[Patents] triviality of innovation steps in logical buildings

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

Hartmut complains about software patents:
>In the end, which layer is claimed depends mainly not on
>        which layer represents my ingenuity
>
>but
>        which layer prevents my competitor from solving the problem?
>
>which again leads to a model of "functional claims" or claims to
>"technical effects", which in fact are problem descriptions.

A question that can be, and is often if not more often, applied to
hardware circuits and gene sequencing patents, not just software.
In fact, I have been complaining for years that in the United States
a patent claims drafting format that forces this information to be
disclosed, the Jepson format (which appears in claims with the language
[..... the improvement comprising ....]) is being used less and less as
companies broadly claim higher and higher layers of their ingenuity.

But once again, software is nothing special with regards to this valid
complaint about patent claiming.

Greg Aharonian