Obviousness

From the lecture slides that were used in class, I learned a lot about Obviousness and what it means to patents. First of all, I thought it was interesting how there is an entire class on obviousness in most law school just because the definition is so convoluted. Taking a step back, the definition on what is patentable comes down to a process, machines, manufacture, composition of matter, or improvement thereof. So now jumping into the obvious side of things, NONOBVIOUS means that a person having ordinary skills in the art would not have thought of it given plurality of prior art. To me, this definition can be confusing as to what art and ordinary skills are. Ordinary skills means that it is someone of that subject that understands it relatively well but is not a technical professional. Take the slide to unlock patent as an example, then someone of ordinary skills would likely be an engineer who has worked on unlocking phones but is not a specific unlock expert. Now, for art. Prior art is previous work in that subject area. For the cup patents we saw a lot of prior art and how the patent of a hot and cold sleeve developed from an insulated cup. Overall, the example of the glow in the dark toothbrush was best because it seemed non-obvious at first because who would think to add a glow stick with a toothbrush to make it easier to find in the dark and maybe more exciting when brushing. However, it was obvious because someone with ordinary skill in the art could have used prior art to reach that conclusion quite easily.