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
I like the four jars | 67 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
I like the four jars
Authored by: Ian Al on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 04:23 AM EST
It means that all the elements of the invention have to fit in just the one jar.
A machine invention must not have methods, processes, manufactures or
composition of materials in it except as the best mode of implementing the
invented machine.

It seems to me that the important legal requirement is that the invention must,
of itself, be statutory subject matter. It should not be possible to say that a
machine invention is a collection of machine components that are prior
knowledge, but put together so that a new or improved composite machine delivers
functions. This is the equivalent of combining the two existing machine
inventions in KSR v. Teleflex and saying that the invention is the sum of the
functions and claims of the two existing inventions, simultaneously with no
further machine inventive concept.

Benson was just such a combination of a computer and using a shift register
together with a math algorithm and saving the result in sign form (aka symbol
form) in the computer. The invention, itself, was an abstract algorithm. The
invention does not fit into any one of the four jars. It is not a machine,
although the best mode is the only mode because the patent actually says that
the invention is only for computers.

It is not a method or process, because a method or a process must have
significant post process activity (it has got to be a method or process for
producing more than abstract symbols like alarm limits or computer symbols
(Diehr)).

Finally, once the narrowing of the invention to one best mode is removed from
consideration (on-a-computer) the invention, itself, is seen as fitting in none
of the four jars because of judicial exclusion.

If the Supreme Court had just found that the invention, itself, was the
manipulation of symbols (which they did) and that it fits into none of the four
jars of ยง101, then they would have avoided all those cries that they had failed
to define what an abstract idea is.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ 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 )