From Aharonian regarding this post:

DOES GENE QUINN UNDERSTAND THAT KSR IS THE SON OF CUNO?

Patent attorney and PLI lecturer Gene Quinn, on his IPWatchdog blog,
recently made the following comment about KSR:

As I have written in the past, it is no stretch to say that under
a strict interpretation of KSR if an inventor follows a path that
they thought would work there could be no patent because that would
be obvious, so under a strict reading of KSR only those invention
paths that were believed to be a complete waste of time but result
in something that works can be patented. Obviously (pun intended)
that cannot be the law because that would mean virtually nothing
can be patented ever again,

So far, I agree – KSR is a subconscious attempt by the Supreme Court to get
rid of patents. None of the Supreme Courts no anything about the practice
of engineering and invention to apply the undefined “predictable” to such
processes. But then he goes on:

save those situations where you have an “accidental inventor”. But
that is what the Supreme Court said, in their infinite and unending
wisdom as it applies to patent matters.

Gene is missing an “or” clause. What he should have written for a complete
thought is:

save those situations where you have an “accidental inventor”
OR A UNPLANNED FLASH OF GENIUS.

A flash of genius is by nature something that happens unpredictably. You
can neither predict an accident, nor an unplanned flash of genius. Had
Gene said this, WHICH HE SHOULD HAVE, he could then argue that the judicial
reasoning in KSR is little more than semantic word games by the Supreme
Court to reintroduce its Cuno “flash of genius” decision into patent
caselaw (especially since Adams, which the Supreme Court cited to justify
“predictable” in KSR, not only doesn’t use the word “predictable”, but also
uses language similar to that of Cuno).

Which makes KSR an unconstitutional decision, since Congress in 1952 felt
that the Cuno decision was so horrible, so disconnected to the process of
invention, that in response to numerous industry complaints about the
nonsense of Cuno, that it added language to 35 USC 103 nullifying the Cuno
decision. Which means, if the Supreme Court pays any attention, that the
Supreme Court can’t ever never ever never ever use “flash of genius”
reasoning with regards to 35 USC 103, or its semantic equivalent, KSR’s
“predictable”. So with the end of 35 USC 103 saying that patentability
is not to be:

“negativated by the manner in which the invention was made”

with one manner in which to invent being predicting the outcome of the
experiment or design process that leads to the invention, KSR contradicts
the federal statute, and is thus unconstitutional.

But the will of Congress is irrelevant to the judicial activists on the
Supreme Court when it comes to patent law. Thus their attempt in KSR to
reintroduce the flash of genius test into patent law, as part of the
conservative wing’s attempt to weaken the patent system.

Not that the patent bar cares. The patent bar will swallow any IP idiocy
(starting with the “monstrously bad logic [Chisum]” of Benson) that oozes
out of the Supreme Court.