KSR v. Teleflex (RIP U.S. Patent system) --First Thoughts

The second from last paragraph in the Supreme Court (of Jesters) ruling of KSR v. Teleflex (4/30/2007) caught this fool's eye:

["]We["] build and create by bringing to the tangible and palpable reality around us new works based on instinct, simple logic, ordinary inferences, extraordinary ideas, and sometimes even genius. These advances, once part of ["]our["] shared knowledge, define a new threshold from which innovation starts once more. And as progress beginning from [ever] higher levels of achievement is expected in the normal course, the results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws. Were it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts. See U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8. These premises led to the bar on patents claiming obvious subject matter established in Hotchkiss and codified in §103. Application of the bar must not be confined within a test or formulation too constrained to serve its purpose.

It ties in nicely with what some refer to as The Religion of Perpetual Progress. Simply put, the fundamentalist believers in this religion use their "common sense" to conclude that "progress" is everlasting and guaranteed to continue in perpetuity while exponentially accelerating towards The Technological Singularity. Regretably, there are only handfuls of people outside the walls of the Supreme Court of Jesters who are aware of dark clouds gathering and threatening the very existence and continuance of the human race let alone perpetuation of the notion that, like diamonds, "Progress" is Forever. The only thing that can be said for the legal geniuses who sit on our Supremist of courts is: Forgive them, they know not what they do.

You can see the exuberent ignorance in their boastful congratulations to themselves. They brag about how "We" build and "We" create. They crow about how we use "instinct" and "inference" to raise our divine selves to ever higher and more glorious plateaus of technological achievement. The sad fact though, is that these Jesters of the Highest Court do not build anything except self aggrandizing words. You can see in their tones that they have not a clue about how the inventing process proceeds. They are so far removed from the trenches that they float on clouds of "palpable reality". Lucky for them, they are not alone. Wiley Coyote hangs there too.