Snide comments aside, there are two drivers of the oscillation of patentability. The first driver is the rapid evolution of technology. The more growth in a region’s technology, the more patents. While this is an ‘obvious’ relationship, it is important in that this direct relationship of growth also creates the legal battles of the second driver – the public understanding of that technology.

Do you have proof of the assertion that there are more patents when there are more growth? Considering the rapid changes that occurred in the software market before software could be patented, as compared to the far slower pace of development now that software can be patented, the relationship between technology growth and number of patents does not seem obvious.

While the ‘lying public’ is not directly involved in patentability decisions, the public ‘at large’ IS involved. To bring new technology to the public for the public’s benefit, the public representatives in the form of judges and justices decide the legal battles, and the legislature (i.e. the public), by time delay, incorporate or correct significant judicial decisions. Judges and justices will find invalid an application or patent that fails to properly explain TO THEM how the application or patent meets the legal requirements, as these deciders understand the technology and the legal requirements.

But are the legislative and legal systems operating in the best interests of the people? Again, it comes down to definitions. What are the best interests of the people?

That I or anyone else does not agree with a decision or a law cannot change that this is and will be the oscillation of patentability.

Regardless of the source of the technology, the U.S. is still a primary or destination filing office and as a result, the U.S. both benefits and suffers from this oscillation. The rest of the world may sit by on idle, or as do so many companies, participate by filing an amicus brief and be heard on the technology and legal requirements.

The rest of the world doesn’t sit on idle – the European Union patent system is quite busy. As is the Japanese system.

While the ‘lying public’ is not directly involved in patentability decisions, the public ‘at large’ IS involved. To bring new technology to the public for the public’s benefit, the public representatives in the form of judges and justices decide the legal battles, and the legislature (i.e. the public), by time delay, incorporate or correct significant judicial decisions. Judges and justices will find invalid an application or patent that fails to properly explain TO THEM how the application or patent meets the legal requirements, as these deciders understand the technology and the legal requirements.

That I or anyone else does not agree with a decision or a law cannot change that this is and will be the oscillation of patentability.

Regardless of the source of the technology, the U.S. is still a primary or destination filing office and as a result, the U.S. both benefits and suffers from this oscillation. The rest of the world may sit by on idle, or as do so many companies, participate by filing an amicus brief and be heard on the technology and legal requirements.

The devil is very much in the details, and the details are not going to be solved by the Supreme Court, at least not in this case. Thankfully Canadian Patent Law is a bit more sane. The American system looks like it was designed by the famed inventor Rube Goldberg.

There are many chemical reactions where you start with two clear liquids and the product is a clear liquid. As far as the lay public can tell simply by looking, nothing has been “transformed”. Nothing has changed.

As Richard Pryor used to say: “Who ya gonna believe; me or your lying eyes?”

Why stop there the ancient Greeks knew about the six simple machines and all mechanical devices are combinations of these simple machines. Some mechanical inventions also use electron clouds moving around (chemistry), but you have already shown there is nothing novel about wiggling electron clouds. So we have eliminated all mechanical and chemical inventions from the realm of patents. But since all of electronics and electricity is just wiggling these same electron clouds, these clearly do not deserve Monopoly status. Lasers also just wiggle around electrons and put out light and light is clearly well known. Nuclear processes are just wiggling positive charges clouds instead of negative charge clouds, so this is certainly not deserving of the embarrassment of Monopoly. Einstein showed that matter could be converted into energy and vice versa, so there is nothing new about PET scanners. In case we have not yet shown that there is really no reason for a patent system. The Supremes in KSR have shown that any invention that obeys the laws of physics should not be patentable, specifically they state “a patent for a combination which only unites old elements with no change in their respective functions . . . obviously withdraws what is already known in to the field of its monopoly.” Only God can obtain a patent and only if he/she/it does not obey the laws of physics.

I don’t know exactly how many years it is since the “first” reprogrammble electronic computer was publicly used. Clearly it’s about 40 years since personal computers were introduced (say circa 1970).

Despite that, I submit that people still do not full comprehend what “software” is is or what “computers” are. We are still all blind men circling the elephant.

But let’s forget the computer/software conundrum for a moment and let’s “step back” to looking at chemical reactions.

Even the sage and wise judges on the US Supreme Court grasp (grok, etc.) to the limited sense that they can, that some sort of “physical transformation” occurs when a reaction occurs like in the case of say, Na + Cl –> NaCl. (In other words, Sodium combined with Calcium yields Salt; for those who don’t read chemical symbols.)

But what exactly has been “transformed”? We are savvy enough in this “modern” day and age to understand that the nucleus of the Sodium atom has not changed. It has the same number of protons and neutrons that it had before the reaction. Ditto for the Calcium atom.

In fact, ditto for most of the electron orbitals of both atoms save for the outer most or valence band orbitals. Stated another way, the “physical structure” of these atoms are substantially unchanged. The only thing that changed was this nebulous cloud of electronic charge that surrounds the atoms before and after they “combined” by means of a “chemical” reaction.

But of course most sage and wise judges on the CAFC and the SCt. know in their heart of hearts that electron clouds are intangible and fleeting things that cannot be given patentable weight. Consider for example In re Nuitjen. Therefore, according to them, nothing has changed in the chemical reaction. An intangible and fleeting electron cloud (fleeting according to Heisenberg) merely got slightly re-distributed.

Now let us “step forward” again into the world of computers. Let’s assume a computer made of CMOS logic circuits. What changes between the before and the after that the CMOs circuits of the computer get “programmed”? Well nothing save for some nebulous electron clouds that get redistributed among the gates of the transistors in the CMOS circuits.

So as you see, computers and programming have absolutely no comparative relation to chemical reactions. Two entirely different things. One has nothing to do with the other. /sarcasm

The reality is that what the rest of the world believes to be “software’ and how the USPTO treats software are two totally different things.

Examiner’s pretend that any claim related to “software” describes software, per se (i.e., software disembodied from anything else). However, nobody goes to Best Buy to purchase the latest disembodied abstract idea. They go to Best Buy to purchase a computer readable medium and/or a license to practice a certain method on their computer.

To the real world, “software” is real. You can buy it, you can sell it, it transforms your computer into a computer capable of doing things your computer would not otherwise be capable of performing. However, the USPTO thinks software is an abstract idea.

These Courts inalidating these patents knowing full well that the Supreme Court is going to rule on this issue is a travesty.