> I don't think it's useful to regard drug patents as 'a typical case.'
Okay, point taken.
> Why should the person with the patent grant have to re-establish non-obviousness when the patent office has already certified that it's non-obvious?
I already addressed that in my initial post (first paragraph).
There's another reason as well. One of the Graham factors is commercial success. At application time, there has not been time to establish the commercial value of the invention. The PTO has to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt. Assuming that most patent litigation doesn't reach trial until several years after the patent is granted, more information will be available then.
> My attempts at understanding the complexity of the patent system flounder every time.
You're getting bogged down in details. You need to back up and look at the big picture.
Anyway, if you don't like my proposal, here's another one by someone with actual credentials[0]. They're not mutually exclusive, though, and I'm inclined to think both could be valuable.
Okay, point taken.
> Why should the person with the patent grant have to re-establish non-obviousness when the patent office has already certified that it's non-obvious?
I already addressed that in my initial post (first paragraph).
There's another reason as well. One of the Graham factors is commercial success. At application time, there has not been time to establish the commercial value of the invention. The PTO has to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt. Assuming that most patent litigation doesn't reach trial until several years after the patent is granted, more information will be available then.
> My attempts at understanding the complexity of the patent system flounder every time.
You're getting bogged down in details. You need to back up and look at the big picture.
Anyway, if you don't like my proposal, here's another one by someone with actual credentials[0]. They're not mutually exclusive, though, and I'm inclined to think both could be valuable.
Gotta run -- more later.
[0] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2117302