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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.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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