Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

A recent court case held that:

"experiments used by inventors to verify the particular characteristics of an invention are not equivalent to the trial and error procedures often employed to discover an invention where the prior art gives no motivation or suggestion to make the invention nor a reasonable expectation of success."

What would you make of the difference of verifying the characteristics of something vs discovering the characteristics of something?

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James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

We would discover the characteristics of numbers. We would discover how to manipulate those numbers in an addition or multiplication or other formula.

But we would verify that previously discovered numbers and formulas are indeed laid out correctly in order to produce a stated solution.

I`m not sure why the differentiation was necessary in the above case, but I can see where an inventor would discover a new event, discover how to recreate it, deduce the procedures necessary, then verify those procedures routinely recreated the event.

Verification means to re-ascertain truth. But that presupposes that "truth" exists. Objectivists define truth as "a statement that agrees with reality."

Modern academic philosophers hold that there`s no such thing as objective reality. Hence, there can be no such thing as truth (or lies). That`s the foundation of relativism. As such, there can be no such thing as verification either, for those philosophers.

how about something other than numbers [i.e. mechanical invention]?

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James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

You`d invent the process by which the machine fulfills a task, then verify that the parts and whole actually accomplish that process. Personally, I prefer the word "develop" a process.

What`s kind of cool is that I`m guessing the actual patent would what....have to apply to the unique "way" of completing a task---the process itself? Then, if there had to be new pieces of machinery or a new machine itself, that too could be patented, right?

Suppose someone invents a remote-controlled robotic laser, designed to enter the blood vessels, be guided up to the brain, then fire a laser to destroy brain tumor cells. The process would be new, as would the machine. So they patent the invention.

The trial and error would be as the inventors build a "working model" (I`d hesitate to call it a prototype), insert it into a carcass, and determine if it can be moved. As each problem crops up, causing either the machine or the process to fail, they pull it out and go back to the drawing board.

They`ve come up with an idea, but not yet "invented" a solution. They`re in the process of inventing.

Eventually they hand out experimental prototypes to physicians in five hospitals for them to verify that the machine accomplishes what it`s been claimed it does. Verification would include that it can be inserted, can be controlled, does fire a laser, can be extricated, and presumably, that it`s safe enough not to kill the patient.

I see no way that such verification could in any way be claimed as anything "new."