Re: One for the Legal Beagles
- From: "guyfawkes" <nothereat2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:08:58 +0000 (UTC)
You need legal advice............broken the order imposed on you on Monday
already it seems! Printouts of the offending material on its way to the
court, first class post!!!
k
"Guy Fawkes" <davenull@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1127409198.983842.21470@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> You need the Supreme Court Library, Queens Building, Royal Courts of
> Justice, Londinium...
>
> or
>
> At pp. 649-651:
>
> "Originally the King granted monopolies pretty lavishly, but the Courts
> of Common Law refused to recognise them unless they were in respect of
> new inventions. The Courts of Common Law held that the King could not
> monopolise, and give to a particular person, manufactures which were
> already the trade of inhabitants of the realm. That principle was
> finally conceded, and in the Statute of Monopolies it was admitted that
> the monopolies were void excepting under those circumstances. But still
> the King had the right to grant monopolies for inventions, and availed
> himself of it, but I regret to say that for the first century the
> grants were couched in very vague terms. They were usually expressed as
> being for inventions for doing so and so, and there was little
> definition of what the invention actually was until about 1700, when a
> very beneficial change was made. The King granted his monopoly, for a
> mere name. In this particular case the invention would have been called
> "Improvements in the manufacture of boots," and the grant of the Patent
> would be to Mr. Brooks for "Improvements in the manufacture of boots";
> and any improvement in the manufacture of boots might be claimed to be
> the improvement to which the title referred, prior to the change of
> which I have spoken. But after 1700 in order to protect the public the
> Crown granted the Patent subject to a condition, and that condition is
> the foundation of modern Patent law. It was in the form of a proviso
> obligating the inventor "by an instrument in writing under this hand
> and seal particularly to describe and ascertain the nature of the said
> invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, and cause
> the same to be enroled within six calendar months". From that time the
> inventor had to describe and ascertain the nature of the invention, and
> in what manner the same was to be performed; otherwise his Patent
> lapsed at the end of six months. The grant was still obtained for the
> mere title; and the definiteness was obtained by the Specification
> which was subsequently filed. As Patents became more important, and
> therefore the rights under Patents were more keenly contested it became
> obvious that this proviso provided for two very different things, the
> nature of the invention - and very little thought shews that this means
> the delimitation of the invention - and the manner in which the same is
> to be performed. The first was necessary to define the monopoly and the
> second was necessary to secure that the public was not defrauded by the
> patentee, because the consideration for granting a monopoly for 14
> years is the free use by the public of the invention at the end of two
> things - the delimitation of the invention, and full practical
> directions how to use it - are in their nature almost antagonistic. As
> it is the duty of the inventor to give the fullest practical
> information to the public he is bound to put in, if, for instance the
> invention is a process, quantities and times which are the best he
> knows. But it would be very cruel to hold him to the invention when he
> carried out only with those best quantities and times, because a person
> could then take his invention in substance if he did not take it in the
> quite the best way, and the value of the grant would be practically
> nothing. Hence inventors, in the own protection took to introducing
> into their Specifications language intended to distinguish between that
> which was there for the practical information of the public, and that
> which was there for the delimitation of the invention. Correct
> delimitation was of the greatest possible importance to the inventor,
> because if his Patent covered something which was old the Patent was
> wholly bad. At the same time there was the danger of confining himself
> to a mere outline which gave delimitation, but did not tell the public
> the best way within those limits of performing his invention. The one
> duty required him to state his invention in its most general form, and
> the other duty required him to state it in its best and therefore in a
> very special form. Out of that has arisen the practice, which
> originally was perfectly optional of having a separate part of the
> Specification primarily designed for delimitation. That is what we call
> the Claim.
>
>
>
> But Claims were by no means universal in the olden times, and even when
> used the Claims were extraordinarily general - usually a mere statement
> that the Patentee did not tie himself to the particular details; and I
> am not surprised that learned Judges such as Lord Ellenborough, in the
> case of Macfarlane v. Price (1 Webs 74) having one of those old
> Specifications before him, should say - "The public cannot tell from
> this what they may do, and what they are not to do; there is no way of
> finding out what is new and what is old." Take for example a Patent for
> a manufacturing process such as tanning. When you found a Patentee
> describing a long process of tanning, you could not believe that what
> he meant was that he claimed that process only when carried out
> precisely as described in every particular, most of which were probably
> descriptions of the ordinary process used in tanning. You must believe
> that there was some particular step in it which he claimed to have
> invented, and which he wanted to protect, and if he did not in some way
> indicate what that step was the Courts could not believe, on the one
> hand, that he meant to claim the whole thing and nothing but the whole
> thing, and, on the other hand, could not tell which was the exceptional
> thing, because the Specification did not enable them to do it. No
> wonder they said that he had not distinguished what was old from what
> was new, and that therefore his Patent was invalid. The real fact of
> the case was that he had not delimited his invention. It was in times
> like those that this phrase "distinguishing old from new" came up. But
> those times were very different from the present when Claims are
> universally used and indeed are obligatory, and if I were to sum up my
> criticism of the point which Mr. Terrell seeks to make I should say
> that a man must distinguish what is old from what is new by his Claim,
> but he has not got to distinguish what is old and what is new in his
> Claim. If the combination which he has claimed, and for which he asks a
> monopoly, is novel, that is sufficient. There is no obligation to go
> further, and to state why it is novel, or what in it is novel."
>
>
>
> At pp. 651-652:
>
> "A patentee often works solitarily; he has very little idea of what
> others are doing, and, I think I may say, that in the enormous majority
> of instances, if not universally, he has no complete knowledge of what
> has been done by others in connection with the matter on which he is
> working. The inventive acts, by which he arrives at the invention for
> which he finally obtains protection, may be inventive acts, which have
> started far behind the level of public knowledge at the time, and much
> of his work, truly inventive so far as he is concerned, has been to
> reinvent that which others, without his knowledge, have invented. I can
> appeal to my own experience in saying that an inventor is generally
> startled to find, when there comes a patent action, that prior
> Specifications are produced which approach closely to his invention and
> of the existence of which he had not the very slightest idea. The
> consequence is that the inventive act of the inventor can have no
> relevance or effect; it is a thing which depends on this knowledge of
> what others had done. Then, are we to say that he is to state what
> would have been the inventive act, supposing him to know the whole
> knowledge of the world. Just consider for a moment what an impossible
> burden that would be to put upon patentees: that they must correctly
> know the whole knowledge of the world, much of which may be practice or
> user by members of the public but not generally known; for such a user
> is just as much a bar to a step being inventive as a printed
> publication would be. Of course if his ignorance has led him to claim
> something which is not novel he has to take the penalty. That is
> necessary. He has chosen at his own risk to ask for and take a monopoly
> as against the public, and the consequence is, that if, which the best
> of faith, he has asked for too much he must suffer for it. But to say
> that he must also ascertain, under the penalty of his Patent being bad,
> everything that preceded his invention, every approach for every side
> that persons have made to it, and must correctly indicate the little
> step which he has made in addition to these, most of which he never
> knew, would be to require something of him which would be perfectly
> idle, so far as regards utility to the public, and grossly unjust so as
> the patentee is concerned. I say more. I say it is an absolutely
> impossible task, because in almost all cases these inventions have been
> approached from many sides."
>
>
> HTH etc
>
.
- References:
- One for the Legal Beagles
- From: mutley
- Re: One for the Legal Beagles
- From: Guy Fawkes
- One for the Legal Beagles
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