventions involve “a combination of old elements” where each element is found somewhere in the prior art. (In re Kahn). After the teaching-suggestion-motivation test is gone, what standard will a patent examiner use to decide whether a new combination is non-obvious? To be sure, the current test is formalistic and has been both under– and over-inclusive. However, has anyone proposed a better test — one that can be carried out by the PTO even in light of the high-turnover and young workforce in the agency’s examining corps? A patent attorney e-mailed his fear that a less formal test will give examiner’s permission to make the dreaded “because I say so” conclusory argument.
The EPO also has a rather formalistic approach known as the "problem-solution" test. That test also has its detractors, but is seen by many as a superior approach. In the UK, the “Windsurfing” test takes its name from the case of Windsurfing Int’l v. Tabur Marine. In that case, the court looked to whether, when viewed without knowledge of the alleged invention, the differences between what is known to a “skilled but unimaginative technician” and the alleged invention constitute steps that would have been obvious to the technician or whether they require any degree of invention. The hypothetical technician does not consider the commercial consequences which might follow if the step or process in question were found in practice to achieve or assist the objective which he had in view.
Another e-mail that I received focused on the low-tech nature of this case.
Like sectional couches with remote controls in the arm rest (recall that nightmare?), the technology [here] is so simple that everyone believes they understand it once it is laid out for them. The technology most [patent attorneys] deal with on a day to day basis is not this simple - drugs, catalysts, biotechnology, automation, software. The risk of a result-driven declaration of the law on obviousness is keeping me awake at night.
These comments at least have anecdotal weight — in the recent eBay oral argument, Chief Justice Roberts was heard to quip that even he could have invented invention in question (or at least created the software flow-charts).
Documents:
- Party Briefs
- KSR’s Petition for Cert (Including the CAFC and District Court decisions in Appx. A & B);
- Teleflex’s Brief in Opposition
- KSR Reply Brief (314 KB)
- Amicus Briefs
Links:
