Product documentation and schematics

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Tue Jun 22 17:18:43 2004

>>>>> "Antonio" == Antonio Carlini <arcarlini_at_iee.org> writes:

>> 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.

 Antonio> I'm not sure that's quite it. I thought that the patent
 Antonio> would be invalid if somebody "competent in the art" could be
 Antonio> reasonably expected to have thought of it (but not
 Antonio> necessarily done it) so you'll obviously never see a patent
 Antonio> for moving a cursor by using an xor :-)

 Antonio> The few patents I've seen try to be as broad as possible
 Antonio> (without going quite far enough to be thrown out as too
 Antonio> broad) and give a few specific examples.

There are a bunch of requirements -- as I understand it (IANAL), they
are roughly like this:

1. It must be useful.
2. It must be "not obvious to one skilled in the art" (that's the
   one you mentioned).
3. It must be novel.
4. The description has to disclose the invention sufficiently for
   one "skilled in the art" to reproduce it.
5. The description has to be of a "preferred embodiment", i.e.,
   one you'd pick, not a variant you'd reject in favor of something
   better you didn't describe.
6. You can't claim what you didn't describe.

That's not to say that reality is all that close to this, but this is
what I've been told the rules are.

     paul
Received on Tue Jun 22 2004 - 17:18:43 BST