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Supreme Court to Rule on 'Obvious' Patents
davidwr writes "News.com reports the U.S. Supreme Court will take up KSR v. Teleflex, a patent case in which the defense is arguing the patent is obvious and should be thrown out. The case hinges on a 1952 provision of patent law. Interestingly, several major IT firms are supporting the defense."
No single company can afford to get off the patent treadmill because they would be vulnerable to attack - but anything that forced the entire industry to "disarm" would be a win for them all.
Clear, Dark Skies
Nope. The Supreme Court last visited patents when it decided Markman in 1997. The Supreme Court did not take this case along with Metabolite just to rule narrowly on the facts. Indeed, it the fact-specific nature of patent courts that has been one of the largest complaints the patent bar has had with the Federal Circuit. Most notably, the Fed. Circuit's treatment of claim construction has been abysmal. Claim construction is when the judge decides exactly what the patent purports to have patented. Obviously, this is crucial and in many instances result-determining. Markman said it was the judge's job to interpret patent claims. The Federal Circuit then refused to take appeals of claim constructions before the entire trial had concluded. Once the entire 2-3 year trial has ended, the loser can appeal the claim construction to the Federal Circuit. About 40% of the cases on appeal on this point are overruled. So that's 2-3 years of litigation down the drain.
I'm guessing the US Supreme Court wants to make it easier to beat down patents. Instead of making everything dependent on whether a patent for a three-bladed razor is infringed by a razor with four blades, the question is whether the subject matter is obvious or unpatentable, which is less depdendent on the ultra-fact specific lawyer games everyone plays on what "includes" means in a patent.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
No, actually he's right and you're mistaken. It's clear both from TFA and from the posted summary that (a) the DEFENSE is saying that obvious patents should be thrown out, and (b) some big IT firms including Cisco are supporting the DEFENSE in this case.
This isn't really all that surprising, if you think about it. I mean, products like Cisco routers or Microsoft Windows do have a huge number of really obvious features -- And I'm sure the savings would be considerable if they didn't have to hire an army of lawyers to check if every single feature was unpatented (thus freeing up said lawyers to pursue anti-piracy litigation against their users...)
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
Thomas Edison beat you to this a hundred years ago.
The story I heard was that he was arguing before the court that some invention was not obvious. He placed a raw egg on the bench in front of the judges, and challenged the judges to make it stand on its pointy end. They tried balancing it, shaking it to break up the yolk, spinning it, and finally declared the task impossible. Mr. Edison took the egg and crushed the pointy end of the eggshell down on the bench, where he easily stood it on its end. One of the judges said "well, that's obvious." Mr. Edison pointed out that, not thirty seconds prior, they had declared the task impossible but now it's obvious. And that's why his patent should stand.
Of course now that I've typed it up, I can find no reference to the story. Typical me. :-( Can someone help me out?
John
That is not the case with the Roberts court. The Clarence Hill lethal injection case got a very narrow ruling earlier this month, as was the MGM/Grokster ruling. Narrow court rulings are far from rare, and as the Cheif Justice himself points out, narrow rulings are more likely to be unanimous decisions, or close to it. From a speech this month at Georgetown:
"If it is not necessary to decide more to a case, then in my view it is necessary not to decide more to a case. Division should not be artificially suppressed, but the rule of law benefits from a broader agreement. The broader the agreement among the justices, the more likely it is a decision on the narrowest possible grounds."