OK, am back from fishing. Didn’t catch anything big, except a nice patch of sunburn.
Right. It appears that a certain member of this site really doesn’t understand that patent system. At all. Oh well, rien se change!
Patent systems exist to help innovation and the advancement of technology. In return for a time limited monopoly, an inventor has to tell the world all about his invention, and how to carry it out. The test of this is whether an imaginary person, called the “man skilled in the art” (“homme du metier” in French, “Fachmann” in German) could carry it out if given his ordinary knowledge of the techniques of the field, and the patent specification. If he couldn’t do this, then it is a case of “insufficient disclosure”. The man skilled in the art has a great memory - he knows everything in his area of expertise. In some cases, he has friends in differing fields who help him. The one thing that the man skilled in the art cannot do is be inventive. He is not capable of any independent thought, and can only do things beyond the teaching of a single document that are obvious (e.g. he could put a known mincing machine and a known sausage filling machine together to make a better sausage machine, but he could not improve a sausage machine by changing the angle on the cutting blades, for instance, since this is not obvious).
A patent gives protection to an invention as defined BY THE CLAIMS. Claims are classed as independent and dependent, and all independent claims must represent a contribution to the state of the art: in other words, they must be both novel and inventive (i.e. non-obvious).
Novelty is simple and totally objective to assess - can the wording of the independent claim(s) be read onto one disclosure in the prior art?
This is a good time to discuss what constitutes a “disclosure”. Frionpan is labouring under the common, but fundamental, misconception that only a prior patent can prevent someone patenting something, and goes on about “infringement”, which is another issue entirely. Any disclosure to the public, written or oral, in any language, constitutes prior art. As does prior commercial use. Not just prior patents, but anything. A 1950s “duck tales” comic was used as novelty-destroying prior art against an application by a naval salvage company for a method of raising sunken vessels by pumping in air-filled spheres. In the comic, Huey Duey & Louie raise a sunken ship by filling it with ping-pong balls. The extreme example given to us is that if it’s written in a language that nobody speaks in a Tibetan monastery on the top of a mountain, provided that anybody can get into the library if they get up there, then it constitutes prior art. Universities often fall into this trap by publishing papers before filing patents based on the work disclosed in the paper. Most of my colleagues who work in sensors have plenty of applicants who have “X’d” themselves [an X document is normally a novelty-destroying document] in this manner. Another common mistake is to write about your invention on the internet before filing a patent (this is less of, but still is, a problem in the US system than in almost the rest of the world due to the US’s “1st to invent” rather than “first to file” system). One of my major applicants frequently X’s itself, but with patent literature (it often writes its claim 1 too broadly and thus one of its own documents falls within the scope of it).
Now would be a good idea to assess the novelty of the RA patent over Frionpan’s “invention”, had he published it earlier. Let’s remind ourselves of the claim:
- An electrically activated primer for use in small arms ammunition, comprising:
an electrically conductive cup having a bottom and opposed side walls defining an internal chamber, said bottom including an aperture formed therein;
wherein the primer is sized so as to have a primer volume within a range of approximately 0.001 cubic inches to 0.010 cubic inches;
a conductive explosive material received within said internal chamber in an amount sufficient to initiate firing of the ammunition;
a contact positioned within said internal chamber adjacent said bottom of said cup in contact with said explosive material for actuating said explosive upon application of an electrical charge, said contact having a reduced thickness sufficient to enable a desired volume of explosive to be received within said internal chamber, wherein said contact has a thickness of between approximately 0.010 inches and approximately 0.030 inches;
an insulating liner received within said cup for separating said contact from said cup; and
a retaining means received within said cup for retaining said explosive material therein.
So, how much of claim 1 is disclosed in Frionpan’s thingy? Only “An electrically activated primer for use in small arms ammunition”. None of the other characteristics of the Remington patent appear in Frionpan’s document. I was considering giving benefit of the doubt on the “electrically conductive cup”, but there was really nothing that could be described as that in Frionpan’s disclosure. There is certainly no electrically conductive priming compound!!!
OK, so the RA patent is novel over Frionpan, so his contention that the RA patent is the same as his, and thus he has somehow been cheated is balls.
The next test is whether the RA patent is inventive over the prior art. To do this, we use the “problem-solution” approach, which pays tribute to the fact the a patent should solve an identifiable problem which is left in the prior art.
To do this, we look at the difference between the closest prior art and the claim, which in this case is the whole claim less the words up to “comprising”. If we were to follow this through (there’s no point with this one because I don’t have access to all the prior art), we would define an objective problem to be solved (which can be the same as identified by the applicant or can be different as desired by the examiner), and then we look to see if a second document solves this problem in such a way that the two documents could be combined by the man skilled in the art without excercise of inventive activity. If so, then it’s deemed not inventive. In this case, there will be far better prior art than Ironpan’s document, so we won’t even go there, since it’s a waste of time.
Let’s talk about infringement now - RA’s patent may be a non-obvious improvement over prior art with a broader scope which is a valid patent, still in-date. If so, RA will not actually be able to exploit their patent without paying royalties to the other patentee (since their product will fall within the scope of the other patentee’s claims). But, the other patentee will not be able to incorporate RA’s improvements without paying licence fees to RA.
I will also note here that the USPTO is renowned for granting utter shoite on occasion, and in general I don’t rate their work as high as that carried out in some of the other offices - as an example, there’s some examiner there who insists on giving the IPC class G04B13/00 (gearwork for mechanical watches) to applications dealing with MIDI and other music synth stuff.
Just to recap - the scope of protection of the patent is defined by the CLAIMS (not the “brief description of the invention”, or any other part of the application other than the CLAIMS), and claim 1 (the one that counts) of the RA patent is significantly different to Ironpan’s document.
Ironman, if you want to dispute this, be aware that this is what I do almost every day of my working life, only with mechanical watches.
As to your documents themselves:
1: Is an electric spark strong enough to set off nitro powder? When I get home in a week or so I might try this, but I have my doubts - nitro powder is not the easiest stuff in the world to set off, which is why primers are so powerful (load a primed case into a rifle & fire it in a dark room, then compare that to a piezoelectric spark).
2: Embodiment 1 - single contact. Assuming that a spark is powerful enough, this will in reality be unreliable, since oil and/or fouling in the chamber will ruin the electrical connection.
3: Embodiment 2 - double conact - requires that the cartridge be precisely positioned in the chamber to enable the contacts to make a connection. Try doing that in the dark, or when feeding from a magazine.
I believe that the cup of STFU is for you :lol: [/i]
