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I doubt that by "running an online service" he's disclosed sufficient details to allow somebody to reproduce his invention. Can you tell how PageRank works jus

I doubt that by "running an online service" he's disclosed sufficient details to allow somebody to reproduce his invention. Can you tell how PageRank works just by using google? Not unless you google "pagerank" ;)

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
>I doubt that by "running an online service" he's disclosed sufficient details to allow somebody to reproduce his invention. If someone looking at the service can tell that it is nearly coincident with their own service then I think there is unlikely to be sufficient inventive step that is undisclosed. AFAICT that is not how things are measured though, use in public except at specific trade fairs is prior use that voids a patent. There is a lot of room for spending money on patent lawyers within the argument as to what is and is not public use though - http://www.ladas.com/Patents/Biotechnology/USPharmPatentLaw/USPhar17.html http://www.ladas.com/Patents/Biotechnology/USPharmPatentLaw/... is a good summary IMO. IANAPL
- dariencrane 15y ago
  I didn't gather from the original post that the online service was biotech-related. But if it is, then you could be right about the public disclosure (unless the service could be demonstrated as "experimental"). But I think it's more likely that we're talking about a software invention, in which case any non-disclosed implementation details could be a way to avoid potential infringement. If someone looking at the service can tell that it is nearly coincident with their own service... Plenty of inventions produce similar results yet have vastly different (and therefore individually patentable) implementations. In the case of an online service, there's little chance of the actual implementation being disclosed or somehow transferred to the end-user. My guess is that the inventive part of the service is executed server-side, and thus isn't accessible to the general public.

pbhjpbhj 15y ago

>I doubt that by "running an online service" he's disclosed sufficient details to allow somebody to reproduce his invention. If someone looking at the service can tell that it is nearly coincident with their own service then I think there is unlikely to be sufficient inventive step that is undisclosed. AFAICT that is not how things are measured though, use in public except at specific trade fairs is prior use that voids a patent. There is a lot of room for spending money on patent lawyers within the argument as to what is and is not public use though - http://www.ladas.com/Patents/Biotechnology/USPharmPatentLaw/USPhar17.html http://www.ladas.com/Patents/Biotechnology/USPharmPatentLaw/... is a good summary IMO. IANAPL

dariencrane 15y ago
I didn't gather from the original post that the online service was biotech-related. But if it is, then you could be right about the public disclosure (unless the service could be demonstrated as "experimental"). But I think it's more likely that we're talking about a software invention, in which case any non-disclosed implementation details could be a way to avoid potential infringement. If someone looking at the service can tell that it is nearly coincident with their own service... Plenty of inventions produce similar results yet have vastly different (and therefore individually patentable) implementations. In the case of an online service, there's little chance of the actual implementation being disclosed or somehow transferred to the end-user. My guess is that the inventive part of the service is executed server-side, and thus isn't accessible to the general public.