550 U.S. 398 (2007) Cited 1,569 times 187 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"
Holding that notebook entries not witnessed until several months to a year after entry did not render them "incredible or necessarily of little corroborative value" under the circumstances and in view of other corroborating evidence
Holding that non-inventor's notebook did not corroborate reduction to practice because the non-inventor "did not testify regarding the notebook or the genuineness of its contents" and the district court was therefore "clearly reliant on the inventor to help identify the author of specific entries made in [the non-inventor's] notebook"
Ruling that a laboratory notebook entry did not corroborate an alleged conception because "[e]ven if the entry expressed the problem, it did not provide the solution"
In Coleman v. Dines (1985) 754 F.2d 353 (Coleman), the appellant testified that he conceived the invention at issue in that case prior to the date of the respondent's patent, and he relied on a letter he sent to a colleague about his work as corroboration for his testimony.
Holding that where the patent in question was copending with the application involved in the interference, the burden of the proof on a party challenging validity is merely a preponderance of the evidence
35 U.S.C. § 103 Cited 6,165 times 492 Legal Analyses
Holding the party seeking invalidity must prove "the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains."