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The criterion of inventive step is even more influential to economy and industry than how it has been thought by normal people. The most important step in a patent system is registration of patents. The substantive requirements for patent registration are novelty, inventive step, and utility in US, and in Korea, industrial applicability replaces the above utility. In addition to these three requirements, publicity based on description requirements can be added as another requirement. Among these requirements, the inventive step is the most essential in deciding whether a patent application is registered or rejected, since industrial applicability or utility is hardly judged negative and novelty does not usually become a key issue in the judgement of conflicting patent registration. Accordingly the KSR case comes to be very important, triggering extraordinary interest in US legal and industrial communities, and it is thought to powerfully effect Korea, concerning the globalization of patent system, pacesetting US leaderships and reliance of Korean economy upon US. The strict application of US CAFC motivation test is considered to be revised to some extent, since CAFC motivation test is not always compatible to the cases recently though it had been adequately applied to the cases of mid-1980s. Therefore, there would be a great change in the US patent system, following the CAFC judgement regarding the KSR case. There are three points to be noticed through this discussion: First, the patent system is a kind of social overhead capital which depends on industrial development and is finally focussed thereon. Second, the objective of the patent system is significantly related to the inventive step of a patent. At last, the criterion of inventive step should evolve in accordance with changes in industries and patent circles, though it is not likely to be easily modified.