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I don't know about rare earth patents, but in software, I have first hand experience in seeing just how trivial patents can be. I've seen patents so trivial, y
by thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
I don't know about rare earth patents, but in software, I have first hand experience in seeing just how trivial patents can be. I've seen patents so trivial, you could write the essence of it in One short line of javascript code. The patent office doesn't seem to take the "must be non-trivial" part of the patent requirement seriously at all. Handing out monopolies for trivial ideas, left and right, isn't going to end well.
Even joel Spolsky said 99.9% of the software patents out there were trivial.
- patentatt 7y agoThere isn’t a “must be non-trivial” requirement of patents. The broadest statement in 35 USC 101 can be boiled down to “new” which is interpreted as “novel and non-obvious.” If these “trivial” patents are “novel and non-obvious” then they are likely eligible for parenting in the US.
- monocasa 7y agoWhat's the formal distinction between 'trivial' and 'obvious'?
- nine_k 7y agoThe fast inverse square root calculation is computationally trivial (literally one line), but highly non-obvious.
- chii 7y agoAn also not something that I would want patented, nor patentable.
- rasz 7y agoIts over 3 lines :), and we arent talking computationally trivial. Nothing that warrants "wtf" from Carmack is trivial.
- xorcist 7y agoWhere would we be if everything non-obvious was patentable? e^(i * pi) + 1 = 0 still frustrates me sometimes.
- munk-a 7y agoIANAL but I think if there is a problem that you need to solve (which may be part of a separately patented process) and the solution to that problem is indistinguishable from the naive approach to solve that problem then the solution is clearly ineligible for patenting - the value the patent is intended to protect is the investment required to develop the solution, and I'd slightly amend that to be "the investment required to develop the solution beyond the trivial solution"... while also remaining strong on my stance that patenting software is pretty weird to begin with.
- gweinberg 7y agoFor it to be original it must be non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art. Don;t know if that makes things any clearer.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vixen99 7y agoAs in software, so in rare earths? Little reason to suppose that. Anyway, trivial ideas or not, the top producer is China at 120,000 MT followed by Australia at 20,000 MT and so on down the list.