Graham v. John Deere Co. (Obviousness)

In 1996, William T. Graham, had sued the John Deere Co. for patent infringement.This case was a turning point for the idea of "obviousness" in terms of patent ideas in that it forced the US Supreme Court to clarify the "nonobviousness" requirement set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 103.

The invention in question and being discussed by Graham and John Deere (an “American corporation that manufactures agricultural, construction, and forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains used in heavy equipment, and lawn care equipment”) was a combination of whats considered 'old mechanical elements.' It was "a device designed to absorb shock from the shanks of chisel plows as they plow through rocky soil and thus to prevent damage to the plow." Graham took it upon himself to solve this problem, he decided to attach the plow shanks to spring clamps, this allows them to flex freely. In 1950 he applied for a patent for this clamp and was granted one, U.S. Patent 2,493,811. Shortly thereafter, he made some improvements to the clamp design by placing the hinge plate beneath the plow shank rather than above it, in order to minimize the outward motion of the shank away from the plate. He applied for a patent on this improvement, which was granted in 1953 as U.S. Patent 2,627,798 (referred to by the court as the '798 patent). This is the patent that William was suing John Deere for. However, the Deere company believed that the '798 patent should not be worthy of a patent at all due to the lack of novelty or invention in the new design. Under the description of an "obvious" patent, John Deere asserted that "because of anticipation, because of a prior use more than one year prior to the date of the application for such patent, and further because the subject matter of the patent would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art due to the status of the prior art" that the patent should be deemed void. In the end, the verdict in the case went to John Deere. The court saw and believed what Mr. Graham considered to be an obvious patent and said the infringement was invalid.

From there, this case is where the whole section 103 came into play in the patent world. Section 103 discuses how to determine what is vs. what isn't obvious. Here are a few of the outlines we have now in secition 103:
“(1) Determination of the scope and content of the prior art
(2) Identification of any differences between the prior art and the claims at issue
(3) Determination of the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art, that warrants the award of a patent.
(4) Review of any relevant secondary considerations, such as commercial success, long felt but unresolved needs and failure of others”