550 U.S. 398 (2007) Cited 1,547 times 185 Legal Analyses
Holding that, in an obviousness analysis, "[r]igid preventative rules that deny factfinders recourse to common sense, however, are neither necessary under our case law nor consistent with it"
Declining to find a claim obvious when the when prior art does not provide "indication of which parameters were critical" or "direction as to which of many possible choices is likely to be successful"
Reversing finding of non-obviousness where court “narrowly focus[ed] on the four prior-art references” and ignored record evidence of “the knowledge and perspective of one of ordinary skill in the art” to explain motivation to combine or modify references
Holding that descriptions of deficiencies of using mainframe computers set out in the "Background of the Invention" portion of the specification did not exclude mainframes from the definition of "'user computer'" where the "specification as a whole" did not express a clear disavowal of that subject matter
37 C.F.R. § 42.104 Cited 28 times 54 Legal Analyses
Describing the content of the petition, including both "the patents or printed publications relied upon for each ground," and "supporting evidence relied upon to support the challenge"