Comments on: Let's play a game: Guess what's being patented!

By: rossmossfloss

rossmossfloss — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:29:00 +0000

BTW, if you liked playing the guessing game, the USPTO is currently hiring examiners.
http://www.usptocareers.gov/jobfair/

By: rossmossfloss

rossmossfloss — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:33:00 +0000

I’ve been a patent examiner for more than a decade, and I can assure you that the above example is well written in comparison to many I have seen. Many attorneys seem to work very hard to make the claim as vague and obtuse as possible and they seem to believe that this is in the best interest of their clients. Maybe it is, I have never worked in patent litigation and maybe there is an advantage to labyrinth claims. No patent examiner likes legalese however. From the patent examiner’s standpoint, clearer and simpler is always better. It seems to me that there are also cultural differences between applicants. My experience has been that big US companies fight very hard and long to keep their claims vague, broad, and indefinite, whereas Chinese applicants seem to be much more agreeable to putting claims into clear and concise language. That’s just been my personal observation. But getting back to the example above, that is a well written claim in my opinion in terms of being understandable as to what is being claimed.

By: HahTse

HahTse — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:06:00 +0000

Hear, hear!

By: Jason Prechtel

Jason Prechtel — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:48:00 +0000

With the way the USPTO is set-up, the language has to be that ludicrously precise. Patent examiners will look at the patent application, and in their response back they will cite language from other patents that disqualify claims made on the patent, tell you that certain language is too broad or vague, or even tell you that what you applied for could be several patents and that you can only choose one to pursue for the rest of your application round.

By: Another Kevin

Another Kevin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:15:00 +0000

If that description was the full text of the claim, I would imagine that there is at least one species whose phallus could be advanced as prior art. Distal + medial + proximal portions, check. Distal portion changes shape between straight and curved, check in many mammals. Stiffening member movable along the flexible portion – the baculum of most mammals would qualify. If there are mammals that have cartilaginous extensions to their bacula, so that the bone has two sections of different stiffness, then Mother Nature has indeed anticipated this claim when She invented the penis.

And yes, an endoscope was the first device that I imagined, too. But still, this claim is terribly drafted.

By: Devilbunny

Devilbunny — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:07:00 +0000

But it simply uses the medical words for near end, far end, and middle – and it plausibly screws up one of the three! (Medial, though it does mean “closer to the center”, is usually used in the context of whether something is closer to or farther from the midline, not the midpoint. The medial portions of an endoscope would, as commonly understood, consist largely of optical fibers.)

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:17:00 +0000

It’s their lawn.

By: Steve Hoefer

Steve Hoefer — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:03:00 +0000

My mental image didn’t have the doctor in it. Not sure what that says about me.

As much as I love to hate the patent system I don’t feel like this is a good indictment. It’s like that communication game everyone plays in 5th grade. One person is blind folded and has to describe how to make a peanut butter jelly sandwich to a second person. The second person does exactly what they’re told. There are two possible results: 1) A giant mess. or 2) a hilariously long and labored description. The patents that end up as #1 don’t get granted.

By: sharkb8

sharkb8 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:07:00 +0000

First, a plurality is one or more, but the way to refer to a singular element of a plurality is “one of the plurality of widgets.” But patent claim drafting is full of anomalies. The first being that each claim is a single sentence. There’s are claims that are pages long, making a single sentence just a mess of clauses. Also, the extensive use of “wherein” clauses to modify introductory phrases from earlier in the sentence. And the requirement that an apparatus claim listing multiple elements use the phrase “comprising” to mean that additional elements can be added, but are not claimed, while the phrase “consisting of” means the listed elements only. But! “Comprising” language is only open ended in the preamble of the claim, not in subgroups.

By: tomrigid

tomrigid — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:48:00 +0000

An IP lawyer attached a tiny camera to his penis and called it “The Violator” but nobody got the joke.

By: jerwin

jerwin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:37:00 +0000

I can’t say that I’m familiar with endoscopes, but the rule should be whether it’s intelligible to a person versed in the art of designing endoscopes, not whether it’s generally understandable.

However, Computer Science patents generally do not meet that standard. Perhaps all patents are written in a jargon specific to patent law, and are, as a rule, incomprehensible to anyone else.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:22:00 +0000

This is clearly poetry meant to open the sluices at both ends. I for one welcome our new Vogon Overlords.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:16:00 +0000

My uretero-pelvic junction is twitching just from reading that.

By: BSD

BSD — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:08:00 +0000

It seems incredibly clear to me. The only aspects I couldn’t have described from the specification were the exact scale and the intended orifice. Note that the handle is unspecified.

Of course, this isn’t a game for me, this is my job, so I’m probably disqualified by some kind of amateur/pro rule.

By: chf64

chf64 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:06:00 +0000

This was pretty easy to understand compared to some of the method sections in scientific papers.

By: Listener43

Listener43 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:03:00 +0000

The 1 lumen and flexibility gave it away – although as some of the other comments indicated, one could have come at it from the other end, as it were.

By: Optic

Optic — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:56:00 +0000

don’t forget the handy phrase “In one embodiment, …”

By: Faith

Faith — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:55:00 +0000

I guessed a flexible sigmoidoscope, but that’s probably because I do mucosal immunology…

By: Optic

Optic — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:53:00 +0000

That you are a normal human being with both reasonable reading skills and a sense of humor?

By: Anne Czechanski

Anne Czechanski — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:23:00 +0000

Rats. I guessed Q-tip.

By: Bob LeDrew

Bob LeDrew — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Yay! I had bladder cancer, and I KNEW this was a cystoscope! YAY cancer! Oy. In the greater scheme of things, I would prefer to not have known.

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:33:00 +0000

Actually, it does serve to add clarity. There is no indefinite plural article; while you can introduce “a widget” and subsequently refer to it as “the widget”, it’s grammatically incorrect to refer to “a widgets” as a predecessor to “the widgets” – the only way to get around it is to introduce “a plurality of widgets” and then subsequently use “the widgets”. If you used “the widgets” right off the bat, it would actually cause more confusion.

(For the same reason, patent claims also occasionally include the phrasing “the at least one doohickey”.)

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, you are all correct in so many ways… but

Isn’t the abstract of the invention for deterinming what the invention at a quick glance. Or the drawing and specification.

I believe the claims are used to tell the public where the invention ends, not what the invention is.

By: Suzanne LaForest

Suzanne LaForest — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:05:00 +0000

I’ve been involved in some patent applications and one of the patent office’s most favorite words is “a plurality.” Once I learned about this, every single description of anything with more than one part was described as “a plurality of” instead of like, normal English, where I’d say “more than one,” or “multiple.” The language of patents is very strange and doesn’t add clarity, even in a technical way. I guess it’s just evolved over many years and has a lot of old-timey legalese.

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:59:00 +0000

Well, the problem is that if you subsequently want to define the middle in greater detail for whatever reason, you will encounter problems doing so unless you specify exactly what constitutes the middle. Yes, it sounds a little strange, but patents can get invalidated for slip-ups of that nature.

By: Red Robot

Red Robot — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:54:00 +0000

It is indeed appropriate.

By: chijack

chijack — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:45:00 +0000

you should also read the Steve Jobs’ patent for the glass staircase.

By: Bodhipaksa

Bodhipaksa — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:41:00 +0000

It was very clear what this device was, what it would look like, and what it was for, but the description was dreadfully overwritten. For example: “ the flexible elongate member includes a proximal portion, a distal portion, and a medial portion disposed between the proximal portion and the distal portion.” In other words this part of the device has a near end, a far end, and a middle. And the middle is between the near end and the far end. It takes a rare type of plodding mind to write something as pointlessly detailed as that.

By: TFox

TFox — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

I’m going to get in line with the “looks like what I imagined” people, and it actually seemed easier to understand than some patents I’ve tried to read. But accurately describing something like that in words is never going to be easy, and any accurate description is going to take some effort to understand.

By: rrh

rrh — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:38:00 +0000

I saw it was named “ow.png” and that seemed appropriate.