Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57 (1969), is a 1969 decision of the United States Supreme Court on the legal standard governing the obviousness of claimed inventions.

The defendant highway constructor's alleged infringement resulted from its placing of a radiant-heat burner on the front of a standard paving machine.

"[2] The patent owner, Pavement Salvage Company, sued the highway constructor, Anderson's-Black Rock, in the United States District Court at Charleston, West Virginia.

The pivotal question would more logically appear to be, assuming that the radiant heat would work effectively, was it obvious that a more successful machine would evolve if all of the elements were constructed on one chassis?

At a time when the industry was concentrating on a quite different, though expensive, partial corrective, there was nothing in the junk pile of prior art heat treatment patents to make it obvious to anyone that they supplied the ultimate solution.

[10]The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for many years ignored and refused to cite or follow the Black Rock decision.

After the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the KSR case, the Federal Circuit began to defer to the Black Rock decision.