Given the SG’s brief supporting review in KSR, a 1977 article by Mary Helen Sears is more timely now than ever.  In the article, Ms. Sears reviews the central lessons of Graham, Adams, Anderson’s Black-Rock, and Sakraida.  She concludes that these cases adopt a core premise about the ordinary artisan’s basic creative ability to recombine and reconfigure known elements in new ways that take advantage of the elements’ known functions.  As she puts it, “the level of ordinary skill at any given time affords the basis for associating old elements in any manner which merely takes advantage of their known capabilities.”  Mary Helen Sears, Combination Patents and 35 U.S.C. section 103, 1977 Detroit College of Law Review 83, 99.

Food for thought!