Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court to Rule On 'Obvious' Patents
vocaro writes "The U.S. Supreme Court appears ready to rewrite the standard of what makes a patent 'obvious.' In a case before the court, brake manufacturer Teleflex is accusing a rival, KSR International, of violating its patent on a brake assembly. Large patent holders, including Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, have submitted briefs supporting KSR, saying that true innovators can have a patent held up against them that reflects nothing more than an obvious combination of preexisting elements, then be told they have to leave the market or pay royalties. The court appears to be on KSR's side, saying that Teleflex's invention would have been obvious to an individual of reasonable skill. During oral arguments, Justice Breyer observed, 'It looks to me at about the same level as I have a sensor on my garage door at the lower hinge ... and the raccoons are eating it. So I think of the brainstorm of putting it on the upper hinge.'"
Gotta love the analogy with the raccoons. Sounds like a judge finally gets it.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's about time.
Sherman Boyd
www.twocell.com
Uh no.. Will Slashdot lose its patent on dupes?
Too late dude, I already patented that.
licet differant, aequabitur
Sure mashed potatoes was invented... and cheese,
but my clever invention adds the two together, to create "Cheesy Mashed Potatoes".
Also I am patenting "Cheesy Potatoes and Peas", and "Cheesy Potatoes and Beans" as these are also very unique inventions.
I would consider selling my these patents if they become popular.
I used to read /. for breaking news. Now it's just windy.
[1] Courts are not known for haste in posting official transcripts. /. is, apparently, quite a bit slower.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Maybe there should be a repository of "obvious patents". Any new patent that only does simple combinations from these "obvious patents" should also then be added to the repository... Somewhat, though to a lesser degree, what the GPL does with open source code. Expired patents would also fall into the repository, as would any patent a company wanted to "donate".
Here I believe "the test" refers to the one mentioned earlier: "accepted test for showing that the plaintiff [patenter?]'s invention would have been obvious to an individual of reasonable skill." I'm not quite sure what the article means by seeing the test "done away with":
I think the article is crap. Legal arguments are quite nuanced, and it seems like the writer has removed too much context to really understand what the Supreme Court Justices are saying in these quotes.
Hopefully, the court won't go so far as to create a new standard, just rule that the current one is not Constitutional. That would force Congress to write a new patent standard, which is who should be deciding the issue. Patents haven't become high viz enough to be a campaign issue, but I'd love to see an advisory panel of both industry and academic representatives formed to create a better system, and then have Congress vote on that.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
"So I think of the brainstorm of putting it on the upper hinge."
Except in her example, her design choices would no doubt result in tons of product liability for her company, when the sensors fail to stop the garage door from closing on a child.
cat
The problem with a lot of these obvious patents isn't whether the invention was obvious or not, but whether the patent is an invention at all.
A cotton gin is an invention, and should be patentable. Mechanically removing seeds from cotton is a problem, and shouldn't be patentable.
paintball
Things are designed a way for a reason. The sensor is at the bottom to detect anything on the ground that would interfere with the door coming down. If you move the sensor to the top, it is now useless, and is also in violation of most, if not all, building codes.
I'm no apologist, but indeed it was covered two days ago, and even before it started six months ago. If you're going to complain, you might want to focus on the fact that--if anything--it's a dupe, and in no way is it a piece of ignored old news as you suggest.
Strikes me as true, and as always when claiming something is obvious, it begs the question "how come you didn't think of it then?"
Well most of these people actually do think of the solution and actually create a working product, but then a Submarine Patent Troll comes out of the woodwork telling them that their actual invention violates their vague patent that they never bothered to bring to market or tell anyone else about.
That is the key problem here... Not that it is just obvious, but they are going after people who do come up with the idea themselves rather than those who have stolen the idea from them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I am the lawyer representing Procyon Lotor and instruct you to cease any and all mention of his "Top Hinge Detectomatic Mechanism" in your case. My client is the sole innovator of this device and trust that you will respect his pending patent.
Yes we have prior art in the form of a maple limb which you will see was chewed in precisely the same manner as said invention.
Sincerely,
Miguel Sanchez
I think you have nailed the current problem - the patent trolls who patent things that others have done but didn't think it was patentable/worth patenting. Of course, prior art should invalidate the patent, but that only works if you've got the money to pay for a lawyer, which brings me back to what I said above, and what appears to have been ignored. The problem with the system is the requirement for judges and lawyers to make decisions that they are seemingly not qualified or able to make.
Fantastic suggestion, IMHO. I gotta plug this concept, even though I've had time to do little besides registering the domain...
Taxonomy of Obvious Ideas
http://tooi.org/
Similar idea to what you suggested, except that it doesn't restrict the repository to patented ideas. My goal is to help propel "ideas" -- and combinations thereof -- into the public domain or some free licensing scheme. If such a thing were done right & had significant mindshare 10 years ago, I doubt there would be a One-Click patent, or a patent on being able to rewind & fast-forward streaming music, etc.
Ultimately, I need to find a few people significantly smarter than myself (and more informed in a number of critical areas) to make this work.
Pi Ran Out
Well most of these people actually do think of the solution and actually create a working product, but then a Submarine Patent Troll comes out of the woodwork telling them that their actual invention violates their vague patent that they never bothered to bring to market or tell anyone else about.
What is a "submarine patent troll?" The 1995 Amendments to the patent laws pretty much ended the endless continuation practice that Lemelson, the original "submarine patent guy" used to his advantage.
BTW, patents are public record -- they are all publicly available on the USPTO website. Should a patent holder have to go out and notify any potential infringers before they begin developing a product?
That is the key problem here... Not that it is just obvious, but they are going after people who do come up with the idea themselves rather than those who have stolen the idea from them.
How do you propose we sort out the "true" infringers who are "stealing" an idea from those who came up with the idea independently? What test to you propose to determine what independent development is? How far "back" in the development stream do you need to go to show "independence?"
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
I thought that the 'not even wrong' quote was Wolfgang Pauli...
What is a "submarine patent troll?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent
Yes they both have extensive articles on Wiki. Although I may have taken the liberty to combine the two termns, but if you really don't know... Read the articles.
The point is that Patent system doesn't require you to actually make an invention, but rather have a description on what these invention does. These things can often be very vague and people have been known to patent the wheel on occasion shows a big flaw in the Patent system.
If I can patent the wheel with vague wording, what does that mean as far as patenting devices that may come into use by some other company?
It isn't that hard to think of something to patent that someone might do since it the idea would be obvious. That is why this reason why it is being brought before the SCOTUS.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes they both have extensive articles on Wiki. Although I may have taken the liberty to combine the two termns, but if you really don't know... Read the articles.
I know exactly what both are. Submarine trolls may have been an issue at one point (see my earlier post), but are really not an issue any more. Even the wikipedia article is clear on that. My point was basically that submarine patents aren't really an issue any more (if they ever really were), and certainly aren't a reason now to mess with the obviousness standard.
The point is that Patent system doesn't require you to actually make an invention, but rather have a description on what these invention does. These things can often be very vague and people have been known to patent the wheel on occasion shows a big flaw in the Patent system.
You do realize that the wheel patent was in Australia, right?
Yes, sometimes weird things do get through the patent office. But consider this -- there are many thousands of patents filed every week with the patent office. The patent office is a profit center -- they bring in far more money than they have a budget -- but congress siphons off most of the patent's office revenues for other projects, and leaves the patent office with far less staff and resources than they would have if congress left the patent office to support itself. Generally speaking, the patent office does a pretty good job with what it has.
As far as the requirements for a patent go, a patent must make an "enabling disclosure" -- in other words, one of "ordinary skill" in the relevant art must be able to take the patent and, without "undue experimentation," practice the patent. What is sufficient to provide an "enabling disclosure" is different from art area to art area, and different from invention to invention -- but it is not generally true that a vague and hand-wavy disclosure is sufficient to result in an issued patent. It may happen sometimes, but it doesn't seem to happen very often.
And when it does, such patents can be successfully challenged in court.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
* (( in my mind, the current test, is really just a reformulation of the 'novel' test, because if you can prove that it isn't novel (new), then it won't pass the current 'obvious' test, and if you can prove it doesn't pass the 'obvious' test, then you've just proved that it's not 'novel'.))
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Ahh, this is quite obvious, but what about putting it on the upper hinge USING A COMPUTER? Doing any mundane thing is magically nonobvious when you're using a computer or doing it on the Internet.
It's a huge, bloated echo chamber of people who one-up each other in arguing just how low they can set the "obvious" bar. The whole patent industry is a self-serving cycle of money grubbing for royalties, filing fees and expanding government fiefdoms, driven by the refrain: "The world is filled with nothing but idiots! Nothing is obvious except in hindsight! Rubberstamp the application now and keep the money rolling in!!!"
Justice Thomas: "What's a hinge?"
Just because someone patents a "non-obvious" idea, doesn't mean that it is new. It may have been thought of before, but not thought important enough to patent.
I think geeks in particular like to cry "That's obvious", because it is... but since geeks aren't "sleezy marketers", they don't rush out and patent things. (Hey, don't knock marketers, we need them to sell crap. I don't want to sell crap. I want to make stuff.)
In other words, one's personality has as much to do with patentability as obviousness.
Lots of smart people think of stuff and do nothing. Some folks think "pet rock" and market the hell out of it.
I have, on more than one occasion, come across "new" ideas in SF novels that I invented. Again, independent invention does not mean "new".
I had a philosophy teacher once describe a scale of "complexity"... at the bottom was straightforward stuff like Math. Up the scale you had other natural phenomena, up thru quantum physics and the like. At the top of the scale of complexity was "human organizations" - politics and the like.
Patents, law, etc - All in this category. "Artificial", and harder than hell for rational geeks to deal with. That's why it is such a hot button.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"You do realize that the wheel patent was in Australia, right?"
It was revenge for stealing our Ugg boots!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, less a Supreme Court expert, but I am a former patent examiner.
The the definitive previous case by the SCOTUS on the interpretation of obviousness is GRAHAM v. JOHN DEERE CO. in which the Court basically concluded that the 1952 enactment of section 103 of the patent statute was basically a codification of a line of judicial opinions going back into the 19th century (with the exception of a 1941 Supreme Court opinion that appeared to introduce a "flash of genius" test that the new law seemed to overrule in the last sentence of section 103). The "test" that this article mentions is the "suggestion" and "motivation" showings that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) and its predecessor, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) developed since the Graham decision was handed down in 1969.
The CCPA only controlled appeals from the PTO, which, of course, affected what claims would be allowed. When the issued patents were challenged by accused infringers, the appeals were decided by the regular Federal Circuit courts, which didn't follow the CCPA. In 1982, responding to complaints from patentees that the law was not uniformly applied the CAFC was formed by merging the CCPA with another court and was given exclusive appellate jurisdiction for all patent appeals, and they took their view of obviousness with them.
Now, usually the SCOTUS is pursuaded to review areas of law where there is a diversion of opinions on the law among the various federal circuits; here, there is, by the exclusive CAFC jurisdiction only one, yet the case was selected for review. I haven't seen a transcript of the hearing; it is still possible that the CAFC's "suggestion/motivation" test will survive and this case will be decided narrowly on the facts of the case, but it looks like, even if they do survive it will be in a less severe form than has been.
However, even if they strike down the CAFC's standard I don't think there will be a big impact on the quality of patents being issued, other factors being equal, since the main problem is the often that the prior art made of record is inadequate. Nevertheless, it would be easier to make sustainable rejections, since more prior art references will be available.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...the courts decide "buttons" are an "obvious" technological invention for reasons of practicality of booting computers. Macrosolid stocks plummet.
Since I've seen plenty of articles on this, but none describing exactly what's at issue in this case, I did some searching and found this link to the Petitioner's Brief. [PDF Warning]
Apparently, an old patent existed for adjustible gas pedals, such that the pedal could be moved to suit the size of the driver. Additionally a second patent existed for a gas pedal which was linked to an Electronically Controlled Throttle (ECT). Teleflex then apparently patented a brake pedal which used a combination of the two technologies, which is, I think, about as obvious as it gets, and then sued KSR Int'l for infringement.
I also found this NYT article on the subject, which explains the case, and how such idiotic patents are allowed to stand.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Without patents, how would the maker of a new drug recoup the cost of clinical trials to prove that the drug is safe and effective in humans?
Amateur packet radio, 1981. Schumacher CAT radio-controlled car, 1986. Nintendo Game Boy compact video game system, 1989. A wireless replacement for the Game Boy's two-player link cable would have been the obvious idea.
The sensor is at the bottom to detect anything on the ground that would interfere with the door coming down. If you move the sensor to the top, it is now useless
Above there are a least a half-dozen posts saying the equivalent.
The obvious-to-me solution is to set angled mirrors at the bottom so that the light path (breaking which trips the sensor on most garage doors I'm familiar with) is still at the bottom, but parts edible by raccoons (wires, plastic sensor housings, etc) are not.
I'd patent that except that the fact that a half-dozen slashdot posters can't figure it out is no indication of non-obviousness.
(And yes, lining it all up is tricky, but there are gadgets for helping line up optical systems that go back to homebuilt gas lasers (mid 1960s) and amateur telescopes (hundreds of years?).
-- Alastair
I have had it with these mother-fucking dupes on this mother-fucking Slashdot!
I for one welcome our lower hinge sensor eating raccoon overlords.
--
BMO
As somebody who has to see those things every $^&# day on the feet of dumb Sorority girls, I think I can safely say that Australia can have them back. They're called ugg boots 'cause every time I see somebody wearing them, my inner gay man goes "ugh!".
Good idea, you should patent it.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
BTW, patents are public record -- they are all publicly available on the USPTO website.
However, this requires a large amount of vigilance. There are tens of thousands of patents, and they're all pretty vague and legalese. Additionally, it's hard to get a crap patent thrown out.
Personally, I'm starting to think that the fact that there are so many patents that we can't effective dredge through them is the problem.
1) What effort, money and timewise, was spent into creating said patentable implementation. Why should someone else be barred, or have to pay arbitrary royalties, to someone who maybe didn't even spend a dime on research and just came up with a clever idea first? Those who think every clever idea should be rewarded with a patent, obviously doesn't have many ideas themselves.. If I had patented all my ideas over the years, I would be stupidly rich, but I don't think that would've been fair to the people actually doing the work of assembling, packaging and marketing their products.
2) Originally from the patent-laws, patent applications should be tested for obviousness. But nobody has actually done that! Patent-offices are granting patents over a low shoe, or finally grants patents which previously has been rejected tens of times, by a persisting patent-seeker. When you actually look for tests on obviousness, it becomes obvious they either have to allow everything, or should just eliminate the whole patent system. It's impossible, impractical and wasteful to go to court over patents, and tests for obviousness will diffuse the law and clog the economic system even more in favour of huge corporations. Who has the lawyers and time to spend shifting through thousands of unreadable patents these days, and for each one determine danger factor concerning every X implementation you use? X times thousands amounts to a pretty hard non-automatable computing problem in itself. In the US, if you even do this, and still use a patent without paying royalties, you're even punished by having to pay triple damages.
3) In Software Patents, or patents where some sort of "calculation device" is included: Where is the line between idea and implementation? How do you distinguish between the very idea, and the implementation, which is already protected by copyright laws? How is it that algorithms are not patentable, but "calculation devices" working out such algorithms are, even though their physical implementation might be very different. Can you see the trickery in this way of bypassing the ban on patents on algorithms?
If implementations are to be patented, and not the idea, we should reverse the requirement: There should for every granted patent application be possible with other implementations covering the same idea, so that the idea remains free.
4) Instead of asking why not patents, you should be asking WHY patents? To further science and progress in society? It is actually hindering science and progress by leaps and bounds. Many researchers are afraid to touch stuff that might be patented, and it presents an artificial barrier to a huge chunk of society. Many businesses can't afford to enter a heavy patented market, because the big global guys got a patent-folio, and they're not. Think why the personal computers got so popular by everybody: Low barrier of entry. Or if everybody had to pay for Linux from day #1: Nothing much would happen then.
Those with technical clue see how silly the patent system is, with its unreadable junk that lays a minefield in their field of technical expertise. It's like something from a few centuries ago, from the dark ages, and it is. It's time to rethink the whole system, or get rid of it completely IMHO.
Only lawyers and IP-corporations gets wealthy on patents, the rest of society gets screwed. Picture a toolbooth on every road-junction, this is what patents, and especially software patents are actually doing to society and over time matters will only worsen if left unadressed.
Yes, and looking at that site to find if you cross a patent is dangerous, because there's a tendency to interpret problems as "willful infringment" if you do, and that gives triple damages (I don't know if that's exact or approximate.)
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
You've just described how the European Patent Office works. In fact, there is even an additional period where, after the examing board finds your patent to be valid, your competitors can file an opposition brief and show up to provide counter-evidence to a board with a scientific/engineering background in the general area. I've done it, and it was night and day compared to dealing with the US examiners I've had to deal with.
We have modified the patent system in the recent past, we finally did away with "first to invent", and went to "first to file" like the Europeans, so maybe there is hope.
To those who say "in hindsight everybody will say they could have thought of that", I disagree - the MASER was nonobvious when it was first thought of.
;).
But the LASER is obvious to anyone knowing of the MASER.
As for in between - whether heatpipes were obvious or not I'm not sure. Let experts in that field decide.
Douglas Engelbart and team came up with plenty of things that were pretty innovative even though they built on stuff other people thought of.
I say that because it took 20 years before people reinvented _some_ of that stuff, AND even today the 1968 Demo remains impressive to "experts in the field".
The really nonobvious and innovative ideas take > $patent_expiry_period years for the masses to figure out that it's useful
Pity the caveman who thought of a steam powered automobile, after others invented fire and boiling water...
> What is a "submarine patent troll?" The 1995 Amendments to the patent laws pretty much ended the endless
> continuation practice that Lemelson, the original "submarine patent guy" used to his advantage.
Apparently for example Rambus managed to pull it through... You don't need endless continuation in the high-tech business. You can get a patent for how many, maybe 20 years? The whole PC business is around that old! A patent on floppy storage wouldn't be worth much today but it was a big deal 10 years ago. If you happen to know that there is some development on foobar then you create a BS patent and wait. If foobar hits the market in the next few years, you wait maybe a year more until it is well established, with multiple, preferably large sources and then emerge from the shadows and sue. If foobar doesn't quite become a hit, well, you just write it off, it was a lost investment. If you can generate enough BS patents, you can get by this business model (as some "intellectual property portfolio" companies do).
> BTW, patents are public record -- they are all publicly available on the USPTO website.
> Should a patent holder have to go out and notify any potential infringers before they begin developing a product?
On the same token, do you expect every balding man to check the USPTO website before combing in the morning to see if their way of combing their hair over the bald spot violates a patent or not? (Yes, there is/was a US patent on the way combing your hair over a bald spot to hide it, although I think it expired a year or two ago).
The argument for patents is always that they will foster innovation. I propose that the U.S. would be much farther ahead technologically if it had no restrictions on ideas. Companies would come up with new ideas by paying inventors/scientists/researchers to tackle a problem. Several companies could pay one research group because it would be more beneficial that way since the idea would help all of them. Instead we live in fear of lawsuits and we don't have the freedom to actually USE ideas for 20 years at time. The more people there are in the world, the more patent laws need to be pushed back or done away with completely because the more it holds back people from being able to invent, use ideas, and build upon them, and the more "obvious" ideas are going to be because there's more people putting 1 + 2 together. Thank you U.S. for restricting the advancement of technology and helping to create a small handful of selfish people that monopolize the marketplace, stifle innovation, and have way too much money. If the government wanted to come half way to a solution it could charge a small invention tax in order to reward that random inventor, but giving them an absolute monopoly on the idea is insane and unfair and only hinders society.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
But you're not bitter about it or anything.
In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
That would be at least as feasable as the current system. "Publicly available" and "usefully available" are different. How's this: I'd like to write an application to keep track of my photos. I'll scan them in, add descriptive keywords, make use of metadata like timestamps. I'll put the application on my server, and access it via a web browser. Can you use the wonderful patent public record to tell me what patents my idea might infringe on? Can you use the wonderful patent system to show me implementations that might help me do what I want (the original purpose of the patent system)? If not, the system isn't working.
In Australia people who wear ugg boots are known as Bogans, for some reason the rest of the planet wants to look like bogons and are willing to pay a fortune for our ugg boots, 'ceptin some damm yankee trademarked the name!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As the numerous posts suggest, how to determine if something is obvious is difficult. As the transcript of the argument shows, you need a lot of experts to determine if something is obvious. And just who do you get to give expert testimony of an invention's obviousness?
See lines 17-21 on page 49 of this transcript of the argument. It seems like Chief Justice Roberts is a bit of a smart ass.
What about the story of the intermittent windshield wiper, by Robert Kearns? He had several patents for having the wipers pause between sweeps back in 1967. Everything he used (pretty much) was available already. But in all the years since winshield wipers were in use (at least here in the US, most cars had them by 1916), NOBODY else thought to:
A) have the idea, and
B) make it work.
So, he patents it, and no car company will buy it. He ends up having to sue Ford (1978) and Chrysler (1982) for installing the systems on their cars. Ford's arguement was that there was nothing NEW about what he did, because all the parts were already in existence. Ford was found to have "unintentionally infringed" on Kearn's patent. Chrysler, too.
The fact that having the ability to have the wipers pause between sweeps is blantantly obvious if you think about it, and yet a patent was awarded. I don't even have to be an engineer to think "Man, I really hate having my wipers moving on the slow setting for this slight rain." But nobody else came up with the idea and made it work for about 50 YEARS! Yep, that DESERVES a patent.
The courts never said the auto companies had to stop using it, so Kearns was deprived of the ability to be the sole manufacturer as he so wished. And by the time he finally started to win some cases, he had too many of them on his plate, so the cases were thrown out for lack of attention by Kearns and his multitude of lawyers. Only Ford and Chrysler had to pay him in the long run. And then his patent ran out after 17 years, and it was done.
Kearns is one of the most famous cases in patent law, where the little guy won. But the truth of the matter is, he barely won, and not much in the grand scheme of things.
I think the proposed idea about measuring obviousness is good, however, I'm wondering what implications would it have.
Let's test it.
Think about "a method and apparatus to carry heavy goods with little force over level ground". Everyone who has once seen the solution would scream that it's obvious. But it's nearly uninventable with hindsight off.
So, should this invention have been patented?
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
I can't give you credit for making up that word. It was obvious.
not everything is a science experiment!
Does this mean some annoying patent possibly held by Fentek Industries (who only make US layout keyboards) will be repealed so Cherry can resume their manufacture of the ErgoPlus G80-5000 (which used to come in all typical layouts) - without having to pass patent extortion on to the consumer.
Favorite quote from the NYT article:o urt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/business/29bizc
When Mr. Goldstein noted that "every single major patent bar association in the country has filed on our side," the chief justice interjected: "Well, which way does that cut? That just indicates that this is profitable for the patent bar." And when Mr. Goldstein referred to experts who had testified that the Teleflex patent was not obvious, the chief justice asked: "Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? I mean, the least insightful person you can find?"
Chief Justice Roberts made the comments with a smile, and the courtroom audience responded with laughter. Mr. Goldstein, an experienced Supreme Court advocate, was unfazed at finding himself the straight man in a courtroom comedy. He kept returning to his theme, which was that the Federal Circuit's test, properly understood, served the function of focusing the inquiry.
Thanks,
Leabre
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/1_7.html#H ardy_2
Tylenol was introduced before Congress and the FDA required clinical trials to establish the safety and effectiveness of new chemicals before they can be marketed. Brand recognition may have been enough back then.
> Was a portable device for email "bloody fucking obvious" in 1991?
Of course it was! Email travels on a higher level networking level and the kind of networking hardware in the lower level is irrelevant. It was obvious in 1991 that email can be used on any device that can be programmed and has a networking hardware component, and that is connected (not necessarilly all or most of the time) to a network. And it was obvious that mobile devices can be connected to a network. Does the the creation of a new technology for hardware connection necessiate clearing legal rights for using all kinds of protocols that can use the networking layers above it?
Anyway, I saw a working "portable device for email" in 1984. It was in the Israeli army. We had this sort of messaging system that could be used to send messages (with a subject line and list of recipients) to other users of other computers in the network. I don't know if the network was based on IP or if the transfer protocol was something like SMTP, but it really doesn't matter. It was an email system. It connected users on different kinds of devices (some used IBM-370 systems. SOme used VAX. I don't know every node of that network but there were CDC computers in some units so they probably also had access). Anyway, to the point: we had this drill that simulated a terrorist attack and one of the things I saw there was a mobile terminal of this system. So perhaps the device was not something you could fit in a pocket. But it was mobile, it used a wireless connection, and it provided email access in the mobile device (the device was probably a minicomputer+radio-telephone+generator on a 6x6 military truck, but I think this should not be relevant in determining that there were actual systems providing email access on a mobile device that predated 1991 by at least 7 years).
The answer to the question "why do you believe 99% of of patents should not be valid?" is very simple: because there are too many of them!
The way the patent system was supposed to work and the way it did work many many many years ago when patent law were "invented" was that a reasonable number of patents were granted, where reasonable means that a developer in a field could invest reasonable time and keep current with new patents in her field. Can anybody do it nowadays with millions of patents written in a legal language developers don't use?
The name "patent" has some significance. Published patent grants should be seen by whoever work in the relevant field. The quantity and the quality of published patents in some fields today make patents irrelevant reading to developers. The fact that there's a relevant patent becomes known after the fact, and patents lose their aim of increasing human knowledge, as they are not worth the developer's time to read. So there's no benefit to society from the patents (not all of them!) so society has no real interest in granting them.
Criteria and duration of patents should be made so that the numer of granted patents per field is reasonable and the duration of patents is comparable to the rate of progress in each field. We are not in the 18th century anymore!