[nitrogen]

The fact that it takes a lawyer to even guess whether a patent applies, and that the typical strategy is to keep a low profile and hope nobody notices, is itself a serious flaw in the patent system. Any system in which it's impossible to predict ahead of time what is safe or legal is broken.

[jlgreco]

Not to mention the fact that engineers are routinely advised to never read patents, since doing so would increase liability when they inevitably independently reinvent the same obvious idea.

[waps]

Humans are a learning algorithm in a body. Very, very few learning algorithms incorporate original thought, because it's computationally expensive. Extremely, extremely expensive. Genetic algorithms are close to the only ones and the best reason to use generic algorithms is when you have no example data whatsoever, and even with datacenters full of machines, a lot of patience is required. Otherwise, genetic algorithms are going to get clobbered in performance by almost every other algorithm.

Which brings me to my point : imho the chances that humans are capable of real original thought is nil. Don't get me wrong, humans are very capable of creatively combining ideas from very different disciplines and non-human sources to arrive at surprising insights and works. But I'm pretty sure humans are not in fact capable of creating something out of nothing, even when it comes to intellectual works.

[tolmasky]

Especially when it is the theoretical target audience (other engineers!) that can't understand them.

[BobWarfield]

What a pity the lawyers have misinterpreted the patent to mean that the application's language itself should be non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art.