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Authored by: Wol on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 07:15 PM EDT |
You are right to be puzzled. As I understand Mr Risch ...
Let's say I design a machine for pumping water out of a pond. But all of my
customers think "great, it'll work fine to pump wine out my vats". Two
years down the line, a new customer actually uses it to pump water out of a pond
as I originally intended.
THAT IS VALID GROUNDS FOR A PATENT !!!
Because if, as Mr Risch says, the only thing that matters is prior art, then
*legally* what I have designed is a wine pump. And my customer is now entitled
to have a patent on using it as a water pump because nobody's ever done that
before. Never mind that that was it's original design purpose, that's legally
irrelevant!
Going back to Mr Risch's point about "replacing the software and disabling
the phone antenna makes a different machine", the whole point of that is
that by any engineer's understanding of the word "machine" you have
NOT made a different machine. You have simply moved a bunch of static
electricity charges to a different place.
It's like arguing that when I have friends round, my house changes into a
completely different house because it has a different set of people in it.
And Mr Risch - this is where PolR (and I, and probably the rest of Groklaw) have
great trouble with the legal definition of "machine". How can we have
HUNDREDS of machines which - *legally* - are different, but
scientifically/engineeringly/physically are ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL! Right down to
the *atomic* level! ??? It just doesn't make sense!
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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