The Board of Appeals recently provided additional support for patent applicants to use against obviousness rejections based solely on recitation of a legal principle. In Ex Parte Nakhamkin, the Board reversed an obviousness rejection that relied only on stating a per se rule of obviousness without comparing the claimed invention or prior art. This decision establishes that examiners must compare the facts of the application to the facts of any case cited and explain how the legal holding applies. It can be used together with explanations of legal principles in the MPEP to mount a two-pronged argument questioning conclusory reliance on a principle and explaining why the principle does not truly apply. This gives applicants more ammunition to challenge rejections based on naked assertion of a