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I thought it "not obvious to a practitioner of the craft" was a requirement for a patent no? Give 10 programmers the task to write "rangeCheck()" and you'll end

I thought it "not obvious to a practitioner of the craft" was a requirement for a patent no? Give 10 programmers the task to write "rangeCheck()" and you'll end up with very similar looking code.

kabouseng 10y ago
This concerns copyright, not patents.
tgb 10y ago
That part is a copyright claim, not patent claim.
Jtsummers 10y ago
This is regarding copyright. But you are correct, if patents were in dispute this (alone) would fail. Keep in mind, components of an invention that's patented can be quite obvious. How a standard gearbox in a car works is well-known, but pair it up with some novel input and output or some novel use, and it's a patentable construct.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Yet, who decides? A pro-IP court powered 'industry' in East Texas that keep entire towns afloat? It seems counter to their financial wellbeing to be critical of IP claims because then we'd all assume a loss in most cases and this stuff would never go to court (mediation would probably solve most issues). Because of how the federal system operates, its difficult for the defendant to force a change of venue here. These pro-IP jurisdictions give companies like Oracle the wins they want and all the fees and fines and lawyer hourlies add up. Its a win-win for everything but justice. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts...
dboreham 10y ago
Although this case relates to copyright, I feel it worthwhile to note that in patent-lawyer-land, what you say does not work so much. I had the pleasure to spend some time working with some very (very!) smart patent lawyers on a couple of cases. Apart from feeling like I was in an episode of Boston Legal merged with The Good Wife, I was able to gain some understanding of the rules of the game. In that game things like "but it's patently obvious" gets you zero points. Any argument you advance that's based on obviousness will lead to eye rolling and deep sighs. Such arguments are extremely hard to win, it turns out. In our legal system, proving invalidity is difficult. By contrast, things like : a comma in the wrong place in claim drafting; case moved to a different jurisdiction; tricks with filing dates; prior art (the thing I was helping with) and other noninfringement theories are greeted with enthusiasm.
- lordnacho 10y ago
  So basically an alternative universe is where these claims are decided? I did a patent a few years ago, and that's how it felt. The patent lawyer would call me to get my version and when the application was done, it would look like it came from another plane of existence. Phrasing like "cause a calculating machine to..." were repeated a lot. Totally unreadable, probably only makes sense if you're a lawyer. And symptomatic of a broken system, in my view.
  - dboreham 10y ago
    Yes, totally. Patent drafting and patent litigation in this field has almost nothing to do with reality.
mywittyname 10y ago
Especially if you give them the detailed requirements for 100% compatibility. There is only one way to write that method such that the same exceptions are thrown with the same error messages for the same input. You can rearrange the last two if blocks and have complete interoperability, but the messages will be different. Moving that first if block, though, will change the behavior of the method by a large degree.

I thought it "not obvious to a practitioner of the craft" was a requirement for a patent no? Give 10 programmers the task to write "rangeCheck()" and you'll end up with very similar looking code.

kabouseng 10y ago

This concerns copyright, not patents.

tgb 10y ago

That part is a copyright claim, not patent claim.

Jtsummers 10y ago

This is regarding copyright. But you are correct, if patents were in dispute this (alone) would fail. Keep in mind, components of an invention that's patented can be quite obvious. How a standard gearbox in a car works is well-known, but pair it up with some novel input and output or some novel use, and it's a patentable construct.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

Yet, who decides? A pro-IP court powered 'industry' in East Texas that keep entire towns afloat? It seems counter to their financial wellbeing to be critical of IP claims because then we'd all assume a loss in most cases and this stuff would never go to court (mediation would probably solve most issues). Because of how the federal system operates, its difficult for the defendant to force a change of venue here. These pro-IP jurisdictions give companies like Oracle the wins they want and all the fees and fines and lawyer hourlies add up. Its a win-win for everything but justice. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts...

dboreham 10y ago

Although this case relates to copyright, I feel it worthwhile to note that in patent-lawyer-land, what you say does not work so much. I had the pleasure to spend some time working with some very (very!) smart patent lawyers on a couple of cases. Apart from feeling like I was in an episode of Boston Legal merged with The Good Wife, I was able to gain some understanding of the rules of the game. In that game things like "but it's patently obvious" gets you zero points. Any argument you advance that's based on obviousness will lead to eye rolling and deep sighs. Such arguments are extremely hard to win, it turns out. In our legal system, proving invalidity is difficult. By contrast, things like : a comma in the wrong place in claim drafting; case moved to a different jurisdiction; tricks with filing dates; prior art (the thing I was helping with) and other noninfringement theories are greeted with enthusiasm.

lordnacho 10y ago
So basically an alternative universe is where these claims are decided? I did a patent a few years ago, and that's how it felt. The patent lawyer would call me to get my version and when the application was done, it would look like it came from another plane of existence. Phrasing like "cause a calculating machine to..." were repeated a lot. Totally unreadable, probably only makes sense if you're a lawyer. And symptomatic of a broken system, in my view.
- dboreham 10y ago
  Yes, totally. Patent drafting and patent litigation in this field has almost nothing to do with reality.

mywittyname 10y ago

Especially if you give them the detailed requirements for 100% compatibility. There is only one way to write that method such that the same exceptions are thrown with the same error messages for the same input. You can rearrange the last two if blocks and have complete interoperability, but the messages will be different. Moving that first if block, though, will change the behavior of the method by a large degree.