> New proposed rule: All patents must be accompanied by a working prototype that encompasses all claims. Anything not implemented in the prototype is not in the

> New proposed rule: All patents must be accompanied by a working prototype that encompasses all claims. Anything not implemented in the prototype is not in the patent. Interesting rule. I'm not sure that a single prototype per patent is reasonable, though, given that claims may cover mutually exclusive claims and divergent use-cases. A set of prototypes that collectively cover all claims (though not all possible combinations of claims) might work, except that the hard part might still be reducing to practice a particular combination of claims not in any of the prototypes. Eg. A patent that has claims for electronic storage and playback of music and claims for a handheld data storage device (each claim embodied separately in prototypes) as well as the combination of a handheld device for electronic storage and playback of music (claim not embodied in a prototype). I'm not sure how to construct the rules in such a way that you aren't either saddling inventors with the need to produce a huge number of prototypes representing a combinatorial explosion of claims and their combinations, nor allowing patent holders to extort subsequent inventors for inventions that they could never have reduced to practice themselves. Leaving the determination of which combinations of claims to allow as "reducing to practice is left as an exercise for the engineer" up to the patent examiner still leaves in place the existing misalignment of incentives that the current system has, except it makes applying for patents more expensive.