Michael Dolan Dot Com

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

U.S. Supreme Court Evaluating ‘Obvious’ Test for Patents

I couldn’t agree more with the Supremes initial reactions – hopefully they’ll do something about it now that’s ‘proper’ – a lot of patents will be disrupted and there are arguments on both sides. One thing is for sure – once again, nobody really cares about the actual case at hand – just the change in the test that could come as a result :)

When it came time to discuss the legal standard for patents, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did not mince words.

“This is gobbledygook. It really is, it’s irrational,” he said.

And so went a hearing in which several of the justices attacked the legal standards used to judge patents the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has followed for the past 20 years.