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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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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 06 2012 @ 02:35 PM EDT
Having seen the input and output of two patent applications in my lifetime (as a
friend and co-worker of the patent applicant), I'd say the the actual problem
isn't that the patent applicants write obfuscated patents. The problem is that
the patent applicants write reasonable descriptions which are then handed off to
lawyers who, being familiar with legalese and unfamiliar with the particulars of
the art in question, proceed to churn out a legalese-infused, obfuscated mess.

If software patents are to be allowed (despite being mathematics, and therefore
a non-patentable subject matter), part of the process should include two
appropriately-sized teams of software developers of 'ordinary skill'. One
should be tasked with developing the patented invention using the would-be
patent itself as the design document. The other should be tasked with
developing as many solutions to the problem the would-be patent solves as
possible, all *without* having access to the patent.

If the patent-using team produces the purported invention, then the patent can
be considered properly descriptive. If not, then it gets tossed. If the
patent-free team produces a solution which would infringe on the would-be
patent, then it fails the non-obvious test.

The person/company filing for the patent gets to choose a) the team size, b) the
team members, and c) the time limit, and pays for both development teams. They
do not, however, get to pick which team members are assigned to which team, or
which team gets which portion of the work.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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