The Hitchiker's Guide through the Judicial Hall of Patent Pending Shame

One ancient adviser said, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

Is that the correct stance?
Do they forgive others as they willst forgiveness unto themselves?

Or maybe we should say, "Understand them for they know not what they do, but forgive them not"?

Welcome to the Judicial Hall of Patent Pending Shame.

First up on our wall of shame is Justice Stephen Breyer, philosopher king and historian extraordinaire .... According to Breyer J. Egypt's King Tut had an all powerful Abacus Man. Breyer's 'Bacus Man could do extraordinary things. Like tallying up all the chits in Egypt's entire kingdom on his tiny 4 beads per symbol bronze abacus machine. Breyer's 'Bacus Man could also telepathically connect instantaneously to all corners of the realm so that he knew in real time when "solvency" ceased to exist for any of the kingdom's numerous accounts. What a man!

We should try to "understand" the debating points made by the Honorable Breyer J. After all, he majored in "philosophy" while going for his undergraduate at Stanford and then in a combination of "philosophy" and "economics" at Magdelen College at Oxford University.

Mind you there is nothing "fundamentally" wrong with studying "philosophy" and "economics" except for one minor detail.

You see, these areas of scholastic effort are wholly divorced from physical reality.

They don't account for the friction between the shell beads and bronze rods of the Tut's 'Bacus Man abacus. Or for the amount of energy needed to make those beads whiz back and forth along the metal rods as the chit data comes flashing in by carrier pigeon at 100,000 bead bits per second. Then there is the wear and tear on these parts and time out for repair and replacement.

Of course, in Plato's cave all is merely shadow flashing as illusions on the cave wall. So Breyer is freed from concerns about physics, metallurgy, chemistry, thermodynamics, Shannon's theory of information transfer and what not. He can make up fantastical hypotheticals that include characters with omnipotent powers and tunnel visions. The Supremes themselves have tunnel vision when they don't want to admit that Le Roy v. Tatham (SCt. 1852) got "metallurgy" wrong. The strain cooled lead is different from cast lead. Strain cooled lead can have a significantly different micro-structure. But heck. What's reality got to do with it when you enter Philosopher Breyer's cave?

Second up on our wall of shame are the dumbnamic duo of Justice Anton Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
No one celebrates the recent passing of Justice Scalia.
However, that said, it can't be ignored that this "originalist" deliberately ignored the Constitutional recognition of inventors having "rights" to "their" respective discoveries per Article I, section 8, clause 8 of that sacred document.

Scalia writes: "I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I—A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature." --ASSOCIATION FOR MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY v. MYRIAD GENETICS, INC. (SCt. 6/13/2013)

JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court and writes: "For the reasons that follow, we hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, ... the study of genetics can lead to valuable medical breakthroughs. ... Myriad after it made one such medical breakthrough. Myriad discovered the precise location and sequence of what are now known as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. ... Myriad was not the only entity to offer BRCA testing after it discovered the genes. ... Judges Lourie and Moore agreed that Myriad's claims were patent eligible under §101 but disagreed on the rationale. Judge Lourie relied on the fact that the entire DNA molecule is held together by chemical bonds and that the covalent bonds at both ends of the segment must be severed in order to isolate segments of DNA. This process technically creates new molecules with unique chemical compositions. ... Myriad did not create or alter any of the genetic information encoded in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The location and order of the nucleotides existed in nature before Myriad found them. ... Myriad did not create anything. To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention. ... Myriad found the location of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, but that discovery, by itself, does not render the BRCA genes "new . . . composition[s] of matter," §101, that are patent eligible. ... "