Intellectual Property Law

How Many Definitions Before Ambiguity Is Reached.

By thomason

My Google search for ambiguous and “federal circuit” yielded over 81K linked pages (probably including “ambiguous books, click [Amazon] Here,” and “Hotels in Ambiguous, click here”).   Years of ‘going Markman’ on the language has resulted in having one full shelf of dictionaries.  So, instead of coloring Easter eggs, there seemed to be some utility in counting how many “accepted” definitions there are of the word, ambiguous.  First, I counted, and at the end of that, noticed that the last listed definition was “has more than one accepted meaning.”  The multitudinous list, then, of “ambiguous” definitions was, to paraphrase: ‘a spade calling a spade a spade’; ‘a rose by the name of rose’; ‘I know what you are but so am I’.

During this Holy season, one wonders how many religions now exist or have existed.  Then, just think how many more there would be if patent attorneys had translated the scriptures.

Full post as published by ISinIP on March 21, 2008 (boomark / email).