The Logic Off Topic list

jonathan@... writes:
>  >Just goes to show that if you can confuse the US Patent
>  >Office well enough they will grant you a patent for anything.
>
>I saw something on 60minutes about ridiculous patents (this
>one wasn't discussed).  The whole patent thing was developed
>to protect actual inventions, not to protect the useage of any
>imaginable idea.
>
>For example, nobody has a patent on using ASCII, but attempts
>have been made to patent emoticons (smiley faces etc...).  Wise
>heads at the patent office prevailed on this one and rejected this
>stupid claim.
>
>But the "hidden track" thing for CDs, while also being a ridiculous
>claim, somehow made it through?!  Think about it:  The RedBook
>standard as developed about 20years ago is made available to
>everybody license free.  Anybody is free to make a CD that adheres
>to this standard, so that it plays in any CD player on the planet.
>The RedBook standard has a lot of little nitty gritty specs - and
>ones that clearly allow for this "hidden track" stuff, although they
>don't explicitly mention it.

While I worked in a patent law firm in the 80's I prosecuted and 
successfully obtained a patent for an invention that consisted of no 
more than a piled stone jetty completely encircling a body of water.

When I first looked at the original patent application I thought it 
was the silliest thing I had ever seen.

The strange thing was it did have a legitimate useful function and 
was a non obvious method of achieving it so it met the two criteria 
needed.  Can you guess what it did?
-- 


                                 Dennis Gunn
                                 Mightyjohn@...

                  check out  MIGHTY JOHN HENRY's album "hot air head"
                                                    info at
                        http://www.twics.com/~mightyjo/home.html