The history of the patent itself would merit a septe chapter.
Quality is not an issue when it costs $2-$2-$3 million find outowhether a patent claim has merit, whereas settling costs "just" $500,000-$1 million.
They even agreed to keep talking about improving how they award patents, a crucial step to prevent the proliferation of parasitic patents of little merit.
It ruled that because Signature's process produced a useful result — an updated mutual fund share price — it merited patent protection.
Analyzing original data of a large standardization process, we demonstrate how many companies use a strategy we call "just-in-time patenting": They apply for patents of low technical merit just before a standardization meeting, and then send the patents' inventors to the meeting to negotiate this patented technology into the standard.
If the idea behind a patent has any commercial merit, it will attract imitators and the inventor must be prepared to defend it in the courts.
Intellectual Ventures, one of the largest companies that specializes in owning and protecting patents, said it believes the provisions requiring more disclosure on ownership of a patent are "misguided and merit further discussion".
In short, if a business or technique is so obvious that anyone could have invented it, it shouldn't merit a patent.
Doudna and her team say that's a logical conclusion, based on her work and not different enough from what she was able to come up with to merit the patent.
A firm keen to defend a blockbuster due to go off-patent may file dozens or hundreds of new patents, often of dubious merit, to confuse and intimidate potential copycats and maintain its monopoly.
#ProTip Every large software company has large piles of patents, most of dubious merit.
