SFLSD: Oh! The inhumanities.

[archival]

(stuff)

Jesus, is that what the paper we my journal published was trying to say?  I think it might have been.

[Miss P]

(stuff)

Jesus, is that what the paper we my journal published was trying to say?  I think it might have been.

Hey, yeah, it actually made sense. 

ETA: I'm glad you caught that (bolded).

ETA2: "Cogito ergo patent"?

it is hot and i want to go back to sleep

Me too!  I think I slept about 45 minutes.  Tossed for a full two hours, though.  That's something.

[Miss P]

<resolves to eat brain of whomever reorganized my office>

Curses!

[mugatu]

Following an unproductive all-nighter, I have personally confirmed that my house is hospitable for the undead, ftr.

<checks ticket prices>

<can't find membership card to claim AAU(ndead)P discount>

<resolves to eat brain of whomever reorganized my office>

* * *

Non sequitur: IMO, the facts of Bilski make it a bad case for cert.  It would be grand if SCOTUS stepped in and said "yeah, we really did mean everything under the sun made by man (sorry ladies), 'cept for algorithms/laws of nature."  But Breyer's dissent (joined by two other justices) in Metabolite tells you that that simply isn't going to happen.  The claim in Bilski is the same general business-method-y, do-it-in-your head thing that Breyer excoriated in Metabolite.

Regardless of merits, simply from looking at the tea leaves since the Great Modern Era of SCOTUS in Patent Law began (i.e., Markman), I think pure business methods are DOA at SCOTUS whenever they do decide to hear such a case.  There will be some sort of tangibility requirement--but Bilski offers no help whatsoever in clarifying this requirement, because Bilski didn't even bother to claim a hardware implementation of the method.

The real drama arising from Bilski is the lack of clarity as to what might satisfy the "machine" part of the "machine or transformation" test.  The BPAI has gone apeshit recently with decisions that a general purpose computer is not a "particular machine" for the purposes of this test.  One of those cases, IMO, would be a much better vehicle for cert than Bilski's stillborn claims.

There is a deeper underlying issue here, but I haven't had a chance to fully wrap my mind around it.  All these questions about what sort of "stuff" should/should not be patentable simply because of the nature of the stuff (i.e., regardless of its novelty/nonobviousness) have an ontological angle to them that, so far as I can tell, has largely been ignored in the literature.  Now that most inventions are things that are hard to touch or directly observe (a complete turnaround from the nice, concrete, macroscopic 19th century world), old paradigms grounded in the coarse physicality of the patentable res are showing severe strain.

(Or maybe I'm just skeered of my ox getting gored in this ruckus.)

my other prof recommended Metabolite!  he's smart.  you must be too.

So, I'm doing diagnostic medicine method patents (the paper is GOING TO BE DONE Friday, I believe.)  1) after bilski, 2) effects of bilski, 3) ridiculousness of it all.  the current one i'm working with has some machine/transformation steps, but the "umbrella" claim does not.  we're looking at DNA to make a call re: colon cancer. 

The dumb thing in this instance is that a person could claim every machine necessary to do what they want, but they couldn't just efficiently get the umbrella patent.  I think it is a waste of resources at a minimum.  and something else at the maximum.

[This is wrong.]

I wish I could be in Boston right now 

::frets::

::also frets::

IOUN, I switched my second [Alternaportal] account to [home language].  It's way cooler this way, and it makes me slightly less rusty in conversational terms!

[Susan B. Anthony]

I wish I could be in Boston right now 

::frets::

::also frets::

IOUN, I switched my second [Alternaportal] account to [home language].  It's way cooler this way, and it makes me slightly less rusty in conversational terms!

but canadians speak english

(well, the ones that matter, anyway)

[This is wrong.]

I wish I could be in Boston right now 

::frets::

::also frets::

IOUN, I switched my second [Alternaportal] account to [home language].  It's way cooler this way, and it makes me slightly less rusty in conversational terms!

but canadians speak english

(well, the ones that matter, anyway)

You're dead to me.

(That would've been way funnier and more confusing if I wrote it in French.  But French sucks, as does Canada.  So whatever.)

[Susan B. Anthony]

You're dead to me.

Dibs on P's place!

[mugatu]

So, I'm doing diagnostic medicine method patents (the paper is GOING TO BE DONE Friday, I believe.)  1) after bilski, 2) effects of bilski, 3) ridiculousness of it all.  the current one i'm working with has some machine/transformation steps, but the "umbrella" claim does not.  we're looking at DNA to make a call re: colon cancer. 

The dumb thing in this instance is that a person could claim every machine necessary to do what they want, but they couldn't just efficiently get the umbrella patent.  I think it is a waste of resources at a minimum.  and something else at the maximum.

 

This type of case underscores the problem I referred to above.  At the time of Cochrane v. Deener, inventive methods all involved doing stuff to things.  A huge amount of innovation today involves the manipulation of information about things.  A common (and fair) protest is that "you shouldn't be able to patent something solely by virtue of its being implemented by a POWERFUL COMPUTER BRAIN" (to mock one of patently-o's frequent commenters).  But this is really an obviousness argument in disguise.  Surely if it would be obvious to take a known method and computerize it, the result is unpatentable.  But it seems ludicrous to preclude something from being patented simply because it's fundamentally embodied in a computer. 

Purely mental processes are a little trickier, but I think there are other ways of dealing with the problem than by trying to hash it out in 101.

It is all quite ridiculous, and I don't have a lot of hope for a non-piecemeal solution from the courts (at least, not one that favors patentability).

I agree.  For instance, Bilski could have very efficiently been rejected via obviousness or lack of novelty but, instead, the PTO decided to make it subject matter.  And, obviously, any sufficiently advanced test will require a computer or some type of machine.  The nice thing about diagnostic medicine is that the machines are not "general".  A mass spec isn't something you find under your dinner table, for instance.  So, at least for the time being, there is a work around.

but i dunno.  my parade of horribles (biotechs and big-pharma will go looking for cures instead of ways to effectively test things) is looking better and better.  (early, non-invasive detection is a good thing, etc.)

[Miss P]

You're dead to me.

Dibs on P's place!

Score!

::scores::