KSR: "the justices just did not seem to get it"

Joff Wild reprises the "biggest IAM blog story of all time," which happened to be about KSR v. Teleflex, and which included

When you see Supreme Court justices struggling, hasn’t something gone very wrong? If they don’t get it, what hope for anyone else that has not spent years and years studying the subject?

IPBiz notes that the Supreme Court likely initially thought this was a simple matter (generating a lot of noise), which they could easily sort out. To rule on obviousness, the court selected a nonprecedential case of the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which did not actually comprise a holding on obviousness itself. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, the CAFC issued a number of rulings on obviousness AFTER the Supreme Court granted cert.

At this point, there may be greater appreciation that the determination of "what is obvious" is not such a simple task.

On obviousness, at BPAI, Ex parte Baxter