This SPL1) oriented patent application is a continuation in part of U.S. application Ser. No. 13/923,630 of “INVENTIVE CONCEPTS ENABLED SEMI-AUTOMATIC TESTS OF PATENTS”
The US Supreme Court's Mayo decision [C] [1] requires describing claimed inventions by their “inventive concepts, in-Cs”2) if they are emerging technology and hence “model based”—thus stimulating “advanced IT” [2] research on decision making in testing such claimed inventions under SPL, also holding if no model is needed or “invention” is replaced by any “(new) knowledge” [18,19,25].
Models are e.g.: The “ISO/OSI” model of telecommunications3), “molecular bonding forces” models of nano-technology, “RNA/DNA” models of genetics [D], “Natural Language” models of advanced IT—some standardized, all implicitly used by SPL precedents without being aware of this3). The philosophical synonym of the term model is “paradigm”, the scientific one is “reference system”, e.g. “coordinate system”. Using a model/paradigm often enables describing inventions alias (new) knowledge precisely, though it itself is not understood or defined precisely—as practiced with mathematics' “axioms/theorems/proofs” and physics' “laws of nature”, here with SPL's “claimed inventions”.
[25] provides, for a claimed invention, 10 “FSTP tests”<=>It satisfies SPL iff it passes them all—mathematically proven [24,25]. Here is provided: These 10 FSTP tests may (semi-)automatically deliver all confirmative “Legal Argument Chains, LACs”. This greatly facilitates every patent practitioner's decision making as to testing a claimed invention under SPL, in particular if it is model based.
SPL may be generalized to any “First Order Logic Finite Legal Norm, FFLN”. A system based on a claimed invention's alias TT.0's PTRFFLN-DS [11], storing all FFLN-relevant functional and nonfunctional properties of TT.0, is a “Innovation Expert System, IES”, if its “User Interface Entity, UIE” enables its user to access all in-C based (legally nonredundant) “LACFFLNS” as to TT.0. Another FFLN, besides SPL, is “Substantive Copyright Law, SCL”, with PTRSCL-DS⊂PTRSPL-DS [31,35].
A PTRFFLN-DS for a claimed invention embodies of the 10 FSTP tests all “Arguable Subtests, ASTs”, being the blueprints of all LACs. The FFLN index will often be omitted in the sequel.
The UIE of a IES is made-up from UIE.Ys, Y=1,2,3, . . . , any UIE.Y having 3 “Layer-UIE.Ys, L-UIE.Ys”: Its knowledge representation “KR-UIE.Y”, its human interaction “HI-UIE.Y”, and its interaction control “IC-UIE.Y”, in config-/realtime-mode operating separately resp. synchronously. A IES or its user invokes between them an “Interaction” by a HI-UIE.Y, which uses via its IC-UIE.Y its KR-UIE.Y, which in turn uses the knowledge stored by PTR-DS [11,25]. Invoking a UIE.Y causes executing at least one of its “UIE.Y Steps”, which executes at least one of its “UIE.Y Moves”.
A LAC.Z, Z=1,2,3, . . . , is presented by executing a UIE.Y in realtime-mode. Thereby a LAC.Z may use a set of UIE.Ys, each presenting this LAC.Z in different logics and/or representations, as customized by a IES user in config-mode—between which a user may toggle by invoking HI-UIE.Y. I.e.: In config-mode of the IES, any AST is semi-automatically transformable into its LAC.Z in several UIE.Ys in various logics and/or multimedia presentations—as later needed by e.g. a judge, examiner, lawyer. In realtime-mode this user then may toggle between these UIE.Ys, highlighting aspects of this LAC.Z.
Any national patent law, e. g. the 35 USC, comprises procedural sections as well as substantive ones, in 35 USC being the 4 §§101/102/103/112, here called its SPL1). Testing a claimed invention under SPL means testing it under the 10 FSTP tests alias the FSTP-Test [7,25]. No other FFLN is considered in this Section, as it is evident that its elaborations hold for all FFLNs (see Section III.2).
The presented invention has been induced primarily by the US Highest Courts' SPL precedents [A-M], especially the Supreme Court's KSR/Bilski/Mayo decisions [A-C] implicitly prompting the CAFC to refine Markman/Phillips [L,M] for enabling consistent and predictable patent precedents for model based emerging technology inventions—i.e. to take SPL precedents to a higher level of development.
By its Mayo decision the Supreme Court outlined this higher level of development of SPL precedents: By requiring that it identifies—especially of a model based claimed invention its “inventive concepts”2) and ensures its claim('s scope) is not “preemptive”. I.e., Mayo:
These two Mayo requirements imply: The so refined/post-Mayo claim construction is, compared to the classical one and also for a model based claimed invention, of legally substantially increased
These clarifications added by the Mayo decision to claim interpretation4) unfortunately did not yet make it into the often quoted—increasingly questioned [21]—USPTO's “Broadest Reasonable Interpretation, BRI” guideline [14], originating pre Phillips. It thus still preserves its uncertainties causing insinuation, some volitionally broadening the meanings of claim terms of a claim were lawful, as USPTO practiced3)—although Markman/Phillips and now also Mayo diametrically contradict it4). Because of this uncertainty, providing semi-automatic decision support by LACs that a claimed invention does satisfy SPL is impossible. Consistency and predictability of SPL precedents is impossible to achieve, if the BRI guideline remains as it is and should make it into SPL precedents. But this is very unlikely and its change is overdue, as it multiply contradicts the Highest Courts SPL precedents and there is no US law supporting this BRI guideline—which might render these then unavoidable contradictions lawful.
The paragraphs i)-iv) elaborate on some of these—already pre-Mayo existing—contradictions between the current BRI guideline's uncertainties and the Highest Courts' Markman/Phillips decisions.
This is a misrepresentation of the Phillips decision, which makes this “BRI opening statement”
Summarizing i) and ii): Right from its beginning the BRI guideline presents Markman/Phillips in an untenable as totally misleading fashion.
To terminate this Section: Its elaborations on claim interpretation did not serve for diving once more into the currently occurring paradigm refinement in the US SPL precedents [25]— in particular into its clarification of the terms/notions/meanings “inventive concept”, “creative concept”5), “inventivity” and “usefulness” embodied by a claimed invention6),7), its “not being an abstract idea only”/“(non)pre-emptiveness”, its “classical/pre-Mayo” vs. “refined/post-Mayo” claim construction, . . . , all required or implied by the Supreme Court's Mayo decision, in beautiful clarity also by earlier German BGH precedents [6]—but for showing that SPL claim construction requires, because of its pitfalls especially with3) model based claimed inventions, much more “problem awareness” than the current BRI guideline owns.
This patent application's specification does not elaborate on the simplest IESes here seeking patent protection—as their technical implementation is evident for the posc—but on the more sophisticated ones and discloses, how any AST of a claimed invention tested under SPL is transformed into its peer UIE.Y/LAC.Z. This is possible as the IES is PTR-DS based. This enables the IES, in its calibration in config-mode, automatically identifying all its AST.Zs and deriving from them all peer LAC.Zs, via at least one peer automatically generated UIE.Y per AST.Z. Per any so automatically generated LAC.Z the user may generate further UIE.Ys, all as outlined by the end of Section I. The below SPL elaborations hold for any FFLN, too, as explained by the end of this Section III.
Performing, for a PTR-DS, this KR transformation of the set of all ASTs into the set of all LACs—and customizing these—is evidently quite different from and much simpler than the “general argument recognition” problem [30]: Here the arguments necessary and sufficient for deciding whether an invention satisfies SPL are provided by their AST blueprints, i.e. its FSTP-Test, while nothing alike has been isolated first, there. Whether the knowledge addressed in [30] may be presented as a PTRFFLN-DS is not an issue, here. If some additional limitations are acceptable, this should be possible, partially at least.
[25] has shown that a claimed invention satisfies SPL iff it passes the FSTP-Test alias the conjunction of all its 10 FSTP tests,
The generation/customization of LAC.Zs is outlined already by this Section's first paragraph; the next bullet points add some more details, sometimes redundantly to what has been explained already.
The preceding elaborations hold also for any PTRFFLN-DS based IES, i.e. for any PTR in which all relations between finitely many legal norms alias requirements to be met by PTR's TT.0 (e.g. the SPL or SCL), between the BED inventive concepts making up the TT.0, and between elements of both these types are describable by First Order Logic. Any such PTRFFLN-DS would namely be based on a finite set of FSTPFFLN tests (similar to the 10 FSTP tests of
The claimed invention is made-up2),4) from instantiations of •) the BED-in-C “KR-UIE” and “HI-UIE” as claimed by claims 1 and 15, and of •) further BED-in-C, e.g. the “IC-UIE”, as claimed by most dependent claims. The meanings of these (binary elementary disclosed) inventive concepts alias claim terms2),4) [30,34] are defined to be storage cells capable of storing specific relations, which are for
KR-UIE: relations between items from the PTR-DS and IC-UIE instantiations,
IC-UIE: relations between IC-UIE and HI-UIE instantiations, all relations as explained with
HI-UIE: relations between HI-UIE instantiations and items from the MEMEX.
Elaborating on the preceding Sections, additional details as to these 3 “claim terms” alias “inventive concepts”2),4) of the claimed invention thus considering the claims also contributing in disclosing it/them, i.e. considering these claims as parts of this patent application's specification—are provided by the following list, not necessarily in the sequence as they are used in these claims. Also, functionalities immediately recognizable from the claims' wordings, remain without further comments.
The claimed invention satisfies the 35 USC §§101, 102, 103, and 112—as it passes all 10 FSTP tests of
FSTP test 1: Technically, the claimed invention as of claims 1 and 16 and of their dependent claims is made-up by at least the two or more BED-cr-Cs disclosed by Sections III, each contributing to enabling to an increasing extent an IES user to customize its LACFFLN-UIE. Hence, disaggregating them is obsolete, i.e. performing the FSTP test 1 is trivial.
FSTP test 2: These three UIEs are lawfully disclosed by Sections III, IV, and the following claims; hence they are even the in-Cs of the claimed invention required by Mayo. Moreover: The FSTP-Test of the here claimed invention uses the same set of these three cr-Cs/in-Cs.
FSTP test 3: None of the claims comprises a “means-plus-function” wording.
FSTP test 4: The disclosures of the three UIEs and hence of the claimed invention—in Sections III, IV, and in the following claims—are enabling.
FSTP test 5: The three UIEs are evidently independent.
FSTP test 6: The three UIEs are posc-nonequivalent, as there is no prior art for them.
FSTP test 7: The claimed invention is evidently novel and nonobvious9).
FSTP test 8: The claimed invention passes the NAIO test, as the problem P it is invented to solve is identified in Section I, and if one of its 3 in-Cs is left away it does not solve it—i.e., the claimed invention is not an abstract idea only.
FSTP test 9: The claimed invention is evidently not a natural phenomenon only; the contrary is true: none of its 3 in-Cs represents a natural phenomenon.
FSTP test 10: The claimed invention is not idempotent, because of the FSTP tests 7 and 9.
Hence, as mentioned/explained above, the here claimed invention satisfies the US SPL.
Finally, it is worthwhile noticing that [25] has shown that this is guaranteed to be true if and only if the claimed invention passes all 10 FSTP tests which in total even comprise 16 tests (see
a-2b shows an illustration of the 10 FSTP tests.
1While today differences still exists between the “Substantive Patent Laws, SPLs” of the US and other regions/nations, e.g. the EU with its EPC-SPL, these should disappear soon, as internationally harmonizing SPLs is politically less controversial and economically highly beneficial for all parties as being “Highest Courts” proof. Many similar processes occurred in the past, e.g. with the various national accounting procedures of public companies, today harmonized by the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standard), accepted worldwide.
2The Mayo decision uses the term “inventive concept” only three times and often omits or replaces it by other terms, e.g. in “. . . do the patent claims add enough <inventive concepts> to . . . .”, or “. . . unless the process has additional features <alias: inventive concepts> that . . . ”, or “What else <inventive concept>is there . . . ”, or “Those steps <alias: inventive concepts> included . . . ”. The synonyms in Mayo for the term “inventive concept” tell: An inventive concept may show-up, in a claimed invention's specification, by a synonym or only implicitly.
A term together with its meaning is a “notion”. A notion hence defines its term's meaning. In Mayo a notion is called an “inventive concept”5), if its meaning has the pragmatics to serve for defining the claimed invention's “§101 usefulness”, this pragmatics being disclosed by the claimed invention's specification (unless known a priori by the person of ordinary skill and creativity). A notion, and hence also the notion “inventive concept” may be represented by different terms (=synonyms, as the preceding paragraph exemplifies).
In the above Phillips opening statement, the “claim term” is a “claim's term” representing an inventive concept4). Other “claim's terms”, not having that pragmatics, are no inventive concepts. The Phillips decision deals only with claim terms4) alias inventive concepts. For convenience it mostly leaves away the leading “claim”. But not in its opening statement, i.e. its “baseline” statement, elaborate on above in α) and below in i).
Just for information: A term in a claim may also represent two different meanings, in particular one meaning with and the other meaning without inventive concept pragmatics, it then can be seen as a claim term or as a plain claim's term—the latter representing a legally inadmissible as “contra Phillips/Mayo” meaning.
The BRI guideline ignores this distinction and thus is often very confusing, for not to say: right away misleading. It thus invites the misunderstanding that a claim's term always is a claim term, which unreasonably broadens the meaning of the resp. claim3). Mayo bars this misunderstanding by introducing the term “inventive concept” as synonym to “claim term”. For “inventive concept” being legal items—not factual ones—see [5,7,11].
3-This real life example for the (mis)use of the BRI guideline is provided by a §103 attack on the author's '902 U.S. Pat. No. 7,145,902 and its claim 68, which confirmed to be based on the BRI guideline). It then also shows that and how the specification of a model based claimed invention is always facilitated by its implicit model.
The volitional broadening of the meanings of the '902 claim terms is achieved as follows. While
Two final comments on this untenable attack: 1.) Today the claimed invention of claim 68 is often called VoIP telephony. 2.) Based on the '902 specification the USPTO recently granted 3 more patents to the author.
The '902 patent also is a nice example of its claimed invention being model based—a common feature of practically all emerging technology inventions, see Section I—and how therein their models are used for precisely describing the resp. claimed invention.
In the '902 case, as always in telecommunications, the underlying model is the ISO/OSI Reference Model and internationally standardized (while most specifications of model based claimed inventions use their own or some group's agreed on and hence non-standardized models). As is typical with reference systems alias paradigms alias models, they prescribe only commonly known features of the basic structures and functioning of the objects they support modeling, i.e. never describe all their technical details. Here the subject matter object modeled is a “communications connection”. Some commonly known features of a communications connection are that it is an end-system-to-end-system connection alias association on this model's layer 7, whereby any association exists as soon as its associated entities are known. An existing communications connection/association is routed over many entities, may be routed over different networks, and its protocol data units, PDUs (here IP-packets) may be monitored by such entities—as used by the '902 specification, enabled by the model underlying the '902 claimed invention.
And similarly is a DNA invention supported by a model representing some common DNA knowledge. 4A patent specification may disclose several inventions. A first consequence is that a claim seeking patent protection for one of them must identify which one of them, which then is called this claim's “claimed invention”.
While this was recognized long a time ago, it is only the Phillips decision that explicitly addressed the second consequence as explained in 2), namely to assure in a claim interpretation—when determining the meaning of a claim explicitly used by a term in this claim or implicitly by its notion's indispensability for the functioning of the claimed invention, in both cases as enablingly/lawfully disclosed by this specification ex- and/or implicitly [25], all 4 combinations covered (ex- and/or implicitly) by the elaborations of Phillips and now even enforced by Mayo2)—the meanings of the terms/notions this claim ex- and/or implicitly uses are determined such as those needed by the disclosed claimed invention. Phillips hence calls such terms/notions of this claim—analogously to its “clamed invention”—as “claim terms”2), in particular in its “opening statement” (quoted above) and several more places, though also often skipping the leading “claim”, probably by convenience/evidence. Markman did not yet address this intricacy in claim construction, i.e. nowhere talks of “claim terms”, evidently assuming the simple case that a patent specification comprises no opportunity for this mismatch or that the reader is problem aware enough. That the USPTO's BRI guideline does not own this problem awareness is shown by 3)—where it does not bar determining the claimed invention's key meanings totally independent of the claimed invention. 5The mathematical definition of the notion “inventive concept”, as provided earlier [5-11], is a dramatic simplification of the “technical” much more powerful notion of “concept” in DL or KR [2-4], as it is here customized to the current needs of modeling FFLN/SPL precedents. Inventive concepts need to model the properties of only constants (being the elements of the claimed invention), nothing else, while in DL or KR concepts serve for modeling how to recursively build compound concepts out of simpler concepts. By contrast, modeling the Highest Courts' SPL precedents needs only a simple disaggregation of compound inventive concepts into elementary ones [5-11]. But legally this notion of “inventive concept” is very powerful, as shown by [25,36].6The “inventivity” of a claimed invention, i.e. embodied by it, is represented by all its invented—hence by this inventivity created—properties of all its elements, thus making-up its total usefulness7).7The “usefulness” of a claimed invention, i.e. embodied by it, is just as its inventivity, represented by this claimed invention's total set of properties (in patent language: “limitations”). Thus, from the definition of its inventive concepts (namely: to make-up this claimed invention) follows that any one of them contributes—by its contribution to the total set of properties/limitations of the claimed invention—equally to the claimed invention's usefulness, as required by §101 and its interpretation by the Supreme Court's Mayo decision.
The Mayo decision invokes, for its refined claim construction for a claimed invention, this additional “contribution to its usefulness” minded view at its claimed invention's inventive concepts—which nothing changes with their hitherto only “contribution to its total limitations” minded meanings, remaining true for the classical claim construction for it. It is this additional “contribution to its usefulness” minded pragmatics of the inventive concepts, by which Mayo achieves the conciseness and coherence of its refined claim construction. 8Due to the novelty of this part of the specification, many details—also evident ones—are briefly explained in this Section or its below footnotes. In a future patent application trivial such explanations would be superfluous. If this future patent application were supported by its PTR-DS as disclosed by [11]—or even by a SES as disclosed by this patent application—then all such explanations, also the trivial ones, would be presented to a user on its request in realtime, as embodied by the PTR-DS's as AST or FSTP test respectively by the claimed invention, i.e. its SES, as this AST's peer LARC.9That performing the NANO test on the here claimed invention determines its creative height to be 3 over pertinent ordinary skill and creativity (“posc”)—given that there is no prior art. And in [5,6] is shown that already a claimed invention's creative height
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