What options are available to a patent holder seeking to enforce his patent? When suing a company that infringes your patent, what can you hope to achieve? Can you really stop an infringer from infringing your patent? Just recently, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit weighed in on these issues.

When are your patent claims obvious in light of the prior art? Is it non-obvious to simply combine two known items in a new way? What is the legal criteria for non-obviousness? As a Florida patent attorney with an active patent prosecution docket, I deal with these issues on a daily basis. Yesterday, Dec. 31, 2009, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences at the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a straightforward and easy-to-understand decision on this issue.

One of the premises for a rejection of a claim based on 35 U.S.C. section 103(a) for obviousness is "optimization of ranges." With regard to the issue of "optimization of ranges," the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure states that generally, differences in concentration or temperature will not support the patentability of subject matter encompassed by the prior art unless there is evidence indicating such concentration or temperature is critical.