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Consider my mind, blown | 443 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Consider my mind, blown
Authored by: dio gratia on Wednesday, January 02 2013 @ 08:22 AM EST

My pleasure.

So, one can patent an illusionists trick without even knowing how the illusion was created! Stunning!
There's this assumption that you'll read the patent office's prior art. They're desperate for you to do so, so they know patents actually promote the arts. Meanwhile persons having ordinary skill in the art can independently invent things that are obvious. And the remaining claims of the '922 patent should be so considered. I'm a past practitioner of the art.

Semiotics as PolR points out is a social science but then so is applying law. We see in Gottschalk that the Supreme Court got it, at least when the claims contained the words signal and representation. I can't help but think of historical accounts from the middle ages and Renaissance relating arguments on whether the name is the thing or not. See Some New Ideas About Law, Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, delivered before the Indiana State Bar Association at Lake Wawasee, Indiana, July 10, 1936 (PDF, 1.2 MB) at 13:

On the basis of Piaget's Studies in Child Psychology, Mr. Frank gives us other parallels between lawyers and children. Children are egocentric, wishful thinkers, and believe in word magic. The name is the thing, for lawyers as for Plato, who also had a childish mind.

In reality there is no certainty about law, the judges merely decide as they want.

Consider citations we've found outrageous, SCO comes to mind though the style is also found in more recent cases as well, counting on the difference between word matching (syntax) over meaning (semiotics). When some of these citations are explored we find they don't actually support the professed position. When you have people whose livelihood depends on not recognizing the distinction you can expect resistance to requiring the distinction be made. Thankfully we count on the judiciary to be impartial and this is where our efforts should perhaps be directed.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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