discover a piece of prior art that may lead the PHOSITA to the invention, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is required by statute to award that applicant a patent. It is well known that it may take a few months or a couple of years for a paper to be published in a peer reviewed academic journal. The date of a sanctioned prior art can be a little later than the patent's application date: Capacity The term "ordinary skill" is not rigidly defined. Factors that may be considered in determining level of ordinary skill in the art include the educational level of the inventor; type of problems encountered in the art; prior art solutions to those problems; rapidity with which innovations are made; sophistication of the technology; and educational level of active workers in the field. KSR v. Teleflex The Supreme Court reversed a decision by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit based on how the lower court defined the capabilities of a PHOSITA. KSR v. Teleflex was decided by a unanimous Supreme Court on April 30, 2007. Importantly, Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion stated, "A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton." Although the Court's opinion acknowledged other Federal Circuit cases that described a PHOSITA as having "common sense" and who could find motivation "implicitly in the prior art," Kennedy emphasized that his opinion was directed at correcting the "errors of law made by the Court of Appeals in this case" and does not necessarily overturn all other Federal Circuit precedent. Once the PHOSITA is properly defined, KSR v. Teleflex described how obviousness should be determined: Elsewhere Practically all patent legislations disallow the patentability of something obvious. Hence, it is no surprise that the laws of other countries have similar formulations. For example, the German Patent Act (Patentgesetz) requires that the invention "cannot be derived by a Fachmann from the state of the art in an obvious manner". The word Fachmann (an ordinary German word meaning somebody who has professional knowledge in a field) is made specific by ständiger Rechtsprechung (usual court opinion) as a "specialist with average knowledge and talent whom one would ordinarily ask to seek a solution for the (objective) problem the invention deals with" Decoupling It is commonly assumed that the PHOSITA (or its European equivalent) in the non-obviousness provision and in the disclosure