Snooki Homework due 2/4/11

Assignment

Assume it is 2015 and you work for one of the companies in either the Graham or Adams case. Your corporate counsel has approached you to get information needed for litigation about why the patent being litigates is or is not obvious in light of the prior art. Based only on the two patents you read for Wednesday's assignment, write an analysis providing all the reasons supporting a conclusion of non-obviousness and an analysis providing all the reasons supporting a conclusion of invalidity of the patent under 103. That is, give both sides of the argument.

Case

William Graham filed US Patent No. 2,627,798 for a clamp for a vibrating shank plow in 1951. The patent created a way for plow shanks to pass obstructions without issue. This was accomplished by allowing the plow shank to be pushed upward through the use of a hinge. In this new patent Graham reference a previous patent he had been granted. However, the only new aspects to the design were that the shank had been moved to below the hinge and a stirrup and connection had been added to the hinge.