Subject:
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Re: Lego Protocol Patent
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Thu, 4 Nov 1999 03:02:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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542 times
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In article <FKMuoA.1yo@lugnet.com>, kekoa@pixel.Stanford.EDU (Kekoa
Proudfoot) wrote:
> Ralph Hempel <rhempel@bmts.com> wrote:
> > Good grief! Maybe I should get involved in patent law (or at least spec'ing
> > for patent lawyers).
> >
> > Honestly, the basic protocol that is described has been implemented LOTS of
> > times in small proprietary projects.
>
> I agree with everything you've said, Ralph.
>
> My turn to say somthing about patents. I know the job of being a patent
> clerk must be amazingly difficult -- how can any person possibly know about
> enough prior art to tell the obvious from the obscure from the ingenious --
> but sometimes there are claims in patents never cease to amaze me, and this
> patent in particular contains several such claims. Now at the same time, I
> think I see what TLG is afraid of and why they would want a patent like
> this.
>
> Now I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me there are several claims in the
> patent that are so broad they are ridiculous. If you keep reading though,
> you'll find that the claims get more and more specific to Mindstorms. See
> e.g claims 4 and 5 and the others that are similarly worded. Not to say
> that the scheme described in those claims has or hasn't been used before,
> but if anybody knows of a previous system that worked that way, that person
> knows too much about communications protocols.
In theory, patents are only allowed for inventions that are "novel and
unique". This means that if someone trained in a given field, with access
to all published literature and knowledge, when faced with the same
problem could reasonably be expected to come up with the same solution,
then the invention is not novel enough to be patenable.
In practice, the US Patent Office is backlogged and appears to be in the
mode of just taking the filing fee and approving the patent after a
somewhat narrow and cursory prior art search. Granted its tough to be
comprehensive in these things, but some of the allowed patents are
pathetic.
However, getting a patent and being able to enforce it are entirely
different matters. The reduced amount of screening up front has simply
moved the "prior art" problem to the courts where it gets sorted out amid
huge legal fees.
I only read through the first few claims, but they all seemed to be overly
broad, and easily refuted by prior art. A narrow enough claim may not
directly conflict with other work, but then it may still be similar enough
to be ruled out as "obvious".
Dave Baum
--
reply to: dbaum at enteract dot com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego Protocol Patent
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| (...) I agree. But I'm pretty sure that a patent only prevents someone else from doing everything mentioned in _all_ of the claims put together. For example, if I were granted a patent containing two claims: 1. Walking 2. Chewing gum. ...then I (...) (25 years ago, 4-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Lego Protocol Patent
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| (...) I agree with everything you've said, Ralph. My turn to say somthing about patents. I know the job of being a patent clerk must be amazingly difficult -- how can any person possibly know about enough prior art to tell the obvious from the (...) (25 years ago, 3-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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