[Patents] Re: Patents digest, Vol 1 #66 - 3 msgs

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

On Thu, 9 Sep 1999 patents-admin@liberte.aful.org wrote:

> 
>   I guess, to get the monopoly and keep secrecy, the best is to get a
> patent on a key point, that should block competition as much as
> possible, while keeping secret most of the rest so that the
> competition gets very little useful information from the patent.
> 
>   Have significant examples of such behavior been documented ?
> Is it frequent ?

I don't have any documents at hand, but from frequent participation in
oral proceedings at the EPO (as a Japanese interpreter) and conversations
with the parties I can confirm that this exactly is the policy they
usually adopt.

However, this can be tricky.  If in a patent you don't include enough
teaching so that your invention can be fully appreciated in a wide enough
context, it will be vulnerable.  Often it happens that an opponent finds
some minor fault with a patent and then, because of lack of subclaims and
lack of disclosure in the description, the patentee has no place to dodge
and loses everything.

The patent system has developped some very fine mechanisms and many patent
attorneys will instinctively reject the arguments of anybody who has not
fully appreciated these achievements.

-phm