Author: Mike S.
Date: 07:46:15 01/08/04
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On January 08, 2004 at 09:34:24, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On January 08, 2004 at 02:27:18, Mr j smith wrote: > >>Will the USPTO accept the challenge ? Tune in tomorrow !!! > >They haven't accepted the challenge at all. > >One classic. Someone patented a _program_ that simply transposed music >from one key to another. Even though that is a direct mathematical >transformation, even though it has been known since early musical instruments >were made and music written, etc. Yet that "idea" is patented. Of course, >most of these new electronic keyboards can transpose from one key to another >automatically, and no patent infringement suit based on this patent has ever >been won by the patent holder. But that didn't stop the patent office from >issuing the patent. The "Peter Principle" once again. Once I've seen a tv documentation about an inventor (I think of german or swiss origin) who claims to have invented the Walkman, IOW a small portable cassette player, earlier than SONY. He had law suits with SONY about that. I remember he mentioned a paragraph from patent law (I don't know which patent law; I guess an international one if such a law exists), which IIRC says something like "To be patented, the invention must have a quality above the work of an average skilled craftsman (or specialist)." (This may be a bit simplified due to my limited english.) I don't know if US patent laws include such a regulation, but I'd assume it's necessary, because without people would apply for a patent for every nonsense :-) The idea just to add rows and or files to the chess board, and/or combine ways some pieces move in a new piece, seems so simple to me... every 8-year old child could "invent" that. This isn't changed by the fact that even a genius like Capablanca designed such a variant (that's not what we call him genius for :-)) - So I too can't understand how such a thing can be seriously patented. Unfortunately it looks like this is meant serious. Maybe I'll try it too. I could invent 20 chess variants of that type in 5 minutes :-)) But I guess most of the imagineable variants have already been described on http://www.chessvariants.com/ (I don't know how many variants are explained there, but probably hundreds of them.) Regards, Mike Scheidl
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