Comments on: High court rejects medical-method patent

By: rxc

rxc — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:43:54 +0000

I once had a great American company claim that a=F/m was a proprietary formula, and deserved to be withheld from public disclosure. Another one claimed that the re-arrangement of chapters into a particular order in a safety evaluation report was proprietary.

I have been waiting for a claim of patent on using exactly 3.14159 as the ratio of the diameter of a circle to the radius, as a new invention.

By: LisaMarie

LisaMarie — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:29:56 +0000

I’m really interested in this. I use that test, and it’s expensive and not covered by insurance. I wonder if this will bring in price competition.

By: Richard Nieporent

Richard Nieporent — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:41:23 +0000

It is good to know that there is still a little sanity left in patent law. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court let the genie out of the bottle when they first allowed software patents. While this ruling helps, it will not prevent other companies from trying to patent ideas.

On an amusing side note, I clicked on an ad the other day for what was claimed to be a patented product that would provide “free energy”. They listed the patents and sure enough the patent office had approved three patents for a perpetual motion machine! The quality of patent examiners sure has deteriorated from the ones employed by the Swiss patent office in 1900.