Written by Mark Terry Today’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision in Ex Parte Michelle illustrates just how useless the non-analogous art argument really is. Not to beat a dead horse, since much has been written about the uselessness of this argument by my fellow patent prosecution bloggers , but seriously, don’t use this argument anymore. I have yet to see it succeed even once. The Ex Parte Michelle case involved a telecommunications network claim rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) for being obvious. The Appellant tried his hand at the “non-analogous art” defense. The Board summarily dismissed this argument in one sentence: