Graham v. John Deere was decided in 1966 and for the first time since the passage of the 1952 Patent Act addressed the issue of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103. As noted in the previous post, the Court also heard oral argument for two companion cases, Calmar v. Cook Chemical and Colgate-Palmolive v. Cook Chemical, on the same day that it heard oral argument for Graham v. John Deere. Those cases also concerned the standard of obviousness.
The counsel for the patentee spent a good deal of his allotted oral argument time describing the invention as follows: [Listen].
The counsel for John Deere described the invention as follows: [Listen].
Counsel for John Deere addressed the obviousness factors here: [Listen].
I find the oral arguments of patent cases from the Supreme Court during the 1960’s particularly interesting in that some of the justices are very candid about not being able to understand patent claims. For example, Justice Black made these remarks: [Listen] and [Listen].
You can listen to the entire oral argument from Graham v. John Deere here: [Listen]. I believe this is currently the only place on the internet where one can listen to this oral argument.
You can read the opinion from Graham v. John Deere here: [Read].