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"
Holding that 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 6, which limits means-plus-function claims to the structures described in the specification and their equivalents, "applies regardless of the context in which the interpretation of means-plus-function language arises, i.e., whether as part of a patentability determination in the PTO or as part of a validity or infringement determination in a court"
Holding that claims are not to be treated as "mere catalogs of separate parts, in disregard of the part-to-part relationships set forth in the claims and that give the claims their meaning"
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"
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."