The article addresses that the court added to a statute that allows missing elements in specifications as long as skilled artisan reading the patents can fill the gaps without experimentation. They termed it as the "wand factors" which includes:
- The quantity of experimentation necessary,
- The amount of direction or guidance presented,
- The presence or absence of working examples,
- The nature of the invention,
- The state of the prior art,
- The relative skill of those in the art,
- The predictability or unpredictability of the art, and
- The breadth of the claims.
Original Article
In terms of groundbreaking patents, I would assume that there would be no prior art because they would be in their own zone of innovation. Which factors do you think are the most difficult to pass?
ReplyDeleteI don't think I like this new addition. Patents are confusing enough as it is that leaving out more stuff I think would only add to the confusion. I wonder if the reason they are doing this is to limit how much a patent examiner has to read? After all, those patents are really long and as we have discussed many times in class, the claims are what matters most. However, I think the specifications are important to give some context to the claims. Otherwise, how will a potential competitor be able to understand what they are trying not to infringe on? Not to mention, who gets to determine who the skilled artisan is? At what level must this person be at? Once again more pieces of subjectivity are introduced into the patent application process.
ReplyDeleteThe abstraction which these gaps allow for are important as we progress into an era of technological diversity. I don't think it's a negative to leave out details of a specific realm of industry seeing as most fields require a great deal of prior knowledge in order to support fluency in its discourse. This seems like a change that will allow for many new and more detailed patents to pass through the system, subsequently bolstering innovation and cash flow.
DeleteHm interesting. I have to agree with Amy, I don't see how these new points add anything in terms of helping the general framework of the USPTO system. If anything I guess they are trying to make it more difficult for people to get patents on forecasted tech that they can hope to one day monopolize. It also makes people put in more thought into their patents and make sure there is more conventional sense in individual patent applications. For patents involving things like medical equipment however, I feel like some of these rules should apply to test the efficacy of the product before it's decided if it's even patentable
ReplyDeleteInteresting post on the issue of "wand factors". Personally, I don't understand why they even allowed such a thing to happen when patents are already in need of more specification in their descriptions. The fact that they are allowing more flexibility with the way patents are written makes rejections more likely and consequently more frequent appeals as well. If it was their intention to be able to reduce the amount of content they need to go through, i think the USPTO is only making it more troublesome and chaotic for themselves. Bad move in my opinion.
ReplyDelete