Doesn’t anyone think that debates over “combinations of references” are outdated? I usually only use one reference — Google. Occasionally I combine Google with a directed PTO search — although even that will likely become more rare as Google continues to digest and index the history of written word. We are information rich, and arguments that exclude certain bits of knowledge from “prior art” based on inaccessibility do not make sense when that information was freely available online and indexed by Google.
On another note, in the current regime, where the Internet is not a single reference, couldn’t a showing that two references would have both been retrieved with a single Google search serve as evidence of a motivation to combine the two?
Of course, these teasers suggest a new business model: Archiving of Google search results for later use during litigation.
