Fw: Patent Notice

[Bradley M. Snook]

I just have a quick comment, and it is primarily directed towards U.S.
patent law, not necessarily issues of the patent's validity or my opinion of
the patent itself.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office evaluates applications based
on laws that are passed by Congress; the USPTO uses these laws to establish
guidelines that must be followed before a patent can be issued. While it is
true that the USPTO has a patent application examination process, it is very
important to understand what is done during this part of the application
process: the respective examining technology center that is assigned to an
application searches through U.S. patents, publications of patent
applications, foreign patent documents, and available literature. Based on
the [limited amount of] research that is done, a patent is issued as long as
what is claimed is 'new, useful, and nonobvious.'

This is the important part: the validity of a patent issued is only tested
if the patentee brings a suit against a defendant for infringement of
patents (district court). The rules here are different than in the patent
application process, but the most important difference is that this time the
defendant will be doing the research to 'prove' to the courts that the clams
that were made were not 'new, useful, and nonobvious.'

When a patent is issued, it gives the patentee "the right to exclude others
from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the
United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. It does
NOT "prohibit by law" the making, using, offering for sale, or selling the
invention. The "right to exclude" means that the patentee has the right to
go to the courts to ask them to force others from making, using, offering
for sale, or selling the invention. This is a VERY important distinction!

For those technicians that walk the possible fine line of infringement of
patents, be sure to read and understand the patent that was issued
(5,585,582). If you feel strongly that the claims that were made were not
'new, useful, and nonobvious,' gather your evidence and continue to use what
is in your opinion not 'excludable' material. Even is everything in the
patent is completely valid, you would not be breaking any laws, you would
simply be infringing on someone else rights; either way, it is still up to
the patentee to spend the time and money to enforce those rights.

>From a legal standpoint, I think that David would have a hard time getting
the courts to enforce the patent that was issued if someone were merely
using the basic concept; much of the patent's concept is based on older
well-known material, and, at least among piano technicians, much of the
material is not 'nonobvious.' On the other hand, the 43 claims are VERY well
written . . .

Bradley M. Snook