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So, what's the claimed invention? | 282 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
That's not a Code-Word Generator
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 15 2013 @ 03:03 PM EDT
It's a lookup table. I don't assume any claims are valid.
Any of the claims which simply look up values in a table are invalid by Bilski.
Any of the claims that multiply two numbers together are likewise invalid.
Any of the claims that compare and sort two numbers are likewise invalid.
There is no invention, and the subject matter is abstract.

Thank you for attempting to educate us in the dark art of claim
construction. Your efforts have revealed to me at least that the
systemic rot is deeper than I suspected. Perhaps the clue is your
> I assume for the purpose of this discussion that the claims are valid.

The ultimate test for validity of claims is surely 35 U.S.C. §§ 101 - 105,
not some ex-officio Manual of Patent Examining Procedure.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

So, what's the claimed invention?
Authored by: Ian Al on Saturday, March 16 2013 @ 05:33 AM EDT
§112b says:
Conclusion.— The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
As you note, 'there is no discussion of inventiveness'. However, the intention of the law is to protect the claimed invention. If claims 46-51 are not specified as particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the invented subject matter, then the law does not provide a monopoly on them.

I find it almost impossible to concentrate on your discussion points because of the elephant. I keep thinking that the folk in the courtroom are the only folk who see any value in the discussion of your point that the patent is only infringed if the elephant is pink.

The claims you analyse are the English label, 'Transport Format Combination Indicator', that stands for a number expressed as binary symbols produced by one or more versions of a math function that only has an outline English description, has a limited range of binary represented numbers as data and is not provided with an invented algorithm to compute the function. Other claims call for a machine that carries out the inexplicit math function.

The legal argument is that any machine that carries out a math algorithm sufficiently close to the outline English description of the math function, regardless of the algorithm used, infringes on the patented method.

Statutory method subject matter is supposed to be newly invented and useful. The outline description of a math function cannot be a useful or a new invention.

A valid patented method cannot be infringed by a machine. It can only be infringed by a person carrying out the steps of the method (with or without a machine as a means) to achieve the material result claimed by the patent. This method has no material result. A successful communication session is not a patentable material result. It is an abstract idea.

I think that the real issue that you highlight is that the courts are prepared to argue infringement of claims before initially asking what is actually the distinctly-claimed and protected invention specified in the patent. That should be the first round of the Markman argument and I suspect that, in the case of many of the patents we see, the court would give up before the second round was ever reached.

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

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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