[michaelolenick]

If these weren't depressing they'd be funny. For those who don't know the patent & trademark office (PTO) defines "obvious" as described in a prior patent or, sometimes, an academic paper. Even if everybody in the field has been doing the same thing for years it isn't "non obvious" unless somebody wrote to the PTO about it. But since it's obvious in reality those nobody except crooks bother to.

The whole system is rigged in favor of "people" who write up patentable junk -- those who have the time to write it into patents -- whereas people who actually build things are busy perfecting the trade skills the patent system was made to protect.

OK - tirade over. Back to my new app. My wife dreamed it up and we're writing it together. When finished and released, if it does well, some fat slob -- who never wrote or programmed anything useful in his life -- will show up to shake us down.

[axman6]

That's not at all how the prior art base of the USPTO, nor any other patent office, is defined. The problem is that these are the most easily searchable bases of prior art because their fields necessitate it: academics are required to find everything piece of related are on what they're researching when producing works like a PhD thesis, and as such huge databases of academic work exist which are easily searchable; patents in the US are also required to disclose all know prior art (I believe, US patent law isn't where my experience comes from), and as such, the larger patent offices (the European and US particularly) have had to develop tools for effectively searching patents. Patents are also usually a good source for prior art because they like to disclose things as broadly as possible so they can claim as broadly as they're allowed. If you find a document which describes something within the scope of the claim you're looking at, then you've got a great novelty citation.

The reason sometimes known things are allowed through is because the patent offices can find no proof that it is well known in the form of a single document before something can be called not novel. In some other juristrictions, common general knowledge in the art is more often used when it's known that something is already routine. even if there's nothing that clearly shows is, simply because it's so common.

[rlpb]

> That's not at all how the prior art base of the USPTO, nor any other patent office, is defined.

Prior art isn't the issue.

To be patentable, an invention has to be: 1) non-obvious (to someone skilled in the art); 2) novel; 3) (other things).

Prior art addresses the novelty side of things. Not the non-obviousness side.

The requirement of non-obviousness sounds great in theory, but is in reality a joke, since the only test used is that of prior art.

It is possible for an invention to be obvious and yet for no prior art to exist. In technology one (non-obvious, novel, patentable) invention often enables a big pile of (novel but now obvious, and therefore not patentable) inventions. Using prior art as the only test for obviousness ignores this case entirely.

[michaelolenick]

Yes - this is what I meant, though I think it's also what I wrote. It's not prior art; it's obviousness, and the USPTO defines non-obvious as published, co-mingling the two. So we see lots of patents for obvious tweaks from one platform to another. For example, the same functionality ported from local computer programs to web-based systems, client-server architecture, and now mobile all seems to qualify as non-obvious. In reality these ports are entirely obvious to anybody who understands that the underlying tech is basically the same.

[axman6]

I would strongly dispute this, and ask that you provide some proof that this happens. Examiners are quite well versed in their technology areas, and can see when a known idea has just been tweeked.

[axman6]

Prior art most definitely addresses the non-obviousness side of things. To show something is non-obvious, examiners will usually take two documents which together disclose all the features of the claimed invention, and say it would be obvious to combine them.

This is how it works in the US (and is quite frankly often quite unfair to the applicant, because the two documents may indeed have all the features, but the invention lies in the idea of combining these unrelated idea to result in something that is greater than the sum of its parts).

In most large juristrictions (excluding the US), there must be something that would lead a PSA to combine the ideas in the documents. So for example, if a claim is to features A, B, C, D and E, then to combine documents X and Y, they should both disclose say features A, B and C, and then one may disclose D, and the other may disclose E. In the US, it is very common for the examiner to find documents which disclose A, B, C and D, and then find a document that discloses E and has no relation to the first document (ie, the document is from a completely different field of endeavour) and combine them.

What this shows is that the US actually has a substantially higher standard in many ways than most countries. But the problem comes back to the prior art base; if you good citations are not found juring examination (and hey, examiners are people like you and me), they cannot make a good case that the application is not novel or is obvious.

> The requirement of non-obviousness sounds great in theory, but is in reality a joke, since the only test used is that of prior art.

Well no, it's not. If the claim is to a known idea with a well known alternative in the art (say a house put together using screws instead of nails), then that's clearly not inventive, and an examiner will object as such. These are often known as workshop improvements or well known alternatives in the art.

My question to you is that if a) the law requires evidence, and not just opinion, and b) it must be shown that something is was obvious at the application's priority date, what else is there to use apart from the prior art? Me saying "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would have been obvious 4 years ago" is definitely not good enough, so how can I prove it without other documents?

> It is possible for an invention to be obvious and yet for no prior art to exist.

But again, the law requires that you can prove that, and if it is the case that the invention is obvious, there will almost without a doubt be some document or documents which shows this. Human beings are pretty good at documenting pretty much everything, it's just a matter of being able to find it.

The issue here is that most people don't understand the role prior art plays. They assume that it's only used for objections based on novelty, and it this is certainly not the case. Maybe many of the readers here could spend some time actually reading the objections given by offices like the USPTO and see that actually, the way they thought things should be run, but assumed they weren't, are actually standard practice.

If you believe you have proof an accepted application is not novel, or is obvious, then by all means, get on Ask Patents and submit it. But it is not, nor will it ever be, good enough to just say "Aww yeah, pretty sure I would've come up with that, now I've read their solution", which is how most people start when talking crap about these matters. The difference between "I think that's obvious!" and "Here, I have proof that obvious!" is millions of miles, and it's about time HN readers realised this.

[chii]

imho, i say that the claims of the patent has to first be examined by a person skilled in the arts, without first reading the actual patent. If the person skilled in the arts is able to discern the inner workings of the patent _without_ having read the patent itself, then the patent can be deemed obvious and thus cannot be valid.

[axman6]

Uh what? So you're saying that if a PSA can understand the definition, it's not inventive? That's ridiculous. And you can bet that many patents are indeed examined without a reading of the description, it's often not necessary. The claims are supposed to stand on their own, and only when comes to matters of determining the exact scope of a term in a claim would you refer to the description most of the time. Also the description should give enough information about a topic that someone who's not an expert in the art (and this is distinct from someone who is skilled in the art) can fully understand the invention, but but apart from the clarifications I mentioned earlier, it plays little role.