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Looks like patent & other intellectual property laws are about to change in the direction of a "common sense" standard....
Supreme Court weighs 'obviousness' of patents
Oral arguments bring questions about whether the current legal standard, opposed by some high-tech firms, is much too permissive.
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: November 28, 2006, 11:03 AM PST
WASHINGTON--U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared to take issue with the current legal standard for granting patents, which many high-tech firms claim is ineffective at weeding out inventions that should be obvious.
During hour-long oral arguments in a case that's closely watched by the business community, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that an existing federal court test for determining patent obviousness relied too little on common sense. Justice Antonin Scalia went so far as to call the test "gobbledygook" and "meaningless."
"It's worse than meaningless because it complicates the question rather than focusing on the statute," Roberts went on to say of the test, which requires evidence of a past "teaching, suggestion or motivation" that would lead to a particular invention in order for it to be declared "obvious."
The case, rooted in an obscure patent spat about gas pedal designs between the Canadian firm KSR International and Pennsylvania-based Teleflex, has attracted the attention of high-tech, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other patent-dependent firms because because it addresses one of the fundamental questions in patent law: What makes an invention, particularly a combination of existing parts, too "obvious" to warrant protection?
If the high court decides to rewrite the legal standard of patent "obviousness" to make it more restrictive, it could have wide-ranging effects by reshaping U.S. intellectual property law and reducing the number of marginal patents. Tuesday's arguments are the only ones that will be heard in the case. A decision is expected by July 2007.
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Oral arguments bring questions about whether the current legal standard, opposed by some high-tech firms, is much too permissive.
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: November 28, 2006, 11:03 AM PST
WASHINGTON--U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared to take issue with the current legal standard for granting patents, which many high-tech firms claim is ineffective at weeding out inventions that should be obvious.
During hour-long oral arguments in a case that's closely watched by the business community, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that an existing federal court test for determining patent obviousness relied too little on common sense. Justice Antonin Scalia went so far as to call the test "gobbledygook" and "meaningless."
"It's worse than meaningless because it complicates the question rather than focusing on the statute," Roberts went on to say of the test, which requires evidence of a past "teaching, suggestion or motivation" that would lead to a particular invention in order for it to be declared "obvious."
The case, rooted in an obscure patent spat about gas pedal designs between the Canadian firm KSR International and Pennsylvania-based Teleflex, has attracted the attention of high-tech, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other patent-dependent firms because because it addresses one of the fundamental questions in patent law: What makes an invention, particularly a combination of existing parts, too "obvious" to warrant protection?
If the high court decides to rewrite the legal standard of patent "obviousness" to make it more restrictive, it could have wide-ranging effects by reshaping U.S. intellectual property law and reducing the number of marginal patents. Tuesday's arguments are the only ones that will be heard in the case. A decision is expected by July 2007.
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