{"id":1163,"date":"2009-11-20T17:27:47","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T23:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=1163"},"modified":"2009-11-24T18:59:08","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T00:59:08","slug":"graham-v-john-deere-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=1163","title":{"rendered":"Graham v. John Deere — Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the Supreme Court has apparently decided not to release the recording of the\u00a0oral argument of Bilski v. Kappos<\/span> until the end of the term, I thought it might be of interest to revisit another important case from the Supreme Court’s history.\u00a0 In Graham v. John Deere<\/span>, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of non-obviousness under 35 U.S.C. section 103.\u00a0 On the same day that the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Graham v. John Deere<\/span>, it also heard the oral argument for two companion cases,\u00a0Calmar v. Cook<\/span> and Colgate-Palmolive v. Cook<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The Calmar v. Cook<\/span> and Colgate-Palmolive v. Cook<\/span> cases concerned a patent on a cap for a chemical sprayer that prevented leakage of chemicals from the container during shipment.\u00a0 The attorney for the patentee argued that the patent was\u00a0non-obvious and asserted 18 guideposts to help determine whether an invention was obvious:<\/p>\n

\u00a01) A long-felt need for the invention;<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 An identified baffling\u00a0problem;<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 Skilled and experienced competitors trying to solve the problem, rather than nobody trying to solve the problem;<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0 Begging for an answer — pleas by customers to inventive company to solve the problem;<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0 Struggles that the parties had in attempting to come up with an answer;<\/p>\n

6)\u00a0 Failures of others in trying to solve the problem;<\/p>\n

7) Was the problem truly\u00a0solved by the inventor of the patent;<\/p>\n

8 ) Consider the results of the solution (old result\u00a0vs. new result) (application to new products)<\/p>\n

9) Manner of arriving at the solution;<\/p>\n

10)\u00a0 The Patent Office did issue a patent;<\/p>\n

11) A new combination of old elements;<\/p>\n

12)\u00a0 All the pertinent art was considered;<\/p>\n

13) Utility of the invention — simple solution;<\/p>\n

14)\u00a0 Acceptance of the invention by competitors and the public;<\/p>\n

15)\u00a0 Recognition;<\/p>\n

16)\u00a0 Copying by others;<\/p>\n

17) Competitor sought the same protection at the Patent Office;<\/p>\n

18) Successes by patentee and infringer with the invention.<\/p>\n

The following exchange between counsel for the patentee and Justice Black is one of the more interesting discussions from the oral argument where both parties agree that obviousness is a\u00a0standard that escapes definition: [Listen<\/a>].<\/p>\n

You can listen to the entire oral argument here: [Listen<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the Supreme Court has apparently decided not to release the recording of the\u00a0oral argument of Bilski v. Kappos until the end of the term, I thought it might be of interest to revisit another important case from the Supreme Court’s history.\u00a0 In Graham v. John Deere, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of non-obviousness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1163"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}