[monochromatic]

If the usual meaning of "integer" clearly doesn't make sense in this context, then we're already into the territory of coming up with a non-standard definition (unless it's just indefinite at that point). So in that case, why is {1, 2, 3, ...} OBVIOUSLY more sensible than {2, 3, ...}?

[Natsu]

> why is {1, 2, 3, ...} OBVIOUSLY more sensible than {2, 3, ...}?

Because that's the definition the patent holder originally asserted when suing, only to suddenly change their tune when there turned out to be prior art for n=1.

People spend a lot of time making sure that all the words in a patent are exactly so. You'd think they'd have made it a tiny bit clearer on exactly which set of numbers they were including (or not including), as they patent actually says they've patented even negative multiples of a time interval when that's self-evident nonsense.

We can sorta figure out what they probably meant, but that's a really bad idea for essentially the same reason that having a compiler that decides "I really think you meant to put a semicolon there" is a bad idea.

When we all know that a sane compiler should reject all garbage input. If you don't say what you actually mean, nobody actually knows what has been patented any more than we can claim to know the results of undefined behavior in a C program for all possible systems.

And these are comparable situations because they both involve the errors inherent in trying to interpret incorrectly written statements in a formal language.

[kazinator]

> Because that's the definition the patent holder originally asserted when suing, only to suddenly change their tune when there turned out to be prior art for n=1.

That seems not only legitimate, but outright necessary. If the n=1 case corresponds to someone else's patent, but the n>1 cases don't, then the n=1 case must be excluded, right?

> Essentially the same reason that having a compiler that decides "I really think you meant to put a semicolon there" is a bad idea.

Compilers do exactly that sort of thing, so they can continue parsing and hopefully give you more diagnostics. (Correct, useful diagnostics, needless to say.) It's called error recovery and sometimes involves inserting tokens into the parse stream.

Error recovery was hugely important in the era when programmers submitted decks of punched cards to some clerk behind a window. But even today, we are still greedy for shorter edit-compile-run cycles, no matter how short they are. If I made four syntax errors, I'd rather fix them in one go than to invoke the rebuild four times and fix one at a time.

[monochromatic]

> That seems not only legitimate, but outright necessary. If the n=1 case corresponds to someone else's patent, but the n>1 cases don't, then the n=1 case must be excluded, right?

The patentee can amend his claims while a patent application is still pending, but a court isn't going to do it for him post-issuance just because of prior art.

[Natsu]

Yes, but they issue a list of errors that need fixing, rather than a broken binary (assuming your compiler isn't broken, anyhow).

As mentioned below, it's their responsibility to write the patent correctly. Once it has been issued, it's too late to modify it, though they often try this with creative interpretation.

Similar to what was said to Humpty Dumpty, there's a question of whether they can have it mean N=1 and N>1 at the same time.