Posts Tagged: "ksr v. teleflex"

Petition for Rehearing en banc filed in Plasmart v. Kappos

This case intrigued me from the start because it seemed rather odd that there should be a nonprecedential opinion in an appeal to the Federal Circuit necessitated by a completely adjudicated inter partes reexamination at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Moreover, the original panel concluded that the combination of known elements resulted in a predictable result. The problem with that reasoning, however, is that not all of the elements were found within the prior art. In fact, the Board found that there are no fewer than three (3) meaningful structural differences between the invention as claimed and the prior art.

5th Anniversary KSR: Is Section 103 Unconstitutional?

This is a good time to review the implications of this case, but an even better time to look into the origins and constitutionality of the Non-obviousness requirement. You might object that the jurisprudence of the non-obviousness requirement is so well established that nothing can be learned from this sort of analysis. I disagree. Patent law is under assault by the Supreme Court, the media, the ‘information wants to be free’ crowd, multinational corporations, and the economics profession. If we attempt to explain patent law based on the decisions of people who never passed the patent bar, never wrote a patent, never prosecuted a patent, and do not have a technical background, we are doomed. We need to define patent law as a natural law/right based on certain fundamental truths. This is the only way to get the non-patent attorney judge or the general public to understand patent law and understand that it represents justice.

KSR the 5th Anniversary: One Supremely Obvious Mess

On Monday, April 30, 2007, the United States Supreme Court issued its final decision in the matter of KSR v. Teleflex, which overruled the Federal Circuit’s application of the so-called “teaching, suggestion, motivation” test (or simply TSM) as it applies to determining whether an invention is obvious. At least for the last generation (and likely longer) no other Supreme Court case in the patent arena has been nearly as influential as the Court’s decision in KSR v. Teleflex. This is because obviousness is where the rubber meets the road for the patentability of inventions. This 5th Anniversary of the ruling provides an opportunity to revisit the decision and where we have come since. This will be a recurring theme this week on IPWatchdog.com as we look at the law of obviousness in the wake of this infamous decision.

Is Your Patent Portfolio Safe from the Supreme Court?

The Prometheus decision shows that you can never know for sure what the outcome will be once you arrive at the Supreme Court. We also know that the Supreme Court is taking more patent cases now than ever, and those decisions have significant implications for the entire industry above and beyond the patent claims at issue and the parties involved. Your patent portfolio may be at risk because some other company obtained poorly written claims and the Supreme Court has taken the opportunity to decide not only the issues before them but to make decisions based on overarching concerns about the entire patent system.

The Law of Recipes: Are Recipes Patentable?

In most cases the typical recipe for a “killer Margarita” or “the best barbeque sauce ever” will not be patentable, but the only way to know for sure is to understand how the Patent Office reaches its conclusions relating to what can and cannot be patented. It is possible to obtain a patent on a recipe or food item if there is a unique aspect to the recipe, there is something counter-intuitive or a problem (such as self live or freshness) is being addressed. The trick will be identifying a uniqueness that is not something one would typically think to try.