So with all the analysis, I'm kind of curious what people's opinions are of the two patents they claim cover this technology
Apparatus and methods for dielectric bias system
Apparatus and methods for dielectric bias system
I've worked professionally in the patents field before, and I think it's incredibly important to understand how an examiner reads patents. First, examiners are taught to always read the claims first. Because from a legal point of view --- the claims are everything -- and you must not bias yourself into reading the claims in light of the claimed invention. Because if they're written broadly enough it covers things already in the prior art, even if those things are not described in the patent, it must be rejected.
The second is the concept of Utility. Patents must have utility. From an examiner's point of view utility is important in two aspects. First -- any utility stated in the claims has no legal weight. In other words, statements such as "for use in . . .." in the claims don't say anything. You find an invention that matches the claims but has a different use? That's prior art. You try to sell a device that the claims covers but has a different use? That's infringement. The other important part of utility in this case is *a patent must be useful for something, not necessarily what the patent is described as the intended use*. In other words, if something is novel to one of ordinary skill in the art and literally has any use at all -- it can be patented. The rejection of a patent because it is 'useless' just does not happen.
In other words, the examiner when granting this patent is basically asking (1) is this obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art and (2) does it have any use? Not what we're asking, (3) does this make any audible difference at all?
Without going into details, I think it's very likely the second patent is garbage. I suspect what happened is the first patent is close to expiring and they wanted some invention with a further out expiration date and tried to see what they could get past an examiner. And it worked.
From what I can tell, and I'm not an EE and super out of my depth here so this is likely wrong, what the first patent is trying to claim is "You have a current running in a coax-style cable. This by definition is going to create capacatance in the cable between the signal and ground because of the diaelectric present. We want to preserve this capacatance when the signal is removed". Does this make any difference in at all? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Apparatus and methods for dielectric bias system
Apparatus and methods for dielectric bias system
I've worked professionally in the patents field before, and I think it's incredibly important to understand how an examiner reads patents. First, examiners are taught to always read the claims first. Because from a legal point of view --- the claims are everything -- and you must not bias yourself into reading the claims in light of the claimed invention. Because if they're written broadly enough it covers things already in the prior art, even if those things are not described in the patent, it must be rejected.
The second is the concept of Utility. Patents must have utility. From an examiner's point of view utility is important in two aspects. First -- any utility stated in the claims has no legal weight. In other words, statements such as "for use in . . .." in the claims don't say anything. You find an invention that matches the claims but has a different use? That's prior art. You try to sell a device that the claims covers but has a different use? That's infringement. The other important part of utility in this case is *a patent must be useful for something, not necessarily what the patent is described as the intended use*. In other words, if something is novel to one of ordinary skill in the art and literally has any use at all -- it can be patented. The rejection of a patent because it is 'useless' just does not happen.
In other words, the examiner when granting this patent is basically asking (1) is this obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art and (2) does it have any use? Not what we're asking, (3) does this make any audible difference at all?
Without going into details, I think it's very likely the second patent is garbage. I suspect what happened is the first patent is close to expiring and they wanted some invention with a further out expiration date and tried to see what they could get past an examiner. And it worked.
From what I can tell, and I'm not an EE and super out of my depth here so this is likely wrong, what the first patent is trying to claim is "You have a current running in a coax-style cable. This by definition is going to create capacatance in the cable between the signal and ground because of the diaelectric present. We want to preserve this capacatance when the signal is removed". Does this make any difference in at all? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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