Holding the district court erred by "considering the references in less than their entireties, i.e., in disregarding disclosures in the references that diverge from and teach away from the invention at hand"
Stating that the district court could also determine whether the prior art offers a motivation to combine based on "whether a combination of the teachings of all or any of the references would have suggested (expressly or by implication) the possibility of achieving further improvement by combining such teachings along the line of the invention in suit"
Reversing rejection for inadequate written description where specification disclosed several species of a genus and claims recited genus but excluded two species of lost interference count
35 U.S.C. § 112 Cited 7,362 times 1046 Legal Analyses
Requiring patent applications to include a "specification" that provides, among other information, a written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making and using it
35 U.S.C. § 103 Cited 6,130 times 479 Legal Analyses
Holding the party seeking invalidity must prove "the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains."