But patents are still being granted: tougher, valid above obvious. And some patent enforcements are still on track, beyond the grasp of hindsight reasoning.

The bar has been raised; a different game is afoot. The dice are already loaded for those on the docket, while adjustments are now being made to applications, with different rigging to sail through the patent office: no more problem solving, no more connecting the dots for examiners to cite as a formula to apply hindsight.

When the weak have been winnowed, and the strong survive renewed examination rigor, within a decade, the presumption of validity will revive, and patent value will be greater than ever, as, being harder to obtain, all the more precious.

But for now, for patent holders, the carnage has just begun. On the defense, it resembles a parade.

From the Wall Street Journal: "How a Patent Ruling Is Changing Court Cases"

Last week, a federal judge in San Francisco who previously had allowed a patent-infringement lawsuit [by Friskit] to proceed against RealNetworks Inc. changed course and dismissed the case, citing the Supreme Court's April ruling in KSR v. Teleflex. The case is believed to be the first in which a trial-court judge has reversed his position and dismissed a case in the defendant's favor, citing the KSR decision.

"The Supreme Court has made it clear what it thinks," the judge said at a hearing in the case. "Patents are being issued on obvious inventions, and it tightened the reins."

The Supreme Court laid out the obviousness doctrine in 1851, saying that a patent requires more "skill and ingenuity" than that of "an ordinary mechanic acquainted with the business." Since virtually every litigated patent case includes an assertion of obviousness, and since the U.S. patent office examines patent applications for obviousness, many legal commentators have called KSR the most important patent case in decades.

"Patentees have long had the upper hand in patent litigation but the KSR case has shifted that balance of power back to defendants," said Dennis Crouch, a law professor at the University of Missouri.

Some experts in law and economics think affording judges discretion in analyzing an obviousness defense is not a good thing. "Flexibility has an Achilles' heel, which is that people with the biggest lobbying and litigation budgets, and the best public relations, win," said Scott Kieff, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who has argued for predictable rules in the patent system. "Flexibility really means that the company that can fight the hardest and shout the loudest wins the attention of the person with the flexibility to use his own discretion."

[A]n appeals panel at the patent office has cited KSR in at least three recent rulings upholding an examiner's rejection of a patent on the grounds of obviousness.

Meanwhile, companies defending patent lawsuits are invoking KSR with mixed results, and it's still too early to tell whether the RealNetworks case will be a forerunner to similar decisions.