A Brush is a Brush is a Brush…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the obviousness rejection of a patent application ruling that patent claims directed to a "hairbrush" would have been obvious in view of a prior art hairbrush reference considered in view of a toothbrush reference. In re Bigio, Case No. 03-1358 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 24, 2004) (Rader J.; Newman, J. dissenting).

In this case, both the examiner and the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (the Board) found that toothbrush art is analogous to Bigio’s hairbrush invention. Bigio contends that the "field of endeavor" test for analogous art lacks clear guidelines and leaves the issue to an examiner’s subjective judgment. The scope of analogous art, according to the majority, turns on whether the art is from the same "field of endeavor," regardless of the problem addressed, and, if the reference is not within the field of the inventor’s endeavor, whether the reference still is "reasonably pertinent" to the particular problem with which