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[Oh, Crud]

  Often the patentability of a thing lies in the technical details that accomplishes the cool function.

Hmm.  Are you agreeing or disagreeing?  Except for my failure to use high falutin' language, your quote doesn't seem materially different than:

Sometimes the non-obviousness of a thing is in how it gets done rather than what it is.

   

  Sounds like 3M's patent on the post-it was just that ... a patent on the cool adhesive that actually achieved the result -- paper that stuck to another paper yet was at the same time easily removable -- when the idea of "stick one paper to another so that it's easily removable" might well be considered obvious.

While I'm not going to parse the chemistry of the two claims 1 quote upthread, now that you mention it, I'm having trouble understanding why the second patent isn't obvious in view of the first patent, which granted/published in time to act as prior art against the (not connected by parentage) second.

[khazzah]

  Often the patentability of a thing lies in the technical details that accomplishes the cool function.

Hmm.  Are you agreeing or disagreeing?  Except for my failure to use high falutin' language, your quote doesn't seem materially different than:

Sometimes the non-obviousness of a thing is in how it gets done rather than what it is.

   

When I wrote my post, I thought I was agreeing with your point in general but adding my own spin to it.

Now that I re-read yours, though, I'm not sure. Perhaps I disagree and think the opposite of what you said.

You said what makes it non-obvious is "how it gets done." If "how it gets done" means "result" then I disagree, since my point was the result was often obvious but the details of the structure/function that produced the result might well be non-obvious.

Thus, I might disagree on your second part too. You said "what it is" is often obvious. But if "what it is" means structure/function, then I say the opposite: details of structure/function are often what makes it non-obvious.

Caveat: my comments are limited to electronics/computers/software and general mechanical. I haven't a clue what makes something obvious or not in the bio or chem context.

[fb]

So are you saying that sticking paper together with adhesive is obvious, but sticking paper together with a novel type of adhesive is not?

[khazzah]

So are you saying that sticking paper together with adhesive is obvious,

Yes. If that's all you claim -- no details about what makes the adhesive novel -- then you'll get an obviousness rejection. And will have a hard time beating it post-KSR.

but sticking paper together with a novel type of adhesive is not?

Yes. Since you did, after all, stipulate that the adhesive is novel.

All I'm saying is that claiming the cool technical details -- here, the adhesive -- is much more likely to result in a patent.