decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

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.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
method and means | 131 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
method and means
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 08 2013 @ 11:27 AM EST
it is a method, but it means nothing.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Silver lining?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 08 2013 @ 12:53 PM EST
As you point out, the general details of the patent are irrelevant when obvious to person having ordinary skill in the art (35 U.S.C. 103 Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter) . So it should be obvious to that skilled person (or a person doing an internet search) that they need to heat the steel to right temperature. Such a person has the necessary resources and experience to do such heating. Thus, no details are required in the patent because there is no way that those can be enforced unless those specifically pertain to the method. Similarly, complete details of an algorithm should not be included in a patent such as the exact method to solve an equation. It would be too easy for someone to avoid a valid patent just because they used a different method to solve the equation but that method is just a variant of the method used in the patent.

However, right temperature without any description would make that claim invalid as being indefinite (which is your second aspect). That is similar to how Mark summarized Judge in Interval case : Judge Marsha Pechman found the key terms “unobtrusive manner” and “does not distract a user” to be indefinite. There is a problem here defining exactness and indefiniteness. If absolute then there can not be no infringement if steel is heated 0.000000001oC more than the maximum temperature disclosed in the patent. However if patents says before the steel glows white then the patent is perhaps indefinite. That is, there is some subjectively to when the glow of steel changes from a light yellow glow (1079oC) to a white glow (1204oC) or even dazzling white (1288oC).

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )