Patentable device to destroy the universe?

[Horatius]

I guess I didn't realize the term was "agent" instead of "examiner". Is that just Canadian?

I was being cute. Patent agents are the people who do what you describe - work with the inventors to figure out what their invention is, draft the application, and then represent the inventor's interests during the prosecution of the applications. Examiners are what I do - I work for the Government, and represent the public interest during the prosecution. Agents try to get as much as possible, examiners try to give as little as possible*, and it usually averages out to what the inventor really deserves.





*Okay, not really; it's not supposed to be an adversarial process, but that's a good one line explanation

 

[Brown]

In fact, if you were to follow the rules used in the USPTO, it's darn near impossible to claim that something is obvious. I'm glad I'm here in Canada, as our rules, while still more restrictive than regular folks expect, aren't nearly as bad as the US.

News flash! Proving obviousness in the US got easier on April 30 of this year, when the Supreme Court handed down an opinion that opened the door to several avenues of obviousness analysis. Although the Court didn't specifically say so, one of the permitted avenues of analysis seems to be the "inventive step" analysis applied by many other jurisdictions.

I made mention to this Supreme Court case, and provided a link to it, in the other thread.

Obviousness still has a specialized legal meaning, and it's more than just an ordinary guy putting his hand on his hip and saying "Looks kinda obvious to me." No, you have to look at it from the point of view of a hypothetical person: "one having ordinary skill in the art." Would this hypothetical person think it was obvious?

Basically, the lowly examiners take a look at what has been done before, and compare it to what is described in the patent application. To be nonobvious, the claimed invention has to be obvious from the point of view of the hypothetical person "having ordinary skill in the art." Maybe it would be obvious because the purported inventor is making a simple substitution of one element for another (e.g., replacing a plastic stopper with a silicone stopper of basically the same size, shape and elasticity). Maybe it would be obvious because the problem is well-known, and various solutions to similar problems are equally well-known. Maybe it would be obvious because there were clear market-driven technological trends going in that direction anyway, so following the trend is obvious. (This was the analysis the Supreme Court used.) Maybe it was obvious because the resulting invention has no emergent properties. (Sure, nobody's ever combined a golf tee with a toothpick by gluing the two together, but the toothpick doesn't do anything with respect to the function of the tee, or vice versa.) Maybe it would be obvious because someone previously suggested the combination, even if he didn't describe it specifically or in detail.

What an examiner is NOT supposed to do is look at the patent application, and say, "Now that I know how it's done, it would have been obvious." This is called a "hindsight-based" analysis, and it is basically using an inventor's own document against him.

It is very easy to see how examiners can get caught up in a hindsight-based analysis. Some of them suffer from chronic hindsight. What I'd like to do, if I ever had to have another meeting with an examiner in Washington DC, and if this examiner tried to lay some hindsight-based obviousness crap on me, I'd show him a magic trick.

Really, I would. I'd show him a magic trick.

And I'd say, "That's a pretty good trick, isn't it? Want to know how it's done?" The examiner would almost certainly want to know how it's done, and I'd tell him. The secret would be simple. Sickeningly simple. The examiner would feel like a dope for falling for the trick.

And then I'd pose the question: "Knowing now that the trick was really, really simple, and knowing what you know now, was ... it ... obvious?"

And then I'd argue that my client's invention wasn't obvious, either, for basically the same reason. When an examiner knows how something is done, the examiner has to think back to the state of knowledge before reading the patent application that explained how it was done.

 

[Horatius]

What an examiner is NOT supposed to do is look at the patent application, and say, "Now that I know how it's done, it would have been obvious." This is called a "hindsight-based" analysis, and it is basically using an inventor's own document against him.

It is very easy to see how examiners can get caught up in a hindsight-based analysis. Some of them suffer from chronic hindsight....

Without a doubt, such hindsight analysis is a big pitfall for examiners. Unfortunately, there's really no good way to avoid it completely. I have to have read the application prior to searching the prior art, otherwise I have no idea what I'm searching for.

Maybe what we need is pairs of examiners - one reads the application, searches for prior art, and then gives all the prior art documents to the second one - and then asks him how to combine them to do something new. Would that work? Maybe, but it would also double the number of examiners, which they might be reluctant to do

... What I'd like to do, if I ever had to have another meeting with an examiner in Washington DC, and if this examiner tried to lay some hindsight-based obviousness crap on me, I'd show him a magic trick.

Really, I would. I'd show him a magic trick.

And I'd say, "That's a pretty good trick, isn't it? Want to know how it's done?" The examiner would almost certainly want to know how it's done, and I'd tell him. The secret would be simple. Sickeningly simple. The examiner would feel like a dope for falling for the trick.

And then I'd pose the question: "Knowing now that the trick was really, really simple, and knowing what you know now, was ... it ... obvious?"

Well, that would certainly liven things up.

Unfortunately, the Examiner wouldn't likely be "skilled in the art" in this case. Show the trick to Penn&Teller, and ask them if it's obvious

 

[Brown]

Unfortunately, the Examiner wouldn't likely be "skilled in the art" in this case. Show the trick to Penn&Teller, and ask them if it's obvious

Ah, that's the beauty of it. It's a trick anyone can do. It requires no special skill or, for that matter, practice. It wouldn't be obvious to magicians, not because they'd be able to figure it out, but because they'd already know it. (Teller would know it for sure.)

And many magicians will tell you that sometimes even they can be fooled by the simplest of tricks, if they don't know the secret.

The same is true with a lot of puzzles. Once you know the solution, the puzzle seems ridiculously easy. But try to imagine what it was like when you didn't know the solution. The solution was simple, but was it obvious?

A little sidelight: When I was studying Engineering, I noticed that some professors were unable to distinguish easy from obvious. Certain concepts are easy, very easy in fact, but that doesn't make them obvious.

When I became a tutor and a teaching assistant, one of my most effective techniques was to explain stuff that was easy, but that the prof neglected to teach because he assumed it was obvious. Once you show someone something that's really simple and make it no longer mysterious, you get a very pleasant reaction from the students. Their eyes open wide. They break into a big smile. They nod and drawl, 'Oooh, yeaaaah!" You can practically see the understanding flooding their brains.

I once gave a circuits review session before a big midterm (it was attended by more students than would attend the regular lecture; the students were really worried about this exam) and showed some basic, simple techniques for solving circuit analysis problems. One of my frequent lines was: "You already know how to solve this problem, but you might not realize that you know." Students commented afterwards that concepts that has mystified them in class were now clear. (And don't get me wrong, the prof was a great prof; he just tended to confuse easy with obvious from time to time.)

The next day, the students took the midterm. The resulting test scores were the highest they'd ever been, and there was an exceptional number of perfect scores. The professor was dumbfounded. The students weren't shy about how they'd done so well; they were so thrilled with the results (and perhaps so worried that the professor might have thought they were cheating) that they went out of their way to tell the prof about my problem-solving techniques, and how these techniques made the test a snap. I even showed the prof the sample problems I'd drafted for the review session (to prove I hadn't purloined his test questions) and the techniques I'd applied to solve them. It was one of the most flattering days of my life.

 

[Horatius]

Ah, that's the beauty of it. It's a trick anyone can do. It requires no special skill or, for that matter, practice. It wouldn't be obvious to magicians, not because they'd be able to figure it out, but because they'd already know it. (Teller would know it for sure.)

And many magicians will tell you that sometimes even they can be fooled by the simplest of tricks, if they don't know the secret.

Well, there you go: it isn't obvious. It might be easy, as you say, once you know the trick, but if even a trained magician can be fooled, unless he already knows it, then it probably isn't obvious.

I'll forgo the discussion of novelty for now

The same is true with a lot of puzzles. Once you know the solution, the puzzle seems ridiculously easy. But try to imagine what it was like when you didn't know the solution. The solution was simple, but was it obvious?

I've solved a few puzzles like that in my time, so I know of what you speak. The problem is always sorting the easy from the obvious after the fact, and there's no easy way to do that, baring the availability of a large group of confused undergrads.





And now everyone can see why some patent examinations can take years

 

[Zygar]

This reminds me of a sci-fi short story I read a while back, about the invention of the first light-speed drive. Because Einstein's equations don't say you can't reach light-speed, just that it takes infinite energy.

Of course, the catch is that it also gives the object an infinite mass...which means and infinite gravitational force, which means an instantaneous gravitational collapse of the universe...

IN the story, it was the sevententh time the drive had been created, tested, and started a new Big Bang

Damn! I had been working on this idea for years. I didn't realize someone had already thought of it!

Not if it were a solid-state perpetual-motion machine C'mon, that's just as feasible!

Again! Someone stole my idea! How am I supposed to destroy the universe in a novel and unexpected way if everyone keeps stealing my ideas?

 

[vIQleS]

This reminds me of a sci-fi short story I read a while back, about the invention of the first light-speed drive. Because Einstein's equations don't say you can't reach light-speed, just that it takes infinite energy.

Of course, the catch is that it also gives the object an infinite mass...which means and infinite gravitational force, which means an instantaneous gravitational collapse of the universe...

IN the story, it was the sevententh time the drive had been created, tested, and started a new Big Bang

I'm just going to go ahead and ask the obvious question here: Who was doing the counting?

 

[Art Vandelay]

I have a similar problem with the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter". You don't need to violate the laws of physics to get several terrawatts from fusion. And the damage a hijacked plane can do is nothing compared to a few terrawatt-hours.

The other thing that amuses me is that proponents of these machines talk about 400% over unity and the like. All they need is 100.0000000..........1% and that would do the trick!

How so? Would it make any sense to spend a million dollars for a machine that can produce a milliwatt of "free" energy? Also, if you're getting one billionth of the energy back over one second, that's equivalent to three percent interest. Not exactly good return on a rather risky investment.

I'd just add that critcizing the USPTO for issuing "silly" patents is a lot like criticizing the Copyright Office because the latest Michael Crichton novel sucked.

That's a ridiculous analogy. A better analogy would be if I were to copyright the phrase "that's a ridiculous analogy", then sue everyone who says that my analogies are ridiculous.

There also seems to be more than a little bit of confimation bias here, in the way that the vast majority of patents that are dealt with appropriately are ignored, but the few that slip through the cracks (as will happen in ANY production-based environment) are held up as evidence of Something Rotten in Denmark.

There's a saying "I'd rather have a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man go to jail." Similarly, one bad patent can be worse than a hundred valid ones being rejected. Remember what a patent is. A patent means "Now the patent holder can sic the entire legal system on anyone who tries to compete with them." That an awesome amount of power, it should be taken seriously.

Does fiction count as prior art? In this case the story Huntsman mentioned seems to have exactly the same idea, and I'm sure many things have been part of sci-fi that could be real in the future. Does this mean we can't patent things like warp-drives, or are only factual accounts counted?

If you want an example, google "donald duck ping pong balls patent prior art".

The over-unity device is not necessarily a universe destroyer. With any unbounded exponential increase in energy you will soon reach the energy density required to produce mass M=EC^-2. Even if the mass is expanding at the speed of light it will eventually be confined by the Schwarzschild radius and form a black hole thereby isolating the over unity device from the rest of the universe.

Since matter can still pass into the event horizon, it's not isolated from the rest of the universe.

No, that's why I put "moving" in parenthesis. It's like the bookshelf analogy. If 1000 people are in a line, and each places a book on a bookshelf at exactly the same time (or a very minute fraction of a second after the one before it), then the "ends" of the line of books are moving apart faster than light speed, even though no actual object is moving FTL.

That was the idea I was getting at, I realize I wasn't clear. Sorry about that

But the difference is that with the bookcase, there's no causality involved; one person putting the book down doesn't depend on the previous one.

Not if it were a solid-state perpetual-motion machine C'mon, that's just as feasible!

If it's solid state, the energy coursing through it would heat it to the point where it wouldn't be solid state for very long. Energy dissipation is one of the biggest problems in solid-state engineering, and it's often only milliwatts that's involved.

A little sidelight: When I was studying Engineering, I noticed that some professors were unable to distinguish easy from obvious. Certain concepts are easy, very easy in fact, but that doesn't make them obvious.

And, in fact, "obvious" can make it harder. One time I had a test where I was told the change in charge on the capacitor was X Coulumbs/sec, and was asked what the displacement current was. I thought "It can't possibly be as easy as simply copying down X".

I'm just going to go ahead and ask the obvious question here: Who was doing the counting?

Obvious answer

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) can now be ridden from the human body by use of the Mercy Healing From God: Viral Detergent.

Isn't the past participle of "rid", "rid"? And doesn't "ridden" mean the opposite of "rid"?

 

[Hellbound]

I'm just going to go ahead and ask the obvious question here: Who was doing the counting?

It was the omniscient third-person perspective The story was "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg". It was written by Mike Resnick, and is in the collection "Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Turn Off the Sun" (which is another good story in the book). It's available for 49 cents at http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook9124.htm?cached. Short, but a good read.

But the difference is that with the bookcase, there's no causality involved; one person putting the book down doesn't depend on the previous one.

And the same could be true of my breadbox PMs, depending on how many are initially built and how they start out. Still, they'd have to be prepositioned, so you've still got a light speed limit at some point (just as in the bookcase, everyone has to get in position before they can put the books on).

 

[Buckaroo]

That's a ridiculous analogy. A better analogy would be if I were to copyright the phrase "that's a ridiculous analogy", then sue everyone who says that my analogies are ridiculous.

Nope. 'Tain't. You've just missed the point. Context is everything.

 

[osmosis]

The over-unity device is not necessarily a universe destroyer. With any unbounded exponential increase in energy you will soon reach the energy density required to produce mass M=EC^-2. Even if the mass is expanding at the speed of light it will eventually be confined by the Schwarzschild radius and form a black hole thereby isolating the over unity device from the rest of the universe.

By jove, you're right! So we can call it a black hole generator!

 

[Art Vandelay]

So what do you guys think of American Inventor? It seems to me that pretty much all of the "inventions" are simply modifications. The winner was a sprinkler system for Christmas trees (which, by the way, had serious problems with efficacy). If someone came into a patent office with that idea, would it get a patent?

And the same could be true of my breadbox PMs, depending on how many are initially built and how they start out. Still, they'd have to be prepositioned, so you've still got a light speed limit at some point (just as in the bookcase, everyone has to get in position before they can put the books on).

But then your question is meanignless. You could set them up so they're going "faster than light" from the beginning.

Nope. 'Tain't. You've just missed the point. Context is everything.

No, you're the one who missed the point. You compared the Patent Office issuing silly patents to an author writing a bad book. You're comparing apples to oranges. Patent:invention::copyright:book. But instead of comparing patent to copyright, or invention to book, you're comparing patent to book. That's just not valid.

 

[Buckaroo]

No, you're the one who missed the point. You compared the Patent Office issuing silly patents to an author writing a bad book. You're comparing apples to oranges. Patent:invention::copyright:book. But instead of comparing patent to copyright, or invention to book, you're comparing patent to book. That's just not valid.

I did no such thing.

I can't believe I'm about to waste time on this, but since pistols at dawn are frowned upon in our modern world, my only recourse is to patiently explain my earlier analogy so that my honor remains unsullied.

I said,

I'd just add that critcizing the USPTO for issuing "silly" patents is a lot like criticizing the Copyright Office because the latest Michael Crichton novel sucked.

A "silly" patent in this case is a patent granted by the PTO to an application that relies on bad science, psuedoscience, crankery, or the like, the application being a document composed by an applicant (or an attorney). A roughly analogous situation in the field of intellectual property is that of a copyright granted by the Copyright Office to a literary work that sucks, the work being composed by an author, in this case Michael Crichton, because I can state as an objective fact and without fear of credible contradiction that his recent work has done just that.

Now, just as we shouldn't blame the Copyright Office for the copyrighted book sucking, neither should we blame the Patent Office for a patented application being "silly."

All of this was implicit in the quoted statement, and I am guessing that few who read it didn't take away the meaning I intended. I assumed that most on this forum were bright enough to read between the lines. As I'm sure you are, too, Art. Perhaps you're just bored.

In any case, in examiner-speak, this is to be my final action, and prosecution is hereby closed.

 

[MrQhuest]

I know its not quite on topic, but I found it to be a fun read.

Http : / / qntm.org/destroy#Methods%20for%20destroying%20the%20Earth

Not sure if they are patentable though...

MrQhuest

 

[Horatius]

I know its not quite on topic, but I found it to be a fun read.

Http : / / qntm.org/destroy#Methods%20for%20destroying%20the%20Earth

Not sure if they are patentable though...

MrQhuest

Some of them would be potentially patentable, if he were the first to suggest them, like this one:

Cooked in a solar oven

You will need: Means for focusing a good few percent of the Sun's energy output directly on the Earth.

What I'm talking about here is: mirrors, and lots of them. Intercept several decent sized asteroids for raw materials and start cranking out kilometre-square sheets of lightweight reflective material (aluminised mylar, aluminium foil, nickel foil, iron foil or whatever you can scrape together). They need to be capable of changing focus direction at will because it is generally impossible to place things stationary in space and the relative positions of the Earth and Sun will be shifting as time passes, so attach a few manoeuvering thrusters and a communications and navigation system to each sheet.

The problem is, I'm pretty sure I could find prior art on this one, so while it is patentable subject matter, he still couldn't get a patent on it.

 

[Horatius]

A "silly" patent in this case is a patent granted by the PTO to an application that relies on bad science, psuedoscience, crankery, or the like, the application being a document composed by an applicant (or an attorney). A roughly analogous situation in the field of intellectual property is that of a copyright granted by the Copyright Office to a literary work that sucks, the work being composed by an author, in this case Michael Crichton, because I can state as an objective fact and without fear of credible contradiction that his recent work has done just that.

Now, just as we shouldn't blame the Copyright Office for the copyrighted book sucking, neither should we blame the Patent Office for a patented application being "silly."
...
In any case, in examiner-speak, this is to be my final action, and prosecution is hereby closed.

Does the USPTO have a Patent Appeal Board for final actions? Because if you do, that's where I'd take this one

The problem with your idea is, the copyright office is merely a registration office - it doesn't examine the books to decide if they're good or not. The Patent office, however, does do such examination, and is supposed to (at least try to) prevent "bad" patents from issuing.

The problem isn't that the patent office isn't supposed to do such things, it's that, to a disturbingly large extent, we're not allowed to do it. Take a look at some of the discussions we're having in the other current patent thread, and you'll see what I mean.

So, yeah, lay off the poor examiners (), but realize that there are a lot of things wrong. Fixing them will be a long slog, but we can't even start until people in a position to do something at least acknowledge the problems.

 

[Art Vandelay]

I can't believe I'm about to waste time on this, but since pistols at dawn are frowned upon in our modern world, my only recourse is to patiently explain my earlier analogy so that my honor remains unsullied.

Since you did absolutely nothing to actually address my argument, but merely repeated, with elaboration, your previous fallacious reasoning, you honor is more sullied, not less.

A roughly analogous situation in the field of intellectual property is that of a copyright granted by the Copyright Office to a literary work that sucks,

Only for extremely large values of "roughly".

Now, just as we shouldn't blame the Copyright Office for the copyrighted book sucking, neither should we blame the Patent Office for a patented application being "silly."

Applications aren't patented, inventions are. Normally I would think that this is just a poor choice of words, rather than lack of understanding, but considering your lack of understanding in other areas, I wonder whether you really think that applications are patented.

What I cannot understand is how you cannot grasp that the Copyright Office does not approve books. Its role is merely to register books. The Patent Office, on the other hand, does approve patents, and it is therefore reasonable to question their judgment.

All of this was implicit in the quoted statement, and I am guessing that few who read it didn't take away the meaning I intended.

As "all of this" does nothing to explain how your analogy is valid, let alone address the concerns that I raised, but rather merely repeats your claim. I don't see how the issue of whether it was impicit or not is relevant.

I assumed that most on this forum were bright enough to read between the lines.

I see nothing to read. A patent is not analogous to a book. An invention is analogous to a book. A patent is analogous to a copyright. A patent is not analogous to a book, and a copyright is not analogous to an invention. I see nothing, implicit or explicit, to counter this argument.

A book is created by the author. An invention is created by an inventor. A patent, however, is created BY THE PATENT OFFICE. Yes, an patent application is created by an inventor, but the patent is created BY THE PATENT OFFICE. Is is therefore not analogous to a book, because a book is not created by the Copyright Office.

 

[Buckaroo]

Does the USPTO have a Patent Appeal Board for final actions? Because if you do, that's where I'd take this one

Hee, hee. All right, here's my response to the appeal.

The problem with your idea is, the copyright office is merely a registration office - it doesn't examine the books to decide if they're good or not. The Patent office, however, does do such examination, and is supposed to (at least try to) prevent "bad" patents from issuing.

True, but since the real point of the examination is to guarantee that the invention hasn't already been invented by someone else, rather than determining whether the science is bad/the invention is silly (the utility requirement not being as straightforward as many of us, including yourself I'm sure, would like), the upshot is the same. You could say that even though no explicit examination is done in issuing a copyright, an "examination" of sorts is implicit in the process, in the sense that a copyright would not be issued to a work that duplicated another work, and *somewhere* that judgement is being made. It is on this level that I'm applying the analogy.

The problem isn't that the patent office isn't supposed to do such things, it's that, to a disturbingly large extent, we're not allowed to do it. Take a look at some of the discussions we're having in the other current patent thread, and you'll see what I mean.

I'm with ya here, pal. (And a great thread it is, too.)

So, yeah, lay off the poor examiners (), but realize that there are a lot of things wrong. Fixing them will be a long slog, but we can't even start until people in a position to do something at least acknowledge the problems.

Can't argue with this, either, especially the first part!

Applications aren't patented, inventions are. Normally I would think that this is just a poor choice of words, rather than lack of understanding, but considering your lack of understanding in other areas, I wonder whether you really think that applications are patented.

Examiners examine applications for inventions. The invention itself sometimes doesn't even physically exist, except as an idea on the page. We examine words, written on pieces of paper (or on a computer screen), that represent the invention, but are not the invention in itself. The specification representing the invention, assuming it makes it through the examination process, becomes the patent document which is issued, and represents the patent for the invention. Since the successful application, and the subsequent patent document, is isomorphic to the legally-defined invention, I use the terms interchangably in this particular context. Deal with it. Oh, and what "other areas?" Where the hell did this come from?

What I cannot understand is how you cannot grasp that the Copyright Office does not approve books. Its role is merely to register books. The Patent Office, on the other hand, does approve patents, and it is therefore reasonable to question their judgment.

I explain this above, in responding to the infinitely more civil Horatius. We may still disagree, but he's polite about it. What I cannot understand is why you chose to come out the gate acting like a (rule 8).

A patent is not analogous to a book.

Straw man. Where did I say this?

A book is created by the author.

True.

An invention is created by an inventor.

True.

A patent, however, is created BY THE PATENT OFFICE.

Nope. We don't create a patent. We grant a patent. The patent is assumed to exist already, as soon the inventor invents an invention. What the examination process does is verify, to the best of our ability, and through an imperfect system, that a true invention, and therefore a valid patent, has been created. All we can do is rule it out. Thus, the inventor actually "creates" the patent. It is on this point that your criticism fails.

Now, if you intend to continue your misguided nitpicking, I would ask that you cool down your rhetoric.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

Does fiction count as prior art? In this case the story Huntsman mentioned seems to have exactly the same idea, and I'm sure many things have been part of sci-fi that could be real in the future. Does this mean we can't patent things like warp-drives, or are only factual accounts counted?

Fiction certainly counts. An acquaintance of mine at the office once used an X-Men comic book as prior art.



As far as granting a patent? Patents are not granted, they are issued. And not by the examiners. All the examiner does is reject or allow the application. An examiner does not finalize the issuance of a patent, we just determine whether one should be allowed to be issued.

As far as who actually does the issuing, I haven't been around long enough to find out. Someone upstairs.

And once again, applications are not judged on how silly they are. They are judged on novelty and obviousness. That's basically it. Could be stupid, silly, essentially useless (essentially), but if it hasn't been done before and follows all the statutes and rules, it's patentable.

Don't like it? Not our problem. We're part of the executive branch, and we don't create the laws. If you don't want more silly patents, write your congressman. He or she can do something about it.

 

[Buckaroo]

As far as granting a patent? Patents are not granted, they are issued. And not by the examiners. All the examiner does is reject or allow the application. An examiner does not finalize the issuance of a patent, we just determine whether one should be allowed to be issued.

As far as who actually does the issuing, I haven't been around long enough to find out. Someone upstairs.

And once again, applications are not judged on how silly they are. They are judged on novelty and obviousness. That's basically it. Could be stupid, silly, essentially useless (essentially), but if it hasn't been done before and follows all the statutes and rules, it's patentable.

Don't like it? Not our problem. We're part of the executive branch, and we don't create the laws. If you don't want more silly patents, write your congressman. He or she can do something about it.

Yep, we might quibble a bit about language -- I would argue, for example, that the act of issuing a patent is just formally recognizing that a patent exists, i.e. granting, but that's something we can hash out over a beer at the next Mid-Atlantic gathering -- but I second this. Once again, onya, Nobby.