Friday, May 11, 2007

Is the U.S. Patent System in Trouble?

My knowledge of the U.S. patent system is relatively neglible, but I am well aware of how to utilize a gas pedal.  Though these two subjects seem rather incongruous, they are currently intertwined within a Supreme Court case, KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc.

According to a Boston Globe story titled Patently obvious, the U.S. patent system is being “jolted” by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the above mentioned case, and the ruling’s jolt factor hinges on the word “obvious.”

Obviously, due to my relatively negligible knowledge of the U.S. patent system, I do not have enough information to opine, one or the other, on the soundness of the court’s decision, but I will note that the court at least understood one obvious factor in the granting of a patent.

If an invention proves especially successful commercially, the court ruled in 1976, that suggests the invention must not have been obvious, or market pressures would have driven someone to come up with it earlier.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/11 at 04:40 AM
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