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 06:14:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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622 times
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In lugnet.robotics, Dave Baum writes:
> 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".
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 could only go after somebody who tries to do both of these things at
the same time.
So typically, the early claims are always somewhat broad, but it is the later
claims that refine the patent into a focused statement of a particular idea.
But I'm no lawyer, and I haven't even read the patent in question yet.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego Protocol Patent
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| (...) Not true. Each claim acts as its own mini-patent. For an accessible article and discussion, check out: (URL) the comments section make sure to set it sort high moderation scores to the top... otherwise it will take years to weed through. -Paul (...) (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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| (...) 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 (...) (25 years ago, 4-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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