The 35 U.S.C. § 103 obviousness rejection is often considered the most common rejection ground used by examiners at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to reject patent applications.  Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (2007) to expand the framework for supporting conclusions of obviousness to include additional rationale, the propriety of these obviousness rejections has been a source of confusion and debate among patent practitioners, patent examiners and legal experts.  This presentation reviews the grounds for supporting a 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection and discusses the Federal Circuit’s precedential decision in Intel Corporation v. PACT XPP Technologies, in which the Court discussed the requirements of KSR’s use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way rationale for supporting an obviousness conclusion. 

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