interesting patent

Gordon gwalias-rev at yahoo.com
Wed Dec 8 16:04:37 EST 2004


There seem to be some misconceptions about what
patents are for:

A U.S. patent as defined in section 35 of the U.S.
code does NOT assure the inventors of the right to
practice. It guarantees their exclusivity to practice
within the scope of the patent claims, for the
lifetime of the patent. 

If that sounds confusing, here's a real-world example
that I am personally familiar with:

The use of a particular, naturally ocurring protein
for treating a given disease is covered by someone
else's patent, but I modify the protein (in some
non-obvious way) such that in addition to treating the
disease, it now has some new properties (perhaps it is
less toxic or it tastes like strawberries). It is a
new form of matter with novel properties and therefore
patentable. 

However, I would still need to obtain a license for
the original patent to use my own modified protein for
treating the disease in question, since that utility
falls under the scope of their claims. The original
patent holders would in turn have to license my patent
to be able to use my new protein to treat this same
disease, so that their improved treatment could
benefit from the properties of being less toxic or
tasting like strawberries, which are covered under the
scope of my claims.

This actually happens all the time in the
biotechnology sector.

I hope this is helpful

Best

Gordon

--- Mark Brownell <gizmotron at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 
> On Wednesday, December 8, 2004, at 12:12 PM, Lynch,
> Jonathan wrote:
> 
> > My understanding is that for many, the point of
> getting a patent is not
> > even to prevent others from using the technology -
> it may well be too
> > broadly defined or have other problems. However,
> if you have a patent,
> > it guarantees your right to use what you patented
> - so others cannot
> > patent the idea later and (if they win in court)
> keep you from using 
> > it.
> 
> Prior art and © Copyright  also give you freedom to
> protect yourself. 
> This company is a member of W3 consortium and they
> are using SGML - XML 
> which is a markup language. You can't patent a
> markup language. It's 
> too late. It's been blown out of the water by prior
> art.
> 
> I guess they have patented the process that occurs
> after parsing the 
> markup language. It must be highly defendable as an
> application example 
> with regards to copyright.
> 
> Interesting idea though.
> 
> my 2 cents
> 
> Mark
> 
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>
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> 


=====
:::::::::: Gordon Webster ::::::::::


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