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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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obvious to whom? | 202 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

obvious to whom?

Authored by: reiisi on Friday, February 01 2013 @ 07:13 PM EST

Most of our (as a race) inventions are incremental and totally obvious -- in
hindsight. Many of those obvious-in-hindsight inventions are considered
innovative enough to be patentable because they did not seem to appear obvious
before they were invented.

Reusing a bit of tech in a different field is one of the things that may seem
obvious when it is seen, but not obvious before. It is not automatically
disallowed, although the patent has to reference the prior art in the other
field and the patentee may need to obtain permission from the earlier patentee
to use his own patent. (This is one of the reasons cross-licensing agreements
are negotiated, and one of the ways in which open source licenses duplicate the
function of the patent system in a much more manageable way.)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

"person having ordinary skill in the art" - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 05 2013 @ 06:42 PM EST

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