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In concept you cannot (enforce) patented sky castles. But you may patent them. A patent becomes worthless when it is invalidated after you try to enforce it. T
by BartjeD 4y ago
In concept you cannot (enforce) patented sky castles.
But you may patent them.
A patent becomes worthless when it is invalidated after you try to enforce it. The enforcement proceedings are the real legal test of a patent. The mere granting of a patent doesn't prove validty. Contrary to what lay people usually expect.
The reasons for having this sort of system are mostly diplomatic, economic, and administrative, so far as a I understand.
A) The patent system is an international patchwork
B) For obvious reasons testing all inventions comprehensively is extremely time consuming. It would increase the cost to register patents.
C) It's far more efficient to let the market sort it out by invalidating patents on sky castles when someone tries to enforce them.
- jacquesm 4y agoOne of the more interesting documents that accompany some patents is the examiners opinion as to the novelty, inventiveness and applicability of the patent.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoAnd this was what tripped up my team for years as we tried to patent a process we used to control a machine. No matter how we tried to narrow the claims, the examiner was always able to find some obscure prior art somewhere that they could use to reject the application. Finally, after about 3 years of trying, our IP attorney suggested we drop it. It was probably this more than anyone else that made me realize that Patent Examiners are really, really good at their jobs and not just rubber stamps, as the software community seems to think.
- AlbertCory 4y ago> For obvious reasons testing all inventions comprehensively is extremely time consuming that's true, but the 112 section of the statute says you have to prove that you "have" the invention, with a Written Description and an Enabling specification. Examiners do make 112 rejections all the time. This merely implements the intentions of 112.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI think it's worth pointing out that 112 (and other common rejections like 101) may have more public writing about them than almost any other part of the law since every patent rejection is public record, but it's still pretty subjective at the examination stage.