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Common Sense: Treating Statutory Non-Obviousness As A Novelty Issue, N. Scott Pierce

N. Scott Pierce

Title 35 of United States Code, at Section 103, limits patent protection to subject matter that would not be “obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.” The requirement was introduced as a statute by the Patent Act of 1952, but, according to the legislative history, was a codification of judicial precedent. The origin of that precedent is widely attributed to the 1851 Supreme Court decision of Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. 248 (1851). However, declaration of Hotchkiss as a watershed moment in legal history …