B Vitamin Case Reaches Supreme Court ~~ surprising implications for patent law....

I'm not a patent lawyer, but I suspect that patent wouldn't get approved in that form, or would get invalidated if it were.

There are many approved patents that are about that specific and useful. Yes, someone with sufficient time and money could get them invalidated, but in many cases companies decide to license the patents rather than fight them--not only because it's cheaper, but also because the patents will then help stifle the competition.

Patents aren't simply vague claims like some people act like they are.

Some are.

I think you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that using a new method of refrigeration to refrigerate a commonly refridgerated item is a novel idea. The new method of refridgeration might be novel and patentable, but using it for common purposes isn't novel even if you narrow the scope to lemon lime soda.

People will patent anything. Someone patented the process of field-stripping a Glock, putting a round in the chamber, and then carefully reassembling it without cocking it so as to have a round in the chamber of the decocked Glock. The person then went on to list various claims regarding features to allow firearms to be carried striker-down and easily recocked.

Carrying a decocked firearm with a round chambered is hardly a novel idea. Field-stripping a firearm for the purpose of loading it without cocking it may be novel, but it would be pretty useless unless the firearm had added features to make it useful. And if a firearm did have such added features, the procedure probably wouldn't be necessary in the first place. Nonetheless, there's a patent for it.

I still maintain that unproven ideas are a dime a dozen; the person who can show how to make an idea useful deserves more reward than someone who thought up the idea but had no practical application for it. Usually ideas are thought up by the same people who make them useful, but when they're not, the real payback should be for the person who made the idea practical.

Fine, name some of them. I've heard that many times and had people make broad statements about patent based only on the abstract. However, I'm quite willing to listen is you have have an example or two.

Carrying a decocked firearm with a round chambered is hardly a novel idea.

Agreed.

Field-stripping a firearm for the purpose of loading it without cocking it may be novel, but it would be pretty useless unless the firearm had added features to make it useful.

Agreed, novel but useless.

And if a firearm did have such added features, the procedure probably wouldn't be necessary in the first place. Nonetheless, there's a patent for it.

Sounds like a useless patent. Doesn't sound overly broad, just useless. As a Glock fan it's an interesting story, however I'm not sure how it's pertinent to our discussion.

I still maintain that unproven ideas are a dime a dozen

You don't really patent ideas you patent processes and inventions. To be to be patentable it has to be described in considerable detail and has to be novel.

Vague unproven ideas are a dime a dozen. A novel, well defined process in which we lack a crucial part of implementing but that part can still be described in detail is still novel and valuable.

The problem I have with your argument is that you talk about all these vague ideas that aren't implementable yet are patented. However, you're lacking examples of such.

I've heard people make such claims over and over again in the past, I've looked up the patents, and they weren't vague and far reaching like they claimed.

It's much harder to do that now. The free patent search sites I used to use appear to have all gone to subscription services now. However, it used to be simple to just look up the details of the patent and see that the person was just reading the abstract in the most liberal way possible to justify their claims.

That farmer specifically selected the resistant plants through several generations of growings to steal the traits for his own use.

So? Could the farmer have practically worked to develop his own improvements by selective breeding while in the vicinity of Monsanto fields? By what means would he be supposed to keep out the Monsanto genes?

Personally, I happen to believe that some of the GM companies want to destroy heirloom strains of crops, so that there will be no alternatives to buying their seeds.

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