Re: [CR]SDGD

(Example: Component Manufacturers:Ideale)

Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:44:41 +0100
From: "Hilary Stone" <hilary.stone@blueyonder.co.uk>
To: jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net
Subject: Re: [CR]SDGD
References: <702621.67531.qm@web82206.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <702621.67531.qm@web82206.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org

The patent office in the UK adopts exactly the same stance as that in Germany - it is up to the person and his patent lawyer to establish that they are applying for a valid patent. The Patent Office plays no part in this process.

Hilary Stone, Bristol, Great Britain

Jerome & Elizabeth Moos wrote:
> So did this mean that the first party that applied for a patent was granted
> it, with no attempt to confirm that he was in fact the inventor? I'm no
> t an expert on patent law, but maybe that's not too different from what hap
> pens in other countries, if no one contests the patent. I expect the Pat
> ent Office will research whether any prior patents exist for the same or si
> milar devices, but if they turn up no prior patent, they may be in no posit
> ion to judge whether a design is in fact original. So the truth may be t
> hat the burden is on others who may have been the true originators of a des
> ign to be aware of an unjustified application and contest it. So maybe t
> he French were just explicitly stating what was tacitly understood in other
> countries.
>
> There are at least a few examples of totally unjustified patents being gran
> ted on an important design of which the recipient was not even remote
> ly the originator. Perhaps the most famous was the (Seldon??) patent
> on the automobile which Henry Ford was finally able to contest and overcom
> e some years after it had been granted. As I recall, the loophole was th
> at the patent had specified a two-stroke engine, and Ford overcame it by us
> ing a four-stroke. I believe there were also some patent fights conne
> cted with the basic technology of radio, and in my industy, there is an inf
> amous patent granted to Unocal for almost every conceivable recipe for maki
> ng reformulated gasoline, none of which they invented. This last I once
> heard described as equivalent to granting someone a patent on chocolate cak
> e, with the claimed "innovation" being that chocolate is an ingredient.
> Not sure there are any such examples of unjustified patents in the bicycle
> industry, although there have been a number of battles over whether this o
> r that device infringed what was usually a valid and reasonable patent, whe
> ther or not it was found to apply to the design in dispute.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, Texas, USA
>
>
> --- On Thu, 9/18/08, Toni.Theilmeier@t-online.de <Toni.Theilmeier@t-online.
> de> wrote:
>
> From: Toni.Theilmeier@t-online.de <Toni.Theilmeier@t-online.de>
> Subject: [CR]SDGD
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008, 6:55 AM
>
> Serge
> Lapointe writes in his {quot}L´histoire des brevets{quot} that an
> 1844law said that Sans Garantie du Gouvernement meant that since
> therewas no procedure to examine inventions,the State did
> not take any responsibility that the inventiondescribed in the
> patent was original, did neither check its merits nor theexactness
> of its description. Neither did the State guarantee that the
>
> patented invention would work.The law was cancelled in
> Regards, Toni Theilmeier, Belm, Germany.