How much &quot;more&quot; needs to be added to an abstract idea in order to pass the subject matter eligibility test for a patent? In Mayo v. Prometheous 566 U. S. ____ (2012), the Supreme Court said (regarding 35 U.S.C. §101 subject matter eligibility): a process that focuses upon the use of a natural law [must] also contain other elements or a combination of elements, sometimes referred to as an “inventive concept,” sufficient to ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the natural law itself. This was reiterated in Alice v. CLS Bank 573 U.S. ___ (2014): a court must first “identif[y] the abstract idea represented in the claim,” and then determine “whether the balance of the claim adds ‘significantly more.’” What is the standard for judging, as part of assessing subject matter eligibility, whether the claimed process contains "significantly more" such that it is not preempting entirely the use of the natural law (or abstract idea, or other ineligible concept) itself?
The USPTO has incorporated the test for &quot;significantly more&quot; in their subject matter eligibility test as follows (see step 2B): (Figure from 2014 Interim Guidance on Subject Matter Eligibility.) The USPTO says (ibid.): A claim directed to a judicial exception must be analyzed to determine whether the elements of the claim, considered both individually and as an ordered combination, are sufficient to ensure that the claim as a whole amounts to significantly more than the exception itself. They say this several different ways: this has been termed a search for an inventive concept ... To be patent-eligible, a claim that is directed to a judicial exception must include additional features to ensure that the claim describes a process or product that applies the exception in a meaningful way, such that it is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception In section 2.B.1., they give a summary of Supreme Court jurisprudence on this point, listing examples of considerations that have been found relevant for this analysis of &quot;whether a claim with additional elements amounts to significantly more than the judicial exception itself&quot;. Limitations that &quot;may be enough to qualify as significantly more&quot; (ibid.): Improvements to another technology or technical field Improvements to the functioning of the computer itself Applying the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine Effecting a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing Adding a specific limitation other than what is well-understood, routine and conventional in the field, or adding unconventional steps that confine the claim to a particular useful application Other meaningful limitations beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment Examples of limitations that are insufficient to qualify as significantly more (ibid.): Adding the words ‘‘apply it’’ (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer Simply appending well-understood, routine and conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception Adding insignificant extrasolution activity to the judicial exception Generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use
There is no one answer, but here are some examples. India is famous for deriving general principles of more important constitutional law concepts that can be used to find constitutional amendments to be unconstitutional. The U.S. has not gone to that extreme but does derive constitutional protections for the overall scheme of the constitution and from the legal context of the nation when constitutional provisions were enacted that don't obvious flow from the text of the legislation (e.g. the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) has been interpreted to establish state sovereign immunity that the text of that amendment does not expressly provide for). Another somewhat weird source of law in the U.S. (constitutional at the federal level and usually common law at the state level) is that the 21st century right to a jury trial in a civil case depends upon whether the claim would have been litigated in England in 1789 in the courts of law or the courts of chancery in England. Customary international law is a thing. It also often arises from international practices or diplomatic norms, rather than tribunal adjudications. In the jurisprudence of the legislative process and some aspects of federalism, historical practices that have not been litigated are frequently resorted to as a source of law. For example, the question of whether a legislature is in recess has been resolved based upon historical practice. Prior to the French Revolution, customary practice was an important source of law in France. Customary practice was an important source of the English common law. In many British colonies and former British colonies (e.g. South Africa and Kenya and Sudan), lower tribal or village courts were often expressly permitted to apply local custom in their decision making. In the U.S., a collection of secondary authority texts compiled by the American Law Institute, an affiliate of the American Bar Association, called the Restatements, which summarize in codified form, various subjects in common law, are often used by courts as a source of law where there is no case law on point in a jurisdiction. In civil law countries, the leading legal treatises of law professors are an important source of interpretive authority of the civil code and other major codification of the law. Most Islamic countries provide in their constitutions that Islamic law is the highest authority and supersedes any secular law including other provisions of the constitution to the contrary. In many parts of the United States, mostly in the west, but also in Florida and Louisiana, property rights arising under Spanish/Mexican law, or under Native American law continue in force even though they derived from legal systems other than U.S. statutes and common law. See, for example: Tribe: We have &quot;aboriginal title&quot; to these lands in New Mexico because we had exclusive occupation of them from around 1300 to 1650, and then still used them a lot since then. Further, the &quot;sovereign&quot; (the U.S.) has never properly taken them away, so they're still ours. District court: No. Tribe on motion to reconsider: How about just these bits of the lands? District court: Still no. Tenth Circuit: There's still a claim for one of the bits. Concurrence 1: No bits for you. Concurrence 2: Two bits. (Source)
You are correct that it is quite expensive to patent something in U.S. law. Under U.S. patent law, once an idea is publicly published, if no one else has a patent application for the same idea that is pending, the idea enters the public domain and no one can obtain a patent of that idea. The publication become "prior art" with respect to any future patent application which cannot be protected by patent law. Of course, if you publish an invention which you discovered independently, that someone else already has a patent application pending for that will be approved the following week, the fact that you published it after the patent was applied for doesn't prevent the person with the pending patent application from having it approved. The term "invention" rather than "idea" is what I will use for the remainder of this answer, because there are many ideas which may not be patented, while the lion's share of patentable ideas are appropriately described as "inventions." But, understand that as used in this answer, the term "invention" is being used to refer to the concepts and ideas necessary to make the invention, and not to a particular instance of a product made using those concepts and ideas. When an invention is in the public domain, anyone can utilize the invention free of charge without a license. People who use the invention are not even required to acknowledge that you invented or discovered it. An invention is also not eligible to be patented if more than a year has elapsed since the first sale of a product using it. But, in that case, the invention can still be protected as a trade secret until it is voluntarily disclosed in some fashion to someone who is not subject to a non-disclosure agreement. (I say voluntary, because the fact that, for example, an unauthorized corporate spy sees the trade secret doesn't end the status of the invention as a trade secret.) Some inventions, are effectively publicly disclosed and published the moment that anyone looks at it closely. The patentable element of other inventions are invisible to an end user, or to observer of an end user. For example, if the invention involves something in the interior of a device, or the invention involves something not visible to the naked eye (e.g. a process for synthesizing an industrial chemical from other chemicals where the chemical formula of the ingredients and end result can't be determined without a microscope or analytical chemistry tests), merely showing someone a product made using the invention will not put it in the public domain. It is generally legal to reverse engineer or independently come up with an invention which is merely a trade secret. It is not legal to use a patented invention or process, even if it is not directly copied and is instead reverse engineered or independently discovered, during the lifetime of the patent. There is no straightforward way to put an invention into the public domain while retaining any right to acknowledgement that you invented it or otherwise exercise control through a licensing agreement without patenting it.
For the record, the requirement says: The board of education or trustees of the school district or the state agency responsible for providing education to students with disabilities shall have the burden of proof, including the burden of persuasion and burden of production, in any such impartial hearing, except that a parent or person in parental relation seeking tuition reimbursement for a unilateral parental placement shall have the burden of persuasion and burden of production on the appropriateness of such placement. To understand "burden of proof", think in terms of what claim is being made, by whom: this is different from understanding what you want to happen. To get the outcome you want, you have to make the right claims. Assume that the law requires the school to accommodate a student's learning disability, then the plaintiff (parent) would claim that the school failed to accommodate. The school would then be required to prove that they did accommodate. In other words, all you have to do (initially) is allege a failure to follow the law, and it is up to the school to provide the evidence that your allegation is incorrect (by providing records, also indicating standards that students are held to; the presumption that the panel is supposed to adopt is that the plaintiff's allegation is true, unless facts are introduced that show that it is false). It's not clear what action of the school is alleged to be at variance with the law. It sounds like a simple correctable bureaucratic error, so a hearing should not be necessary, but that doesn't mean that one isn't (e.g. if they have a policy of not admitting to making mistakes).
A thing needs to be original in order for it to get copyright protection. 17 USC §102: "Copyright protection subsists [...] in original works of authorship" Copyright Act Section 5 (1): "copyright shall subsist in Canada [...] in every original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work..." In the US, originality requires "a modicum of creativity" (Feist Pubs., Inc. v. Rural Tel. Svc. Co., Inc. 499 U.S. 340 (1991). In Canada, originality requires an "exercise of skill and judgment" and that "not be so trivial that it could be characterized as a purely mechanical exercise" (CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 SCR 339). Text transcribed from a public domain source would not be given copyright protection.
We cannot and will not try to answer &quot;what should i do?&quot; questions here. Nothing in the linked page makes me think that the views expressed in the previous question here are any less correct. They certainly have not changed the law on copyright. The linked page is an open forum. Many of the posts o9n that thread express ill-informed and incorrect views of how copyright works, and what it protects. Several google searchs find no trace of the suit described in the thread. Note that in US law no copyright claim may be heard in a small claims court, except for the federal copyright office's small claims tribunal. I am not sure if the same is true in Canada, but it might be that the suit was simply dismissed on such a basis. In any case small claims cases do not establish legal precedents in Canada or the US. Of course it is true that anyone can sue over almost anything, even when there is no valid legal basis for the suit. If the suit had been won by the claimant, or even settled that would be larger grounds for worry. A person seriously worried over publishing a book such as that described in the question might do well to consult a lawyer with relevant expertise. A single consultation plus an opinion letter might not cost very much. But 17 USC 102 (b) is very clear that copyright never protects facts, as are the copyright laws of other countries. Note that reports of the events of sports matches are not protected by copyright, although expressive language and analysis may be. 17 USC 102 (b) reads: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. Article 2 paragraph (8) of the Berne Copyright Convention provides that: (8) The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information. There seems little room for copyright protection of the moves of chess games.
Patent law, especially patent prosecution (writing patent applications and working with the US Patent &amp; Trademark Office to get those applications granted), is the most common area of law for scientists and engineers to enter. Patent prosecution does not require a law degree, but does require a science or engineering undergraduate degree. On the other hand, patent litigation (going to court over alleged infringement of granted patents) and other technology-focused areas of law (e.g., IP transactions) do generally require a law degree (and not a technical degree), and so you would have to spend a good deal of time and money on law school.
The power definitely exists, and it is also said by some (respectable persons) that they have a duty to do so. There are many schools of legal interpretation. One trend is to attempt to discern legislative intent, based on whatever facts there might be such as newspaper articles or legislative committee reports. A contrary trend is to look exclusively at the text enacted by the legislature – this school is known as the Textualist school, and is currently dominant in the US Supreme Court. There are also non-textualist &quot;progressive&quot; trends that seek justice according to some social principle, rather than the text of the law or the definitive intent of the original legislators, which may address the situation that you have in mind. In civil cases, statutory law tends to be rather unclear, allowing a judge to decide on the basis of their beliefs of what is fair, equitable or just. That is because in the common law, close to a millenium old, judgments were supposed to be &quot;just&quot;. In the US, much of the common law has been re-coded as statutory law, and in that case, the intent of the legislature is really to &quot;encode the sense of justice implicit in the common law&quot;. This does not mean that trial judges have unlimited power to set aside the words of existing laws. Their primary obligation is to apply the law literally, as interpreted by their superiors (appellate courts). When the higher courts are silent and when the legislature is not clear, the trial judge has some leeway to follow whichever jurisprudential philosophy they adhere to.