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Risch conflates an idea with its implementation | 67 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Risch conflates an idea with its implementation
Authored by: mrisch on Friday, November 16 2012 @ 07:55 PM EST
That's totally NOT what I said. What I said is that most
software engineers believe that implementation is obvious
once you identify the problem. Coming up with the
idea/problem is NOT always obvious - often, but not always.
Maybe you would all say always, or that it shouldn't matter
(which is what I said we need to think hard about in the
law).

Thus, engineers are so skilled that the solution to the
problem, once framed, is obvious. This means that if there
are gaps in the description, they can easily filled in by
engineers. After all, filling in the gaps to implement the
idea is obvious. And that's all that patent law requires to
satisfy the enablement requirement.

That's what I said. I also mentioned that the better way to
deal with such patents is written description, if there are
gaps, it means that the original inventor didn't really
invent the implementation they are claiming 10 years later -
Lodsys is a great example of this.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

By the way...
Authored by: mrisch on Friday, November 16 2012 @ 08:04 PM EST
I am willing to concede that not all patents are enabled -
that some might be difficult to implement. But if that's true,
it means that not all patents are obvious. I actually believe
that to be closer to the truth, but after slogging through
more than 1000 comments here, the consensus here seemed to be
that no, there is no such thing as a non-obvious software
patent.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • By the way... - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 17 2012 @ 07:06 AM EST
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