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Patent Troll Goes After Notebook Cooling
An anonymous reader writes "If you are manufacturing notebooks and you are using hardware that needs to be cooled down occasionally, you may be in the crosshairs of IPventure, which claims patent rights to an approach that is common in all notebooks today. For now, the company appears to be establishing its case by suing Fujitsu and Lenovo over the use of its invention in the Lifebook and Thinkpad series of products."
Obviousness was one of several patent concepts that arose from the Progress Clause but that wasn't originally a part of the statute. Instead, it was formed as a judicial doctrine that viewed obviousness as contrary to the limits on the patent system in the Progress Clause (in the 1850 Supreme Court case Hotchkiss v. Greenwood).
The concept of obviousness, along with the general guideline of "obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art", was later incorporated into the statute. In fact, many of the patent eligibility requirements were originally formulated by the courts and later adopted by Congress.