Patent Law

Productivity

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

In the eyes of an economist, all inventions go to one purpose: increasing human productivity. Less effort for equivalent result. More bang for the buck. Patents are intended as incentive for increasing productivity. Patentability is circumscribed by utility: a patented invention must be useful. Natural phenomenon are not patentable, but harnessing such a phenomenon is (think electrons racing around defined circuits). As a result, increasing productivity always alters the way humans organize their activity. However things were done in the past, an invention changes how somebody may do something. The dictionary corresponds with this by defining 'technology' as "the practical application of knowledge." On all points foregoing, the U.S. government does not converge.

In its Supreme Court amicus brief in the Bilski case, the USPTO opines:

[T]he term "process" encompasses all technological and industrial processes, broadly conceived. But it does not extend patent-eligibility beyond those bounds, to methods of organizing human activity that is untethered to technology.

The brief defines technology as "any machine or transformation of matter."

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on September 28, 2009 (boomark / email).