In this case, the United States Supreme Court set out how the obviousness question should be addressed by the courts, and admonished the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for addressing it in a narrow, rigid manner, inconsistent with 35 U.S.C.S. § 103 and the Court's precedent. The Court relied on its analysis of 35 U.S.C.S. § 103 in Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 U.S. 1, 17-18 , 86 S. Ct. 684, 15 L. Ed. 2d 545, and noted that it was intended to have been an expansive and flexible approach to the obviousness question that was inconsistent with the way the appellate court applied its TSM test under which a patent claim was only proved obvious if the prior art, the problem's nature, or the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art revealed some motivation or suggestion to combine the prior art teachings.Early reactions to the Court’s ruling included the speculation that it would make certain anti-competitive practices harder to sustain. Complete Case in Brief.