Just one leaf plucking minute there

What? The Olympus Nine are afraid of some wee little ole' Corona-19 virus?

Coronavirus forces Supreme Court to delay

"The justices, many of whom are among the most at-risk for COVID-19 given their age and underlying health conditions, remain in good health and continue to work on court business from home or their private chambers, Arberg told ABC News."

Hold on just one leaf plucking minute there! Aren't these the same geniuses who said that finding a cure is simple abstraction? Just pluck the right sprout off the DNA tree and use it to make a vaccine. These are routine, well understood and conventional practices! Not exactly as hard as lathing the trunk of the DNA tree into the shape of a baseball bat.

The above snarky remarks will need explication for those not familiar with the Alice/Mayo fantasy journey that the U.S. "Supreme" Court has embarked on. There was a patent case involving diagnostic detection of susceptibility to breast cancer by identifying so-called BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genomes in the DNA of females. The Supremes determined that "isolating" these genomes was abstract and not deserving of patent protection. They saw the process as a simple one, like plucking the right leaf off of tree. This was arrogant and hubiristic. Since then, the Federal Circuit has ruled that no invention that fits into diagnostic testing "bucket" is patent eligible.

However, getting to the right genes, proteins, mechanisms for diagnosis and treatment are no simple walk in the park. See Race Against the Clock here

We should enlist the stable geniuses on the Supreme Court, pull them out of their cowardly hiding places, to help in the race against the COVID-19 virus.

Our disappearing world

Remember the good old days?

When you walked into your garage and saw a solid physical object known as a garage door opener?

Sorry. It's not there anymore. It has been teleported into the abstraction dimension (a neighborhood of the Twilight Zone) by the astute judges of the Federal Circuit.
THE CHAMBERLAIN GROUP, INC. v. TECHTRONIC INDUSTRIES CO. LTD [OPINION Fed. Cir. - PRECEDENTIAL 2019-08-21]

According to the Fed. Cir., adding a wireless status reporting device to your garage door opener (more generally, your "barrier operator") is an abstract act that is not patent eligible.

What's being teleported away from us next? The kitchen garbage disposer? NO ooohhhhh.....

Dice-Secting Reality

The dicey illogic of Alice/Mayo continues with IN RE: MARCO GULDENAAR HOLDING B.V. (Fed. Cir 12-28-2018)

Normally it is the Fed. Cir. that accuses inventors of claiming a result without specifying exactly how it is achieved.

This time however, a role reversal is undertaken. It is the Fed. Cir. that dissects a claim so to only see the result without acknowledging exactly how it is achieved in accordance with the claim.

For more details about the specifics of the case you can link to here.

That aside, the real question is by what authority can the Fed. Cir. dissect a claim so as to pick and choose only the parts that will support their conclusion that the "only" novelty is "printed matter" and that the so-labeled "printed matter" has no relation to the substrate?

Raw Capitalism versus the Independent Inventor

A talking head in a recent pundits round-table was hawking the notion of human ingenuity mixing with market forces to provide inevitable progress by humanity for overcoming all problems by means of technological innovation.

Do the forces of raw capitalism truly lead to inevitable progress and conquest of all problems through "innovation"?

Raw capitalism directs large entities to minimize costs, maximize profits, take over government and crush all potential opponents.

The independent inventor represents a potential opponent. But how to most efficiently crush him while minimizing costs and maximizing profits?

One answer is to engage in corporate capture and then let the cogs of government do all the crushing for you. An elegant answer since tax payer money does the work while you sit back and enjoy the carnage.

So let's step back and see what the system has wrought:


1) Inventors are encouraged to file patent applications so that the government can "secure" for them exclusive rights in "their" respective discoveries and inventions.

2) Inventors are encouraged to early publish their filings with an implied promise that they will be treated fairly.

3) Examiners at the Patent office come up with all kinds of bizarre rejections, including under the Alice/Mayo doctrine and the KSR flexibility rule so as to make sure inventors spend lots of money, RCE after RCE, without ever getting anywhere.

4) Even if they initially do get a grant of a patent, inventors are subject to repeat post-grant reviews (PGRs).

5) Even if they get in front of a jury and win, inventors do not get the promised exclusivity via injunctions thanks to the eBay decision.

6) At the end of the day most inventors are left bankrupt, having spent their lives and fortunes fighting in the unsympathetic court rooms and appeal chambers.

In the mean time, the oligarchs who have set up this catch and kill system sit back and laugh. They take what they want and rarely if ever pay for it.

Oil States and the Despicable Toll Bridge Inventor

The Sct. Oil States decision depicts the greedy grubby inventor as no more than a troll who sets up a toll on a common thoroughfare (a bridge of course).

Such a toll troll deserves no more than a revocable franchise right according to the Sct. because this despicable creature is blocking the public from free passage through a common feature of commerce.

Justice Thomas writes:
"This Court has recognized that franchises can be qualified in this manner. For example, Congress can grant a franchise that permits a company to erect a toll bridge, but qualify the grant by reserving its authority to revoke or amend the franchise. See, e.g., Louisville Bridge Co. v. United States, 242 U. S. 409, 421 (1917) (collecting cases). Even after the bridge is built, the Government can exercise its reserved authority through legislation or an administrative proceeding. ... Thus, the public-rights doctrine covers the matter resolved in inter partes review. The Constitution does not prohibit [cough, cough] the Board from resolving it outside of an Article III court. ... Patents convey only a specific form of property right—a public franchise. See Pfaff, 525 U. S., at 63-64. And patents are "entitled to protection as any other property, consisting of a franchise." Seymour, 11 Wall. at 533 (emphasis added). As a public franchise, a patent can confer only the rights that "the statute prescribes." ....

Missing from the holy lips of our Saint Thomas are three simple Latin words:
QUID PRO QUO

Saint Thomas Inquisitor instead sees the playing field as this:
"As this Court has long recognized, the grant of a patent is a matter between "the public, who are the grantors, and . . . the patentee." Duell, supra, at 586 (quoting Butterworth v. United States ex rel. Hoe, 112 U. S. 50, 59 (1884)). By "issuing patents," the PTO "take[s] from the public rights of immense value, and bestow[s] them upon the patentee." United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 128 U. S. 315, 370 (1888). Specifically, patents are "public franchises" that the Government grants "to the inventors ..." ... To Be Continued

Till recent times it was the inventor who was the giver and the public the taker.
QUID PRO QUO
The inventor gives his passions, sweat, life blood, time, money and all his know how (his best mode) to the public as part of an offer and acceptance contract deal.
All he gets for it is a stupid piece of paper.
It is the public who are the takers and the benefactors of the deal. The inventor cannot un-ring the bell by retrieving that which he trustingly handed over to the public, the thing we used call his intellectual "property" (IP). According to the Supremes however, the public can re-neg on their end of deal and freely take back that stamped piece of worthless paper.

As for you my pretty ...

As for you my pretty ...

An unsecured franchise!
One that can be revoked at whim of privy counsel or political hacks of the crown.

Never you mind that Constitution behind the curtain.
Pay not attention to the part about securing inventors.
WE control the horizontal. WE control the definitions.
Revocable franchise is all you get. Got it? Go.

Oil States opinion here

Do Russians Use This Blog to Take Down America?

Perhaps.

In the past year I've noticed an uptick in Russian audience traffic to this blog.

Is it providing the Russians with new ideas on how to destroy America?
Do it by destroying America's Golden Goose, the much coveted US Patent System?

I ask the Russians if we Americans might be so dumb as to do it to ourselves?

Dah (yes), I answer.

We've been doing it to ourselves ever since the mid 1990's. Early publication of the inventor's trade secrets. KSR. eBay. Alice/Mayo. ...

Can the Russians just sit back and laugh?
Watch the self-inflicted carnage?
Dah.