Court Opinion

ID: 9456183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:44:35.041852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:52.681541
License: Public Domain

RICH, Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the result.
The statutory prerequisite to patent-ability involved here is unobviousness, to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time the invention was made. 35 U.S.C. § 103. The statute says nothing about the “relative merits” of the invention. Moreover, I do not know to what the merits are supposed to be “relative.” We have ruled that an invention does not have to be “better” to be patentable.1 Relative to the prior art, and considering the ordinary skill of the art, what we consider is not “merits” but differences and the unobviousness of the invention as a whole taking those differences into account. The “legal standard” is unobviousness. The level of skill is not a standard, it is, in conjunction with the prior art, the base against which unobviousness is measured.

. In re Ratti, 270 F.2d 810, 46 CCPA 976 (1959).