Supreme Court and KSR: CCIA Calls it Most Pro-Innovation Ruling in Years

File Under: Copyright, 2007, News

Apr 30, 2007

In a “friend-of-the-court” brief, CCIA argued that obvious patents have plagued the information and communications technology industry. Easy-to-get patents, the brief argued, have created the conditions for the crisis in patent quality and eroded confidence in the patent system.

“We are encouraged by the Court’s efforts to clamp down on obvious patents,” said CCIA President & CEO Ed Black. “This is the Court’s second unanimous decision in recent months that tries to rein in runaway patents. It reaffirms what we have always said: the patent system’s purpose is to promote innovation, not patents. Real patent reform is still needed to reduce the vast number of junk patents.”

“The Supreme Court has again rejected the reflexively ‘pro-patent’ jurisprudence of our specialized patent court,” said Brian Kahin, CCIA Senior Fellow. “Unfortunately, much damage has been done by the low standard of nonobviousness that has encouraged speculation and extortion on an unprecedented scale.”

In unmistakably clear language, the Court held: “Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress and may, in the case of patents combining previously known elements, deprive prior inventions of their value or utility.”

View CCIA’s “friend-of-the-court” brief here:
http://www.ccianet.org/docs/patent/CCIA-Amicus-in-KSRIntl.pdf

CCIA’s analysis of the impact of patents on IT can be found in its report, Patent Reform for a Digital Economy.
http://www.ccianet.org/docs/patent/CCIA_WP_PatReformDigEcon.pdf