Non-Obvious: Experimental Study on the Hindsight Issue

By Gregory Mandel

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Gregory Mandel, Non-Obvious: Experimental Study on the Hindsight Issue, 9 Yale Journal of Law & Technology 1 (2007).

For the first time in thirty years, the Supreme Court will consider the core patent requirement that an invention be non-obvious. At the heart of the case lies the challenge of how to insulate non-obvious decisions from the distortion of the hindsight bias. This Article reports the latest empirical studies in a line of hindsight research, which present experimental data bearing directly on the issue before the Court: how individuals make non-obvious decisions under existing Supreme Court and Federal Circuit precedent.