McCain's technology advisers are unfortunately detrimental

McCain's technology adviser is Carly Fiorina. Remember her? She is the one who was instrumental in driving the price of Lucent stock from $80 to $0.80. Then she went on to really screw up HP - and send much of the technology development for that once great company offshore. Like any good follower of Phil Graham, she dismissed objections by saying "There is no job that is America's god-given right anymore." So when McCain says "I have to tell you that the innovation and the technology and the entrepreneurship of the world still lies in the United States." someone ought to remind him that his own key economic adviser played a pivotal role in making him wrong.

Deutchland uber professors

Rummaging through the back issues of (8 November 2002!) Science magazine (www.sciencemag.org) I see a nice article on new patent rules for German professors. A new law was enacted in Germany in February 2002. University professors no longer will have exclusive IP rights to their inventions, with the universities gaining more control of the rights to such inventions. In return, professors (or university scientists) will receive 30% of all revenues generated through the exploitation of the invention. Nothing new. Germany, just like any other socialist government, wants total control of intellectual property.

The trickiness of the technical description phraseology

Very often an text from another patent must be inserted into a patent application, almost verbatim. This practice would equal an implicit admission of a prior art anticipating (rendering non-novel) the application, had the application not used this standard verbiage

The …which is incorporated by reference for all purposes as if fully set forth herein

Very often the language of the technical description within the patent application must be technically correct, though not necessarily precise in engineering terms, while enabling, by teaching a literate technical person to manufacture the invention:

The angular divergence of gimbal roll axis 64 from platform roll axis 68 in Figures 3A-3C has been exaggerated for illustrational clarity.

the line drawings in patent submissions may be surprisingly simple, sometimes hand-drawn, though neat, in their black-and-white monotony. They do not need to be precise, nor truly representative. A propeller blade, the turboprop engine and the unique hub may look as if drawn by a tidy elementary school pupil.

More of the cautionary, self-protective CYA verbiage:

It is to be understood that the...descriptions below are illustrative, and are not intended to…

does not restrict the present invention to the specific details set forth below…

It will be recognized by those with skill in the art that…

...known in the art

At the end of the introductory section, there must be an formula that proves the application's compliance with the US Patent laws' Paragraph 101, that the invention is presents a solution to the public need due to the disadvantages of the existing prior art:

...a widely recognized need for... which would overcome the disadvantages of presently known

Isn't it easy?