cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/5636484
Can fictional products be used as prior art against real world patents though? The entire idea of patents is to protect something someone made work in the real world.
“The whole concept of a touchscreen device…” is something that prior fictional examples prove false. They did not come up with the concept, but they did implement a prior concept.
“Nobody thought of it” and “nobody made it before” are two different things. Apple even pretended the second was true when they weren’t even first to market on several of their products.
“The whole concept of a touchscreen device…” is something that prior fictional examples prove false. They did not come up with the concept, but they did implement a prior concept.
But that didn’t come from a patent filing, that was my commentary on how they behaved. Patent filing language is much more precise for this reason.
My understanding is that patents are to protect novel new ideas. If something’s already bean described in fiction, what innovation is protected by the patent?
So, I’d think “it’s a tablet” wouldn’t be patentable because that was described in Star Trek. But, "screen technology blah that makes tablets practical "would be patentable.
Neat post on related topic: https://fia.umd.edu/answer-can-science-fiction-stories-be-used-to-demonstrate-prior-art-in-patent-cases/
My understanding is that patents are to protect novel new ideas. If something’s already bean described in fiction, what innovation is protected by the patent?
The implementation in the real world. Fiction does not tend to go into how these machines work beyond that which is needed for the narrative. You won’t get enough information from such a book or TV show to be able to build something similar yourself, which is usually what you need for a patent.
I’m not saying that devices described by fiction are patentable based on the description in the fiction. But, those descriptions could be used to prove that the ‘invention’ is too obvious to be patentable. Page 7 of this document from the USPTO going over what ‘prior art’ is suggests that fiction can be used as prior art.
Patents protect the details of achieving an invention, not the idea for an invention itself (thereby allowing multiple different approaches to serving a market). Most courts are likely to rule that an electronic tablet is a market segment, rather than an invention. But listing out all the electronics and software needed to build one and or the industrial processes and machinery to build one at scale might be granted a patent. Fiction virtually never produces any such detail.
Inventions need to be non-obvious (35 U.S.C. 103: Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter) in order to be patentable. Prior art can be used to show that an invention is obvious. The prior art doesn’t need to rise to the level of detail contained in a patent to be prior art.
