[time-nuts] patents and hobbyist projects (was: Temperature controlled TCVCXO)

Tim Shoppa tshoppa at gmail.com
Sun May 15 08:31:12 EDT 2016


In addition to what others write about nobody will come after you for
hobbyist/testing purposes...

It is surprisingly easy for a patent non-professional to be confused, about
what a patent actually covers (claims) vs does not cover (claim).

There is a section called "description" that is useful and interesting for
techie guys. Especially when the patent was the result of a actual real
device, anyone skilled in the field will be able to read the "description"
section of a patent and figure out the device and learn something from the
patent. The "citations" and "referred to by" are usually interesting
reading too.

Beyond that, there is a section called "claims" that actually sets out the
legal language about what the inventors, and their patent lawyers, and the
patent examiner, eventually decided (probably over a period of months to
years) could be patented. Reading the claim section is surprisingly tricky.
Lots of interesting things (to you and me) in the description are probably
not actually claimed because they were claimed by previous patents (See the
patent citations at the bottom). When I'm in a room with the patent lawyers
and they are telling me how to read it, I can manage to follow them and
even learn a little bit of the patent phrase-ology in a way that makes
sense to me. These lessons in patent phrase-ology stick with me for only a
matter of days after we leave the room. The language of the claims is very
highly specialized, and even further the patent lawyers have "optimized"
the claims, so that base claims are elaborated on in a very complicated and
ornate way in later claims such that a challenge to any one claim of the
patent will have minimized the effect on negating the whole patent.

Tim N3QE

On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 5:56 AM, Attila Kinali <attila at kinali.ch> wrote:

> On Fri, 13 May 2016 19:32:58 -0500
> David <davidwhess at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for those.  I went over them pretty carefully and what I am
> > proposing is not covered by either although that would not protect me
> > from a debilitating patent lawsuit.
>
> I wouldn't worry about patent lawsuits at all unless you intend to
> start a multi-million business.
>


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