It depends on the meaning of the word "obvious"

I've argued here before that there are too many people out there claiming patents on things that obviously shouldn't have patent protection, such as putting peanut butter on crackers. Now there is a case before the Supreme Court that may help resolve this problem:

The patent in dispute is for an adjustable gas pedal, designed to work in vehicles equipped with electronic engine controls. In the past, gas pedals that could be adjusted for the driver’s comfort worked mechanically. The new version, produced by a Canadian company, the KSR International Company, under contract to General Motors, combined an adjustable pedal with an electronic sensor.

Claiming that it had already patented such a product, a rival company, Teleflex Inc., sued. KSR argued that Teleflex’s patent was invalid because the combination of the two elements was obvious. A federal district judge in Detroit agreed, and dismissed the infringement suit.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has jurisdiction over all patent appeals, overturned that decision. It ordered the district court to reconsider the case under a test that makes obviousness harder to prove — and therefore makes patents easier to obtain and defend. It is the validity of that test that is at issue in the case, KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., No. 04-1350.

The Federal Circuit’s test for obviousness is usually referred to as the teaching-suggestion-motivation test. Under the test, a patent cannot be rejected as obvious unless the party challenging it can show that at the time of the invention, there existed a “teaching, suggestion, or motivation” that would have led a person familiar with the field to put existing products together. Meeting that test often requires a jury trial, making patent litigation prolonged and expensive.

James W. Dabney, the lawyer representing KSR, told the justices that the Federal Circuit had improperly displaced “skill and ingenuity” as the benchmark for obtaining a patent and replaced it with what amounted to an “entitlement” to patent protection. But the Supreme Court itself “has rejected time and time again the notion that someone who was the first simply to take advantage of the known capability of technology was entitled to a patent,” he added.

The federal Patent and Trademark Office agrees with the critique and entered the case on the side of KSR. Thomas G. Hungar, a deputy solicitor general, told the justices that “as the sole means of proving obviousness, the teaching-suggestion-motivation test is contrary to the Patent Act, irreconcilable with this court’s precedents, and bad policy.”

Mr. Hungar added, “It asks the wrong question and, in cases like this one, it produces the wrong answer.”

The justification for awarding temporary monopoly protection to a product in our society is NOT, as many believe, because the inventor has an inherent property right to his invention. Indeed, in the U.S. there has never been a "property right" to ideas. The reason for patents under the U.S. Constitution is an economic one -- it is to create an economic incentive for people to invent. Giving away the incentive to those who do the obvious is a horrible mis-allocation of resources. I'm on KSR's side on this one. There should be a pretty high hurdle to proving non-obviousness. The reward should go to those who really had to work for it.