Thales Visionix v. USA and Elbit Systems (Ct. Fed. Clm. 2015).
Suing the government is always an interesting proposition because it is government-employed judges who decide whether or not the government is liable. In the U.S. claims of patent infringement against the Federal Government (or its contractors, typically) are brought in the Court of Federal Claims (CFC).
Here, Thales sued the Government and its contractor Elbit systems for infringing its U.S. Patent No. 6,474,159 used to track the relative motion between two moving objects. The allegation is that the invention is used in F-35 helmet-mounted displays – when the pilot turns his head, the relative tracking system shifts the display information.
The ‘159 patent is expressly directed to “cockpit helmet-tracking,” although it is not expressly limited to those applications. See Claim 1:
1. A system for tracking the motion of an object relative to a moving reference frame, comprising:
a first inertial sensor mounted on the tracked object;
a second inertial sensor mounted on the moving reference frame; and
an element adapted to receive signals from said first and second inertial sensors and configured to determine an orientation of the object relative to the moving reference frame based on the signals received from the first and second inertial sensors.
Reading claim 1, you’ll note the requirement of two sensors physically mounted upon two different objects as well as a signal receiver configured to receive data and compute the relative orientations. Further claims define the types of sensors as well as mechanisms for computation.
In the lawsuit, the United States Government raised the defense that the patent lacks subject matter eligibility – as impermissibly directed to an abstract idea. In its opinion, the CFC agrees;
Here, the Court … finds that TVI fails the first prong of the Alice analysis because the independent claims of the ‘159 Patent are directed to mathematical equations for determining the relative position of a moving object to a moving reference frame. Derived from Newtonian principles of motion and “borrowing the mathematics that an inertial navigation system uses to track an airplane relative to a rotating earth”, the navigation equation is undoubtedly a complex mathematical concept, and a solution to the problem of tracking two moving objects in relation to each other. However, the Court finds that this concept is a “building block of human ingenuity”, and the solution lies in the mathematical formulae, not the generic devices listed in the system claim. Accordingly, TVI’s claims fail the first prong of the Alice analysis because the claims are directed to the abstract idea of tracking two moving objects, and incorporate laws of nature governing motion, both of which are ineligible for patent protection.
[Regarding Alice Step 2] the system claim fails to transform the method claim into a patent-eligible invention. The plain language of Claim 1 describes generic, fungible inertial sensors that admittedly have already gained “widespread acceptance” in the field of motion tracking. Like the computer elements in Alice, these inertial trackers, when considered as an ordered combination in the claimed system, add nothing transformative to the patent. Although the concept of tracking the motion of a moving object relative to a moving reference frame may have been novel and nonobvious, the claimed system does nothing to ground this abstract idea in a specific way. The claims allow for the application of the navigation equation in almost endless environments, and are not limited to a fighter jet and a pilot’s helmet. . . .
Ultimately, the concern that drives the exclusionary exceptions for abstract ideas and laws of nature from § 101 eligibility “[i]s one of pre-emption.” Alice. The Court finds that the scope of the subject patent’s claims is insufficiently limited under the holdings of Mayo and Diehr, and if the patent were considered to protect eligible subject matter, it would pre-empt the use of the underlying abstract idea of relative motion tracking by others in the field. The patent’s ineligibility is confirmed by the machine-or-transformation test, under which the claims are not tied to any specific machine and do not transform the nature of the patent into something more than the abstract mathematics behind it. At its core, the patent is seeking protection for the mathematical formulae used in determining the relative orientation of two moving objects. The Court is unwilling to afford patent protection to Plaintiff’s claim on this building block of motion tracking technology.
Do have a look at claim 22:
22. A method comprising determining an orientation of an object relative to a moving reference frame based on signals from two inertial sensors mounted respectively on the object and on the moving reference frame.
In my youth we used to call this a “free beer” claim.
There may be some maths in the written description, but precious little evidence in the claim.
If there is a discovery, or some surprising and unusual result, in claim 22 then it is indeed well hidden.
Paul, agreed. The claim is so broadly written as to include all mathematical formulae for computing the desired result that is claimed — which is actually a WORSE problem than preempting the specific math disclosed.
Paul do you think that readers will cotton on to the reason why such claims are called free beer claims? As I understand it, free beer is a desirable result, but one which is, without explanation, impossible to realise. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If, by contrast, there is free beer then it does need explaining (in the claim) how it is delivered.
Here, I offered a defence of the claim, that the invention lies in a flash of inspiration that two sensors could be stacked. As it happens, that insight was old. But what if it had been new?
@ Max Drei
It was my great pleasure to see free beer once in my life, and to see a phrase that we had long used in relation to a particular kind of claim turn into practical reality.
As I remember the beer was Murphy’s Irish Stout which had just been launched. As part of the launch, the brewers were giving away bottles of the product in the hope that those who had tried it would like it and buy more. The offering was immensely popular, as you would expect, and there were long queues.
Claim 22 gives away a result but pays nothing in terms of technical features that achieve that result. A something for nothing claim whose only technical features are two known sensors mounted on different articles. There may have been a perfectly wonderful invention in this specification but this claim wasn’t it (Apologies to Groucho Marx).
Thanks Paul. Bottles of beer given away free would of course be immensely popular, as are free beer claims. But the flow of free beer soon stops, as should the flow of free beer claims.
Are you just a bit uncomfortable with using the eligibility tool to strike down a claim that recites a less than sufficient number of technical features. I personally prefer the way the EPO deals with such claims (as old, obvious or indefinite).
BTW, I take it that you are not suggesting that the delivered technical effect has to be recited in the claim.
If I understand correctly, it seems that an electronic device/arrangement is now ineligible subject matter if you accidentally mention in the claim that it is configured to carry out some function (which presumably is programmed, which presumably involves mathematics of some sort).
Glad I’ve got that cleared up.
Ely, is that your interpretation? Really? Come on now.
But seriously, if that is your conclusion, and this is not a joke, please just say so. I am truly puzzled that people can come to this conclusion.
Ned,
You have two sensors located in specific different physical locations and performing functions.
Please provide me any robotic assembly which you can’t use the same logic as the court to say that it is patent ineligible subject matter.
The problem with the claim is that it should be found unpatentable for being too broad in view of known prior art, but to say that it is ineligible under 101?
Ely
Ned,
I’m still aghast at this decision so I’m going to vent a little more.
1. Every single object in the world electronic or purely mechanical works in accordance to the laws of nature.
2. Every single object in the world is made of known common physical components (even a new material or drug is just a combination of known molecules or elements).
3. Looking at the court excerpt above:
“the independent claims of the ‘159 Patent are directed to mathematical equations” => please point out to me the equation in claim 1.
“Derived from Newtonian principles of motion and “borrowing the mathematics that an inertial navigation system uses to track an airplane relative to a rotating earth” => the merriam webster definition of “engineering” is “the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people”.
“the Court finds that this concept is a “building block of human ingenuity” => The only meaning I can derive from this statement is that they mean it is not novel.
“and the solution lies in the mathematical formulae, not the generic devices listed in the system claim.” => what device isn’t made of generic components, if you look closely enough?
Basically all the arguments are just that the claim is too broad – but this should have been easily proven by bringing prior art.
Let me know why you disagree.
Ely, the court actually said that the math was actually claimed in claim 22 which is also an independent claim.
The apparatus claim actually does not claim math, and claims a result which is worse. See Rubber-Tip Pencil
The sensors are eligible, so was the computer in Benson, so were the pencil and rubber piece in Rubber-Tip Pencil.
The courts are not saying these are not eligible. The court is saying rather that invention must be in eligible subject matter.
Now the court construed the “element” elements as covering mathematical formulae. These are not eligible. But this, it appears, was the sole invention in the claims.
So we had Mayo again. Sensors providing data that is input to a calculation. The claim then stops.
There is no specific application or machine claimed to use the calculation. Therein lies the problem.
Again C R P Ned – You ignore what is really going on with the “Gist/Abstract” sword and your anti-nominalism is nothing more than Wax of Nose anti-constitutionalism.
BOTH sides in Alice stipulated that the statutory category aspect was met. The Court waved that away and made it disappear.
Somewhere in this thread anon is asserting that, when it comes to eligibility/patentability, there is a key difference between “math” and “applied math”. I don’t see it. Rather, I see no reason to disbar pure mathematicians as inventors.
Suppose a number theorist one day has an insight that his pure math could be useful in cryptography. That leads to a good claim in the field of cryptography, which ought to make its inventor a lot of money. Are we to dub the field in which the inventor is working “applied mathematics”? Or are we to say that it doesn’t matter to patentability whether the mathematics underpinning the exhortation “Apply it” are pure mathematics or applied mathematics?
In other words, when it comes to “Apply it” must it be applied math that one applies, or can it also be pure math?
Anybody care to comment constructively?
Of course you don’t see it.
Open your eyes – that’s the best constructive advice you will get – from anyone.
One thing that you don’t see because you are purposefully closing your eyes is that I have always maintained the difference between eligibility and patentability.
Your not-so-subtle conflation happens to echo the Malcolm “whatever” mantra.
You should (constructively) take note that those positions clarifying the law are always better than those positions that conflate the law.
Max, LE ROY ET AL. v. TATHAM ET AL., 55 U.S. 156, 14 L. Ed. 367 (1852). link to scholar.google.com?
case=9195622383669422745&q=le+roy+v.+tatham&hl=en&as_sdt=2006
Claiming math without an application is the same as claiming an idea without a practical means for implementing it.
The basic distinction hear came out of England in the cases cited by the Supreme Court in Le Roy and can be found in Webster’s patent cases — describing English patent cases.
Well yes Ned. Answering that question isn’t that difficult for the courts is it? Article 52 of the EPC declares “mathematical methods” as such to be ineligible. Who could argue with that? My point was that the math that you apply (to generate eligible subject matter) does not have to be applied math but could also be pure math.
Your “point” MaxDrei evidences a basic misunderstanding of what math and applied math mean.
There is no such thing as “pure math applied.”
The misunderstanding on my part is not of the difference between pure and applied math but, rather of what you wrote earlier in this thread.
You see, all that I have to go on, as to what you are thinking when you type your contributions, are the words that appear on my Screen.
I hope we can agree on the trite propositions that i) a mathematical method, as such, is not eligible for patents, whether in the USA or in Europe, ii) any eligibility lies in the application of the said method and iii) it doesn’t matter what sort of math is found in the said method, because no sort of math is excluded.
Your inclusion of “as such” has NOTHING to do with my words on your screen.
No MaxDrei, the lack of understanding is not from my end.
What is trite is your attempted differentiation between pure math and applied math and somehow thinking that one can apply pure math, and have it remain pure math.
You need to work on the basics, like the difference between pure math and applied math.
So again, non-reality. In information processing, functional claiming is used to represent a set of solutions. Period. There is no dispute about this with scientist.
What has happened? Judicial activist have intentionally misrepresented this fact to harken back to old SCOTUS case law before the 1952 Act.
The shameless disingenuous behavior from the anti-patent crowd is endless.
(And, my disingenuous friends, please try to dispute the fact above and not write some giant post of smoke.)
(But wait, there’s more—module is now a nonce word ’cause them there spanking new Fed. Cir. Google purchased judges say it is. And the sun goes around the earth and if you say differently we’ll burn you at the stake.)
link to bbc.com
This is really getting outrageous. These scientist need to be taught that these machines are just abstractions and that any generic computer can do anything any computer can do.
Sheesh. The scientist don’t read the pronouncements made by the God-like 9 and the Google purchased Fed. Cir. judges.
In other news, the programmers are in danger of being burned at the stake for continuing to use the world “module” to convey structure and to have a meaning. The Fed. Cir. issued a warning to programmers that they have proclaimed that “module” conveys no structure and the continued use of “module” by programmers may result in stake burnings. The Fed. Cir. has asked the DOJ to collect the names of the programmers so that they can burn a few as examples.
Why burn them? They can be made to march like nice little lemmings.
Where does one appeal CFC decisions? SCOTUS or Fed. Cir.? Just curious to see if we will see this case appealed, and if so where, or if this is essentially the end of the case.
Court of Federal Claims decisions can be appealed to the Federal Circuit.
Sec. 1295. Jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
(a) The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction—
(3) of an appeal from a final decision of the United States Court of Federal Claims;
Thanks Pilgrim & Ned.
There once was a body of 103 law designed to protect patent owners/applicants against the unfairness of hindsight opinions, intuitive rejections/invalidations, lack of rigorous analysis, and basic procedural fairness. Because often things look obvious after-the-fact. And, everything new is made of old stuff but put together or modified in a new way.
The New 103 Jurisprudence (aka, section 101) is based on a statute that starts with the qualification that “any” invention in one of several very broad categories is patentable. The New 103 Jurisprudence allows judges to deem, from the bench, in their infinite wisdom, what is (a) new, (b) what is “significant”, (c) what is a “fundamental building block”, (d) what would or would not preempt use, etc.
These subjective findings are now allowed to be made without evidentiary support, but rather are based purely on text construction and the knowledge of the judge(s). Such inherently subjective holdings can be made before a claim construction proceeding, so the judges do not even interpret the claims as one of ordinary skill in the art would interpret the claims. The judges interpret them … as a judge would.
If you read the decision (Sensor Based …) of this blog entry, the actual analysis can be narrowed down to about one paragraph, possibly two. The judge invalidates an issued patent based on a single paragraph of “analysis” (conclusory statements, actually) that lacks any citation to facts on the record.
Do tell, lawmakers (judges), how is one supposed to write a claim serving the public-notice purpose of a patent when the intended audiences are both technical artisans and … judges likely lacking even a formal technical education?
I have no problem with many of these _outcomes_, but the process by which they are arrived at is a travesty of justice. Too much judicial discretion, too much unpredicability, too few requirements of proof or analytical rigor.
[Prediction: Malcolm Mooney dodges the main issue raised by this post, and instead posts a comment isolating some picayune detail of this post and then rants on with feigned sorrow for undeserving public-robbing pretend-inventors]
HofPU, there are a lot of misassumptions in your post which indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on.
Two steps: 1. Identify ineligible material and describe its gist; and 2) determine whether it is sufficiently applied. With respect to the latter, the MOT is a good guideline. But claiming the novel subject matter as a result sans any of means of method of achieving the result is also not sufficient.
Step 2 is the most critical, in my view. This looks to see if the otherwise patentable subject matter is other than conventional, or whether the ineligible material is applied to transform the claim as a whole into a patentable application. Think, new matter doctrine as to what this means — some new functional relationship of the abstract to the underlying subject matter.
103 is all about comparing the claim to the prior art. It has nothing to do with patentable subject matter.
I think you miss the point. The two-step analysis is a sham that requires no factual support and allows a judge to make decisions about technology, the meaning of terms of art, the state of the art many years in the past, obviousness (in so many words), and what are fundamental building blocks.
I know what 103 is about, but I’m not alone in observing that the new 101 decisions are quite similar to old 103 analyses that were discredited in precedential decisions.
All of these points in the last two posts by HoPB are good points. When did 103 become 101? In Alice.
PatentBob, this is not about prior art. 103 has nothing to do with 101.
It is entirely disingenuous Ned to ignore the conflation going on here by the Court regarding 101/103.
You lesson even more what is left of y0ur “credibility” with your mindlessness.
Well, H, certainly if claim has in it subject matter that has previously been found to be “abstract,” or a product or law of nature, then the second step becomes applicable.
What findings of fact must there be on step 1? What expert testimony can be introduced to negate a finding that the claim contains subject matter that has previously been held to be ineligible.
On step 2, it must be apparent that everything else in the claim is not the invention of the patentee. Generic computers, a generic reference to the Internet, any and all inertial sensors in the case at bar, are examples where the patentee is not claiming invention in these generic components. The only defense would be to show that the claim is to a specific machine as in Alappat or that the ineligible material, the programmed computer, used in the particular application produces an improved result as in Diehr.
There seems to be a complication in this formula when the novel subject matter is claimed as a result, i.e., to the point of abstraction, and everything else in the claim is old. Here, the claim might otherwise pass 101 except for the abstract way the novel subject matter is claimed.
So the question is when a claim is to a result, is this a finding of fact or question of law?
Stop parsing.
Jepson claim format is an optional claim format.
There were perfect cures before the Diehr patent.
Perfectly valid patents are made up entirely of all old items ALL THE TIME.
The Merry GO Round continues…
Some “debate” there Ned.
Really Ned a generic computer? Is that there one of them computers that magically does whatever Justice Stevens tells it to do in exchange for Posner giving it a pizza?
Maybe it is one of those “House/Morse” computers in which all future inventions are “already in there” and that Britney Spears CD is exactly the same as that Microsoft Windows operating disk….
Oh where oh where has my little Nazomi gone? Ned clenches tight his eyes and refuses to see the easy lesson of the Grand Hall.
>There seems to be a complication in this formula when the novel subject matter is claimed as a result, i.e., to the point of abstraction, and everything else in the claim is old. Here, the claim might otherwise pass 101 except for the abstract way the novel subject matter is claimed.
Ned this is disingenuous. I just quoted from a technical book a few weeks ago on here where chapter 1 said that functional statements were meant to represent a set of known solutions. You know that. I guess you anti-patent people can continue to tell us that the sun goes around the earth and as long as the God-like 9 and Google purchased Fed. Cir. backs you up, then that is the law. But it is not reality.
Just shameful Ned that you push this stuff. Try to address how a person of ordinary skill would interpret the functional claim. (But we all know you just start blabbing and blabbing and don’t address this.) Blab. Blab. Blab.
Night, is it even possible that you are a lawyer?
So–let’s see I just challenged you with a fact. You responded with what?
OK. Sure Ned. You don’t think you are fooling any real attorneys on here with your nonsense do you?
But, please blab away some more ….
Night, the problem I see with your side of the “debate” is a almost complete disdain for the rule of law.
Since State Street Bank, the PTO has been issuing patents on business methods and anything and everything that included a computer or CRM. But anyone who knew what Benson, Flook and Diehr stood for knew that the Federal Circuit had adopted a rule that was destined to be reversed. But it took the PTO to force the issue in Bilski.
So now the heyday of State Street Bank has come a cropper, you simply refuse to accept the ruling of a unanimous Supreme Court in Alice. I call this a profound disrespect for the rule of law — akin to the revolt lead by Judge Rich in ’50-’52 to the rulings of the Supreme Court on a variety of issues in the ’40s.
I also think it is a variation of CYA so that one can blame others for one’s only malpractice in telling clients that their business methods were patentable subject matter when anybody with any common sense knew that Judge Rich’s view of things would never prevail in the long run.
Now I too think some Supreme Court rulings are unfortunate — eBay being at the top of that list. But I do not advise my clients that eBay is not controlling law, nor do I willfully misstate it holding.
And again there was a simple fact about whether functional language is used by engineers to represent the set of solutions in CS/EE. We know it does. And yet you keep claiming it doesn’t. That was what the “debate” was about. You just blew a smoke screen the size of Texas.
As to your smoke screen: Ned, seriously? So, during the State Street period everyone “knew” the law was wrong and it was OK to argue such, but now Alice has set things straight and only unethical people argue that the law is wrong. Seriously.
And please stop mixing up my statements about reality and the judicial activist that call themselves judges and what I advise clients. OK. Nice try. Wow more smoke than a CA wildfire. Good job. I guess it probably confused someone.
Night, query: functional language == set of known? solutions, or all possible solutions?
Regarding judicial activism, has any judge ever been less conservative that Rich? State Street, a panel decision pity’s sake, overturned both Benson and Hotel Security. Now you discount that people did not know better that State Street would not stand subsequent Federal Circuit and Supreme Court scrutiny.
But it did take awhile for the PTAB to reject State Street — its 2006 decision in Bilski, a couple more years for the Federal Circuit to follow suit. Supreme Court condemnation quickly followed.
All of this was predictable. No one really expected any of these courts to simply rubber stamp State Street Bank.
Ned, your diatribes and denigration of a person remain a smokescreen against accepting what Congress did.
It is truly desp ic able that you show such disrespect for the rule of law and pull a Malcolm and accuse others of the very thing.
Ned, you know the answer to that question.
Functional = all known solutions and then all of other patent law takes over for determining whether another solution would fall under it–enablement, e.g.
Night, I am with you if the claim is construed to cover known structures and infringement is determined by equivalents.
You lose me when you say the scope of the claim includes everything enabled by the spec., so one does not actually know whether one infringes until on actually tries to build something according to the spec.
Such a claim scope is inherently indefinite.
Ned>You lose me when you say the scope of the claim includes everything enabled by the spec., so one does not actually know whether one infringes until on actually tries to build something according to the spec.
Such a claim scope is inherently indefinite.
This is more smoke. What? Nonsense. Scope of enablement is —of course–the gold standard and how claims should be construed. Where in the world do you generate this nonsense Ned?
Ned, I like your last point. At least claiming a result is arguably an objective criteria.
My critique of Alice and its offspring is that it is too subjective and lacks requirements of proof. A claim is to be interpreted as it would be by one of ordinary skill in the relevant art, at the time of invention. Good drafters/prosecutors keep this in mind; they constantly ask “how will an engineer/biologist/etc. interpret this language?” Technicians in some fields use some rather specific argot. An Alice “analysis” ignores this.
Your remarks on step 2 confirm my other complaint. Step 2 involves understanding what is or is not new. How can this be done without resort to facts of record? A judge is an expert on what the state of the art was on inertial sensing and computation at the time of invention? I don’t think so.
The unstated purpose of Alice is judicial efficiency. Let judges get rid of low quality seemingly overbroad patents without great expense to challengers. And so the pendulum swings. Maybe in 10 or 20 years we’ll see another State Street, or correct statutory construction applied to section 101. In the meantime, patent participants are left with a serious predictability problem.
Alice wasn’t needed. The problem of overbroad patents (claims that are clearly within a statutory category but very broad) already had a solution. The new patent proceedings at the PTO allow a streamlined 103 challenge, which is the right statutory tool for most of these overbroad patents. Study the history and language of section 101 and you’ll find that its present use was never intended by Congress and is not supported by the black letters of the statute.
Well, H, I have said this before and will say it again here, if the otherwise eligible subject matter in the claim is not self-evidently old and old in combination, then Mayo would caution that there could be invention in such. This by itself would move the claim into 102/103 where the novelty of the eligible subject matter would be placed at issue.
To resolve a case at the 101 stage, there has to be no dispute of facts. None.
In the case at bar, the Court noted that the patentee had argued that the location of a sensor on a moving platform was itself an invention. The court simply ignored this because the sensor itself was generic. However, I think that might have been enough to move the question of patentability out of 101 and into 102/103.
OK, Night. You accuse me of infringement because the functional limitation literally reads on my device. I, using your definition of scope, send you an expert opinion that based on your spec. that my clients device was not enabled by your specification.
What?
Enablement has nothing to do with infringement or scope. One cannot functionally claim everything an then have the courts reduce the scope o the claim to the extent the spec enables something. That is way, way out there Night. Literally way way out there.
>>that my clients device was not enabled by your specification.
Ned, LizardTech deals exactly with this issue. And, of course this issue is going to come up. That someone invents something that reads on your claims, but is not enabled. And, what happens is the claims are invalidated. That is the tension. If you claim too much, your claims may be invalidated in this way.
As to the rest of your nonsense—it is nonsense. You keep saying you can’t claim “functionally” ’cause ’cause. How about you try to be a real patent attorney? Try to focus on the inventions — you see that is what real patent attorneys do. Those skilled in the art discuss the inventions using functional language. The books say expressly that they use functional language to represent sets of solutions.
Deal with that.
Being a real patent attorney would mean that he would have to stop his curse-ades – at least as far as his dissembling in pretending that the law written by Congress is something other than what it is.
But to do that, he would then have to admit that what he is really after is a change in law, a change that the courts are not sanctioned to write.
And this is exactly why his sh00ting himself in the foot with his posting of the Judge O’Malley article warning against judicial activism when it comes to statutory law is oh so typically common of the anti-patent failings.
I don’t mind at all that certain people have certain views of how they would prefer patent law to be.
I completely mind when those same people are simply – and plainly – dishonest in their approaches.
Inte11ectual honesty is simply not too much to ask for.
It is totally out of control anon. It is coming from the massive money from Google and the likes of Lemley. There is no ethics just the power to burn it down. That is what is driving this madness.
Lemley, and his software has no structure, is, represents the worst of it. A professor that is untethered from ethics.
All too often “ethics” in the eye of the beholder means nothing.
One only has to look at the “ecosystem” here – a blight has persisted for nine years and running (long long long before I ever started posting here), without even a hint of care by the blog masters.
Why is that?
Perceptions are left to abound.
“lot of misassumptions in your post which indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on”
…from the Malcolm School of Misdirection….
Hear, hear.
HofPBs great post. No facts needed only a judge’s opinion about how they feel about it. No rules. No law.
Ned: you have become ridiculous. Just an absurd person at this point Ned.
None of what you decry is necessary where there is you know, physical structure or transformations of matter. The stuff patents were intended to protect.
What you decry is essential to adjudicate the ownership of ideas, which should be anathema to patent law (and free people) but which has become the means to profit and/or control, and so will only be torn from those who benefit. As we can see.
Yes Marin I am typing on an idea right now. It all exists in the spirit world and is not real machines.
Maybe if you educated yourself so you understood information processing machines then next time you wouldn’t think you can just make any system you want regardless of what patents are out there.
I have warned you in the past: stop the defamation. You wont read the case papers by your own admission- willful ignorance.
The machine has physical structure. Patent eligible.
Your misguided arguments have structure, are somewhat novel, and useful (to you apparently). Not patent eligible. Neither is per se software. Get over it.
Software is not the thought of software.
Rick, the pencil and rubber tip were old. The idea of catching one to the other without more detail was an example of claiming the idea of attachment, not any means or method of doing so.
The case has repeatedly been cited by the Supreme Court as an example of 101 claiming an idea — abstract .
What an interesting thread. Paul Cole points out that the claim is directed to a result or a goal to be achieved. Ned Heller observes that the stacked sensor idea was known and desired but thought to be out of reach because the computation was too slow, but then along came the mathematicians at Thales, with math good enough to get the computation done fast enough.
Ned thinks that limiting the claim to a HUD renders it eligible. I suppose that Paul would disagree. I suppose that if Paul were judging patentability he would want the math in the claim. After all, it is the math that solves the problem, and patents are for solutions to problems not mere statements of the problem to be solved.
At the EPO, the means by which the problem is solved have to be “technical”. Paul, is the math technical?
Perhaps a better question (along your portrayal of the question**):
Is it math or application of math?
**there are different problems that inure based on your approach, but I am setting those aside for the moment to highlight a certain “looseness” in terminology here: the difference between mere math and applied math.
It was not the difference between pure and applied math that was troubling me. Rather, it was what sort of person to name as inventor. A mathematician for example.
What is troubling you appears to be a distinction without a difference.
Sure a mathematician can be an inventor.
So can a plumber, fireman, third-grader, heck, even an academic can be an inventor.
The great thing about software in fact (the thing that Malcolm is consistently deceptive about) is that thie type of invention opens up inventive activity to the greatest spread of people EVER.
And yet, he both claims this is a “t001” of ultra-elite 1%’ers as well as something that is “PER SE” outside the realms of patent protection.
anon, you misunderstand. I am not saying that there is a prohibition on naming mathematicians as inventors of, say, kitchen gadgets. What I am suggesting is that, when it comes to eligibility, it can be helpful to ask oneself what technical field the person would have been operating in, when conceiving the invention. Tax accountancy or product marketing, for example.
Here, the physics was known, as was the math to deliver the result. Lacking was just a person with enough math talent to streamline the math. So the invention was not in engineering or physics or even in programming, but 100% in math.
Not saying that is conclusive for eligibility, just something to think about.
Clearly, such can also be non-helpful, as the prejudice then quickly arises as to my first response and the looseness and lack of understanding as to the difference between mere math and applied math.
You seem to want to pidgin hole the inventor for some (rather obvious) reason.
Just another way to parse what should not be parsed.
As even Lemley notes (in his AIA positions), it takes a village to invent.
Your attempted parse here is nothing but the “Point of Novelty” misapplied yet again.
That’s just not how our sovereign has written the law.
Thanks, but no thanks.