Late in 2013, there was a court case filed between Soverain v. Newegg to determine whether Newegg had actually violated the intellectual property rights of Soverain. Newegg attempted to argue that Soverain's patent was obvious and therefore not worthy of IP protection. Initially, the jury, in the East District of Texas (where else?) found Newegg guilty of infringement and fined them, but when the company appealed the decision, the Federal Circuit reversed the decision on the basis of obviousness.
All this controversy regarding this court case really brings to light the ridiculous nature of how obviousness is decided. It is clear that there needs to be a better standard for obviousness given that two different court cases came to different conclusions on the issue.
Following Newegg's victory in the Federal Circuit court, Soverain attempted to appeal this case yet again to the Supreme Court. They appealed on the basis that the Federal Circuit court overturning a decision made by a jury subverts the democratic process. According to Soverain, obviousness is not and cannot be determined purely as a question of the law, and therefore must be interpreted by a jury of members of society.
The Seventh Amendment protects the right to a trial by jury, but is this really how we should be deciding issues of obviousness? This brings to light questions of whether or not a jury of common people is qualified to determine whether an invention is obvious or not. If this is a question of law, rather than of crime, then the same protections of a jury trial no longer apply. All of these things must be considered when determining how to figure out what is obvious or not.
Ultimately, there will always be a great deal of difficulty in determining whether an invention is obvious or not. This is necessarily a subjective process, so establishing a standard is something that is extremely hard to do. However, I still hold that a better standard needs to exist in order to more clearly define what an obvious invention is.
Source: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2013/12/supreme-court-the-right-to-a-jury-trial-on-obviousness.html
All this controversy regarding this court case really brings to light the ridiculous nature of how obviousness is decided. It is clear that there needs to be a better standard for obviousness given that two different court cases came to different conclusions on the issue.
Following Newegg's victory in the Federal Circuit court, Soverain attempted to appeal this case yet again to the Supreme Court. They appealed on the basis that the Federal Circuit court overturning a decision made by a jury subverts the democratic process. According to Soverain, obviousness is not and cannot be determined purely as a question of the law, and therefore must be interpreted by a jury of members of society.
The Seventh Amendment protects the right to a trial by jury, but is this really how we should be deciding issues of obviousness? This brings to light questions of whether or not a jury of common people is qualified to determine whether an invention is obvious or not. If this is a question of law, rather than of crime, then the same protections of a jury trial no longer apply. All of these things must be considered when determining how to figure out what is obvious or not.
Ultimately, there will always be a great deal of difficulty in determining whether an invention is obvious or not. This is necessarily a subjective process, so establishing a standard is something that is extremely hard to do. However, I still hold that a better standard needs to exist in order to more clearly define what an obvious invention is.
Source: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2013/12/supreme-court-the-right-to-a-jury-trial-on-obviousness.html
Thank you for sharing the case.
ReplyDeleteI feel a standard totally needs to exist but it would extremely hard to define. I think first of all, it's easy to overlook some previous inventions since any given examiner does not have a complete set of knowledge for any given industry for the claimed patent. Then there are always new evidences come into existence as the case progresses. Do you think there might any solution to combat these issues?