The root cause [LWN.net]

The root cause

Posted Jul 16, 2012 21:08 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
In reply to: The root cause by giraffedata
Parent article: Akademy: Defensive publications

> I was in a patent law class that spent the whole first day stressing, "you can't patent an idea; you can only patent an invention." And the words ring in my ears, "An invention is a an idea reduced to practice."

The problem with this reasoning is that the patent doesn't cover a _specific_ device or instance of a process, it covers all devices or all processes which happen to implement the ideas described in the patent. The monopoly isn't granted over a concrete good or service, or even exact copies, but over the _idea_ which encompasses all similar goods and services.

It would be true enough to say that the patent is _infringed_ by reducing the patented idea to practice, without a license. An abstract concept cannot infringe; for that you must build a device, or implement a process, based on the same idea. However, it is the idea which the patent monopolizes.

Or I suppose you could say that a patent grants you a monopoly over _other_ people's inventions, superseding (and infringing on) their own property rights, if those inventions happen to include a reduction to practice of the idea described in the patent. However, that puts patents in such an obviously bad light that their proponents would probably rather just say that patents cover ideas in the first place.

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The root cause

Posted Jul 16, 2012 21:46 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

> The problem with this reasoning is that the patent doesn't cover a _specific_ device or instance of a process, it covers all devices or all processes which happen to implement the ideas described in the patent.

If the idea described in the patent is very general then you have a problem.

i.e. if the patent is "how to cure rubber" it's bad

But if the idea described in the patent is specific, it can be worthwhile and doesn't prevent other people from achieving the same result through different means

i.e. if the patent is "how to cure rubber by following this process for calculating how much heat you apply to the rubber" it can be good.

This doesn't prevent someone else from inventing another way to cure rubber, they just can't use that specific approach to the problem. If they come up with a different way of calculating how much heat to apply, that can be worth a second patent.