The U.S. Supreme Court is about to take up the critical issue of the "obviousness" of a patent. CNET has an informative article about the upcoming case - although the Supreme Court has a long sad history of allowing the Federal Circuit Court to make up the law as it goes along. Needless to say

Last January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed an earlier court decision last that found patents held by Teleflex were "obvious" and therefore invalid.

Also of interest is

Microsoft and Cisco charged that the current test applied by the Federal Circuit "hurts innovation" because it establishes "far too lenient a standard for patentability." Cisco has even built up a portfolio of patents for "defensive purposes" in order to "neutralize" a proliferation of trivial patents, the brief said.

highlighting the fact that large companies probably have more to lose from patent law than gain.