Firefox market share bounces back 6708

I suggest you talk to a patent attorney about this for the authoritative word on it. I'll relate from memory as best I can how my attorney explained it. Patents cover 'inventions', not 'ideas'. I can have the idea for a better apple peeler... but unless I spell out exactly how it works, I cannot patent it. In legal terms, an idea relates what you want to do, an invention explains how you plan to do it.

In practice, our broken patent office lets through countless patents that explain the idea but then become real vague in 'how it works' part... dressing it up with enough techo-babble to fool the examiner into rubber stamping it. The head of the patent and trademark office has come right out and said that they are permissive in approving patents and depend on the business world to challenge and overturn the bad ones.

This flawed approach reinforces the perception that 'patents cover ideas' when the law says explicitly that they do not. I invite any patent attorneys out there to jump in and correct my explanation, as I am not an attorney and my memory is far from perfect.

Later,

Thad