6 ms·
Could a private citizen following a dietary protocol actually be sued for infringement of a patent? Seems absurd, not to mention highly unenforceable.
by theorique 10y ago
Could a private citizen following a dietary protocol actually be sued for infringement of a patent? Seems absurd, not to mention highly unenforceable.
- aurizon 10y agoThis patent will be used as the basis for a racket that preys on health cranks, naturopaths etc that will sentence their followers to a slow death
- bdowling 10y agoFor a claim to be literally infringed, every element of the claim must be present in the allegedly infringing use. Since the first element of the first claim is "identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms...", that element would need to be present in the private citizen's use as well. A single private citizen following a dietary protocol is probably not "identifying a subject exhibiting symptoms..." Further, the language "administering multiple cycles of a diet protocol to the subject" seems to imply that multiple persons are needed in order to carry out this method, so it could be argued that a single private citizen could not infringe the claim by himself in any circumstances. The same reasoning applies to all of the other claims since all of the claims as issued depend from claim 1 or from claims 16, 25, or 28, which have similar limiting language.