> As I understnad patent law (and IANAL), if somebody 'competent in the
> field' can't recreate the invention from the patent, then the
> patent is invalid.
I'm not sure that's quite it. I thought that the patent
would be invalid if somebody "competent in the art"
could be reasonably expected to have thought of it
(but not necessarily done it) so you'll obviously
never see a patent for moving a cursor by using
an xor :-)
The few patents I've seen try to be as broad as
possible (without going quite far enough to be
thrown out as too broad) and give a few specific
examples.
So if you find that you can make your calculator
last for years on a single sunbeam if you use
Peruvian Bat Guano as the keyboard membrane,
what you do is patent the use of Peruvian
Bat Guano as a keyboard membrane in any way
shape or form. You give an example which
involves a 0.1mm layer of said Guano and
claim (correctly) that it improves battery
life. Since your patent covers all use of
such guano, you don't bother to mention
that the best guano is that collected
during the summer nights, that a 0.15mm
layer produces much more beneficial
effects and that only the guano
collected by a specific tribe doesn't
smell.
Of course, by the time the patent agent
has finished with the application you
won't find simple words like "guano"
or "calculator" or "keyboard" in it
anywhere at all. I always assume that
if I can understand anything at all
about a patent on first reading,
then someone made a big mistake
somewhere :-)
BTW: In case bat guano (peruvian or
otherwise or indeed any biological
waste product [babel fish anyone?])
does prove to be useful
in any form of computing device,
then please remember that this
message counts as publication,
so you are too late to make a
fortune from my ideas!!!
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini_at_iee.org
Received on Tue Jun 22 2004 - 17:10:42 BST