I remember an old movie - "The Ten Commandments" - where
the
character
Seti, the Pharoah of Egypt, had a problem about
abstractness.
He is
trying to understand the Hebrews' concept of a
"Messiah"; he commands Ramses,
his son, "If it's a myth,
bring it to me in a bottle. If it's a man, bring him
to me
in chains."
I never did quite work out how Ramses was supposed to
get
the myth into the bottle, or keep it there, but the point
was
mooted.
I would submit that this yields a test which should
suffice even
for one so untutored as a Federal Circuit
judge.
Of course, most
inventions are not things for which
chains are appropriate containers; but, to
modernize and
generalize, I would suggest a Rubbermaid tub.
If:
a) you can submit your invention in a
Rubbermaid
tub1, and
b) a POSITA can tell reliably
whether
the invention is2 or is not in the tub,
then:
your invention is not abstract.
Showing that the
idea is abstract, on the other
hand, is unnecessary: only ideas which
are demonstrably non-
abstract qualify for patent, and that proof is the burden
of
the inventor. Rattle the tub or go home.
1. A recently conducted
survey showed that one out of one
seven-year-olds was capable of imagining a
similar tub sized
to fit the Earth inside. I propose a suitable thought
experiment should be capable of handling any size
restrictions. Besides,
Rubbermaid makes bigger containers
than you may realize.
2. If the thing
in the tub turns out to be a
description of the invention, then that is
proof of
abstractness.
cpeterson [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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