[graham.d (OP)]

Funnily enough, somebody just sent me this. You might want to take a butcher's.

http://gablelaw.com/news/2011/poor%20body.pdf

I have to say I could not follow this very well in the time I have to read it. It seems to be discussing the problems of how patents are weakened by trying to claim too much as well as saying that it can often be better to avoid pictorial views which can weaken the written claims. In this particular case it is the retractable needle concept which is the good idea but it is hard to specify all the possible ways of doing that in sufficient detail to prevent others from having variants that use the same concept. Is that right??
 

[Geezer]

Funnily enough, somebody just sent me this. You might want to take a butcher's.

http://gablelaw.com/news/2011/poor%20body.pdf

I have to say I could not follow this very well in the time I have to read it. It seems to be discussing the problems of how patents are weakened by trying to claim too much as well as saying that it can often be better to avoid pictorial views which can weaken the written claims. In this particular case it is the retractable needle concept which is the good idea but it is hard to specify all the possible ways of doing that in sufficient detail to prevent others from having variants that use the same concept. Is that right??
 

It appears that the court decided to make a fundamental shift in the interpretation of the law by giving the specification priority over the claims. If that holds, it could have some profound implications.

As you point out, the result is that it makes sense to put as little detail as possible into the specification, which seems to make nonsense of the whole idea behind patents.

[Geezer]

This is a weak feedback latch though there are lots of names. Used extensively as a bus-hold (for example) where you want to ensure that the input does not float when not driven. I hope nobody has tried to patent that recently though I would not be surprised.

Yes - I built a discrete version for that purpose in 1976  []

(I seem to remember calling it a "rectal set flip-flop")

[qazibasit]

these tech giants are fighting so as to be the only major player left in the industry, like google is trying to own the web, apple trying to own the microgadgets. But even if they do so they will end up making a closed system, where the customer will be left with no choice. I was reading an article and there the analyst was right in saying that assume we just have one mail server left on the internet and thats google, and only one social networking site. This is pure enslavement. Thats is the reason internet is getting boring day by day, there is nothing left for a common man to contribute. There was a time when people used to maintain their own web page and try different stuff there, but today we can only say that those good days are over now.