View source for Talk:In re Kahn, CAFC 04-1616 (2006)


== Maura ==

First, the Board rejected the argument that the invention’s intended use supports patentability, noting that “the manner in which a claimed apparatus is intended to be employed does not differentiate the claimed apparatus [from] a prior art apparatus satisfying the claimed structural limitations.” Id. at 5-6. Second, the Board rejected the argument that because “the purposes of the [prior art] references . . . are different from the [invention’s] purpose,” the	invention	is	non-obvious,	explaining	that	“[t]he	law . . . does	not	require	that references be combined for reasons contemplated by an inventor” and that “prior art need not suggest the same problem set forth by appellant.” Id. at 6-7. Third, the Board rejected the arguments that features of a secondary reference be capable of incorporation into the structure of a primary reference and that the invention be suggested completely by one reference. Id. at 7. Finally, the Board rejected a “long-felt need” argument, explaining that Khan had not presented any objective evidence of a long-standing problem or long-standing need in the art. Id. at 11-12.

However, mere identification in the prior art of each element is insufficient to defeat the patentability of the combined subject matter as a whole. Id. at 1355, 1357.

The “motivation-suggestion-teaching” requirement protects against the entry of hindsight into the obviousness analysis, a problem which § 103 was meant to confront. See 35 U.S.C. § 103 (stating that obviousness must be assessed “at the time the invention was made”);

(internal quotations omitted)). By requiring the Board to explain the motivation, suggestion, or teaching as part of its prima facie case, the law guards against hindsight in all cases—whether or not the applicant offers evidence on secondary considerations—which advances Congress’s goal of creating a more practical, uniform, and definite test for patentability.

The analogous-art test requires that the Board show that a reference is either in the field of the applicant’s endeavor or is reasonably pertinent to the problem with which the inventor was concerned in order to rely on that reference as a basis for rejection.

The motivation-suggestion-teaching test picks up where the analogous art test leaves off and informs the Graham analysis. To reach a non-hindsight driven conclusion as to whether a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention would have viewed the subject matter as a whole to have been obvious in view of multiple references, the Board must provide some rationale, articulation, or reasoned basis to explain why the conclusion of obviousness is correct. The requirement of such an explanation is consistent with governing obviousness law, see § 103(a); Graham, 383 U.S. at 35; Dann, 425 U.S. at 227-29, and helps ensure predictable patentability determinations.

In considering motivation in the obviousness analysis, the problem examined is not the specific problem solved by the invention but the general problem that confronted the inventor before the invention was made.

Therefore, the “motivation-suggestion-teaching” test asks not merely what the references disclose, but whether a person of ordinary skill in the art, possessed with the understandings and knowledge reflected in the prior art, and motivated by the general problem facing the inventor, would have been led to make the combination recited in the claims. See Cross Med. Prods., 424 F.3d at 1321-24. From this it may be determined whether the overall disclosures, teachings, and suggestions of the prior art, and the level of skill in the art—i.e., the understandings and knowledge of persons having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention—support the legal conclusion of obviousness.

“A reference may be said to teach away when a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference, would be discouraged from following the path set out in the reference, or would be led in a direction divergent from the path that was taken by the applicant.”

(“A judicially noticed fact must be one not subject to reasonable dispute in that it is either (1) generally known within the territorial jurisdiction of the trial court or (2) capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.”);