Abstract

     In KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., the Supreme Court restored the “expansive and flexible approach” to the obviousness inquiry required under Title 35 of the United States Code. This article concludes that the KSR decision should prompt changes in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC) jurisprudence on the obviousness standard. The article reviews the many CAFC rulings on this standard, from In re O’Farrell through In re Deuel, showing how the CAFC departed from the standard obviousness inquiry. The focus then turns to the KSR decision and shows that the analysis of the CAFC did not follow a proper analysis, even where the results would have remained unchanged. Finally, this article propose an expansive yet flexible test for evaluating obviousness of claims to genetic sequences to aid the CAFC in its obviousness analysis.