How can I find glass cutting patents? How can I find glass cutting patents? Apparently they use a different numbering system than ordinary patents. For example, according to glass collectors, the following patent was registered: 63,795 / “Exotic Flower” / William P. Moran / 18 Jan 1923 / 15 Jan 1924 However, U.S. patent 63795 does not correspond to this patent.
The reason why I could not find the patent is that there are several different kinds of patents. Mechanical patents, for example, are &quot;utility&quot; patents. The cut glass pattern referenced in the question is not a utility patent, it is a design patent. Each patent type has its own numbering system. To search for a design patent, typically a &quot;D&quot; is inserted before the patent number, like &quot;D63795&quot;. This results in the correct patent being discovered:
Trivial is hard to judge after the fact due to hindsight bias. Once you know the answer to a riddle it seems obvious but you couldn’t figure it out without already knowing it. The criteria for get a patent in the US does not include the word or concept “trivial”. It does include non-obviousness. To reduce hindsight bias an examiner needs to follow a process of identifying all sub- components of an invention in the prior art and then making a good argument as to how someone of ordinary skill in the field would be motivated to put them together. Also there is no measure of improvement over past technology required for a patent. A trivial improvement in cost or performance is fine. Actually no objective improvement is required at all. An existing solution might work as well or better than your invention. That means probably no one will buy it but if it is novel and not obvious one can get a patent.
Possibly: remember that we have 50 different states and their laws plus the federal government. Alabama criminal code §13A-9-9 define the crime of &quot;possession of a forgery device&quot;, which is when one makes or possesses with knowledge of its character any plate, die or other device, appliance, apparatus, equipment or article specifically designed or adapted for use in forging written instruments with intent to use it himself, or to aid or permit another to use it for purposes of forgery. Selling is covered under the fact of possession. Arizona has a similar law, referring to the situation when a person Makes or possesses with knowledge of its character and with intent to commit fraud any plate, die, or other device, apparatus, equipment, software, access device, article, material, good, property or supply specifically designed or adapted for use in forging written instruments. Makes or possesses any device, apparatus, equipment, software, access device, article, material, good, property or supply adaptable for use in forging written instruments with intent to use it or to aid or permit another to use it for purposes of forgery. Federal law would be covered here: §474 covers any plate, stone, or other thing, or any part thereof, from which has been printed, or which may be prepared by direction of the Secretary of the Treasury for the purpose of printing, any obligation or other security of the United States, uses such plate, stone, or other thing, or any part thereof, or... but this could not be reasonably interpreted to include a printing press, and would not cover a gadget that forges passports (Dept. of State, not Treasury). There isn't a federal statute with the breadth of the Alabama law. Any such law would have to include an &quot;intent to forge&quot; element.
A U.S. answer. In the US there is nothing about this that automatically makes the patent invalid. They listed all the inventors as required. How did they handle not having a signed declaration from you? If they forged your signature that can be fraud on the office. Alternatively they could have said you had some agreement with them that justified them saying they tried to reach you but couldn’t (sometimes ok under the AIA law but not earlier) and therefore filed without your signature. However, depending on the details, you might want to help them fix that up in retrospect and enjoy being exactly equal co-owners with ABC Ptd Ltd. In the U.S. all rights flow from the inventors and the default is they can each make, sell, import, etc, and can each license with no consulting or accounting to each other, a horrible arrangement. This puts them in a bad position commercially and they might give you much money or royalty stream for you to agree to a different arrangement. In the rest of the world the applicant is often more important than the inventors so this is a U.S. only answer.
Yes you can do this in the UK. Section 60 of the Patents Act 1977 has a specific carve-out for this kind of activity: (5) An act which, apart from this subsection, would constitute an infringement of a patent for an invention shall not do so if; (a) it is done privately and for purposes which are not commercial; (b) it is done for experimental purposes relating to the subject-matter of the invention; So if you build and operate your laser without selling anything you are in the clear. You can also experiment with potential improvements. There is no such thing as a &quot;global patent&quot;: patents are issued in each country and the national law of each country applies (except for Europe). If an inventor wants patent protection in lots of countries they have to file for a patent in each country. So if this laser is patented only in the USA and you are in the UK then you could make and sell as many lasers as you wanted, as long as you didn't export them to the USA. And vice-versa for a UK patent and a USA engineer.
This supposes that the patentable concept can’t be learned form the operation of the whole program and hiding the invention while making use of the invention in public is not a disclosure. However, in the US there is a famous case In re Blaisdell, 242 F.2d 779, 783, 113 USPQ 289, 292 (CCPA 1957); Hall v. Macneale, 107 U.S. 90, 96-97 (1882); Ex parte Kuklo, 25 USPQ2d 1387, 1390 (Bd. Pat. App. &amp; Inter. 1992) that concluded a public demonstration that didn’t expose the inner workings did start the clock on a bar to patentability. See previous question https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/20886/would-the-demonstration-of-an-invention-be-considered-public-disclosure The answer (from me) has the caveat that this is a pre-AIA case and courts might come to a different answer under that current law. The U.S. has viewed public use, especially commercial public use, as disqualifying (after a grace period) but the rest of the world puts its emphasis on actual disclosure of the inventive concept so this result might be different elsewhere. One thought experiment would be to analogize with an article in a widely available journal with the words Don’t read the article that starts on page 19 on the cover. From a disclosure point of view I do not think that is different from it being possible, but illegal, to read.
What you are missing is that the original copyright holder can give permission to make derivative works with strings attached. There is no automatic right to derive something from a copyrighted work. Those strings could include constraints on what you create in the process of making the derivative work. Yes it is a string limiting what you can do with something you own, but you would have been warned in the license and had the choice to start from scratch. People do create work-alike software with no copyright strings using two teams and a &quot;clean room&quot; design process. It is a lot harder than modifying something another person has developed. Also, law and someone's understanding of morals need not be aligned at all. And, in patent law, just creating something all by yourself from scratch does not give you ownership. If someone else did it first and got a patent you can't make the item you might think you own. IP law is complex and looking for &quot;fundamentals&quot; may not get you anywhere.
Can only be done one way and has been done - not novel; you can only think of one way to do it and don't know if it has done that way or at all, may be is patentable. From one example it is hard to give a general answer that might apply to a case you might actually be thinking about. One can not get a patent on something that is not novel or is obvious (using U.S. patent law concepts) or not useful. Novelty is judged by trying to find a single reference, published before the filing date, that contains all elements of the claimed invention. An examiner can't just say &quot;that is the way I would have solved the problem&quot; or &quot;everybody knows that already&quot;. This is to make the test for novelty more objective and give the applicant something tangible to argue against. Next consider obviousness. The examiner can't just say &quot;seems obvious to me&quot;. Besides the problem that it is far from objective, there is a strong psychological effect called &quot;hindsight bias&quot;. Once you know a solution, it seems obvious even if you would never have come up with it independently. To assert a rejection based on obviousness an examiner needs to find one or more references that, together, have all the elements in a claimed invention. That part is pretty objective. Then they need to argue that a (fictitious) person of ordinary skill in the art would think to combine those references to achieve the claimed invention. A POSITA knows everything that was ever published anywhere at any time in any language in the relevant field or specifically relevant to the problem from an other field and is of median/average skill in the field. There are rare cases where the problem was never recognized and the recognition of the problem is an important part of the invention. In that case the solution might be obvious once the problem was (inventively) identified. That would still not be an obvious invention. Your example might fit into this. In the rest-of-the-world obviousness is replaced by &quot;having an inventive step&quot;, not exactly the same concept. And the rules of what can be considered prior art different. A third criteria is &quot;useful&quot; in the U.S. It is somewhat analogous to &quot;industrial applicability&quot; in the rest of the world. Until about 2000 this was a trivial hurdle in the U.S. As long it was not a law of nature (abstract), something completely done in your head or a perpetual motion machine, it was probably useful. There have been many rulings since then that have put more and more things in the &quot;abstract&quot; category and if it's abstract its not useful. This is the basis of the &quot;you can't patent software&quot; mantra. There are plenty of things that look like software that get patented but it is getting harder.