Levels of abstraction

A patent is supposed to be written in sufficient detail that someone "skilled in the art" can reproduce the invention.

The first filer gets a monopoly on *his* solution to the problem. If it seems to be a "going" idea in the marketplace, then others will reinvent the same invention -- but in a way that avoids the independent claims in the granted patent(s).

Or, will flagrantly violate the patent and hope they can make enough money, quickly, before they can be caught. And, as they likely aren't *personally* undertaking those infringements (hide behind a corporate entity), they are free to move on to a new corporate shelter and try again.

The entity that was supposed to benefit from this exclusivity (the patent holder) is the one who ends up penalized as he tries (and often fails) to be compensated for that infringement.

So, you *paid* to get the monopoly protection. Then, paid to enforce it. And, there's still nothing that is ACTUALLY guaranteeing your monopoly.

Exactly. And, nowadays, there is a lot of technology available for low cost -- along with the expertise to make use of it. You don't need to front a year's pay to get a fab to make a custom chip for you. And, you can "borrow" much of the kit available at your local university to reverse engineer what's in someone else's custom.

You can buy a 3D printer and make (small quantities) of a patented device. And, likely find a (chinese?) house that will mass produce them for low dollars. You just want to be sure you can offload them before someone catches up with you -- then, transfer the unsold inventory to another bogus corporation to start over.

I'm sure folks can analyze the contents of pharmaceutical products and recreate them without formal disclosure from the original patent holder.

"Special processes" are likely the best protections for IP. I.e., if you have some efficient way of making an item that isn't known to your competitors...

I'm not super familiar with EU patent law, but in these parts, you have to give a written description sufficient to enable a "person of ordinary skill in the art" to practice the invention "without undue experimentation". See e.g.

and .

Sure thing. Sometimes nearly-identical inventions get patented at nearly the same time. For instance, I have a patent,

, that is very nearly identical with one filed by Prof. Garrett Moddel of the University of Colorado. His issued first, but mine has an earlier priority date, so if it ever becomes commercially important, there might be an interesting fight between UC and IBM.

Without patents, copycats can come along later and eat your lunch despite having done zero innnovation of their own. See e.g.

.

I don't agree. One of the main lines of evidence used to establish the non-obviousness of an invention is a long- and widely-felt need.

For example, one of my patents,

covers a circuit that improves the SNR of many kinds of laser-based measurements by as much as 70 dB, more or less automatically. There's nothing in it that couldn't have been invented in the 1960s, but despite a widely-felt need for better SNR, it wasn't.

There are lots of other examples like that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The doctrine of equivalents is an attempt to prevent folks from avoiding a valid patent by mere hair-splitting arguments. To be equivalent to a patented invention, an allegedly infringing product must perform substantially the same function in substantially the same way.

Some of them. "Waymo v. Uber" brings up a lot of stuff.

Maybe some. The ones I've worked with have been pretty straight shooters, at least in my vicinity, but then I don't take on cases I don't believe in.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And yet, the clueless John Doe troll has itself posted yet another incorrectly formatted USENET posting on Fri, 29 Oct 2021 20:36:05 -0000 (UTC) in message-id <slhlvl$fta$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me.

yf1Gkk4VFeCF

On a sunny day (Fri, 29 Oct 2021 21:51:32 +0300) it happened Dimiter_Popoff snipped-for-privacy@tgi-sci.com wrote in <slhfrl$6qo$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

OK, bit of history, long ago I had a TV repair shop in Amsterdam. More people got involved, and we made it into a VOF some sort of general business partnership. Worked nice... One day me and the guy who did the administration for the company got invited by somebody we occasionally met, for dinner at his home. We went there, and basically he tested if we were interested in working for the CIA. X (will use that name for our administrator) was all for it and I just declined. I warned X 'beware of what you get into', young and inexperienced he was. I left the company we had, and as it ran on my papers it sort of dissolved a bit later, and after that I worked in several projects for companies. Years later I met X again when I was in Denver for some event and he was in the same hotel X was all enthusiastic; 'Been in Panama blah blah <dunno what you missed sort of jive)' but then again what happened there was not all that hard to get if you did read the news in those days. Few years later I was listening with head plugs to music on my mp3 player waiting for a subway train in Amsterdam and I see X now with beard and looking like he had not slept for days on the other side of the subway! Few days later he was in a meeting in Amsterdam, last time I have seen him, been there. So.. but there was news.... Hard to tell, after that guy where we had dinner I told many people I knew I was asked by him for the CIA and that REALLY pissed him off (You Really Messed Up Everything). Later one day I had to do security in an event we had and I refused him entry and he got hysterical.. Let him in for the sake of peace... Met his wife years later, asked her how he was.. Seems he got over it. When we go further back in time when I was working for the Dutch TV network doing head control room and we had a special situation there also was this guy who was hanging around me and asking me questions about what I though about America... Well I am positive about America so?? But looking backwards I can recognize CIA people I think (he was too obvious). It is my opinion that many or most f the Dutch politicians have been similarly taken into that 'US controlled field' how else can you explain they bought that F35 crap that is now flying over the house here almost every day.. When we go even further back in time when I worked in my first job, designing equipment for power stations and army and navy, I wanted something else, more interesting, so there was an ad for a technician in NATO. Went there for interview, all well, then got an interview with a general, he told me: 'Mr Panteltje, we cannot have any commies here you know' I replied 'commies are also people'. Knew it was the wrong answer but it flipped out of my mouth, so next job application was for that national TV network and I got that one. That was before NATO turned into a US imperialist force going into Iraq, Afghanistan etc, but was for defense, As to commies, my father, who was a journalist but also fought with the 'commies' in Spain against Franco, and was in the resistance in WW2, was put in a German concentration camp as political prisoner because he wrote against the Germans, was freed by the Russians. I had my share of stories from that, and CIA and the likes visiting us at home.

US has his agents everywhere, Is OK with me :-) Last time I could still get that US visum... Now without being shot 3 times or more in the arm no way :-) Although I am sure member of the see-eye-eya perhaps are exempt.

There is more but you asked a question...

I am not Higgins (From Magnum) telling stories..

This song

:-)

The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And yet, the clueless John Doe troll has itself posted yet another incorrectly formatted USENET posting on Sat, 30 Oct 2021 08:18:02 -0000 (UTC) in message-id <sliv3p$sgs$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me.

Nte/RgP1jTox

The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And yet, the clueless John Doe troll has itself posted yet another incorrectly formatted USENET posting on Sat, 30 Oct 2021 08:18:59 -0000 (UTC) in message-id <sliv5j$sgs$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me.

BWF1BjdkjvON

Had you lived in a communist country - like I did - nobody would have told you "we don't want anti-commies here". At best you would have got away with several years in a labour camp, more likely - if that happened prior to say 1960 - they'd feed the pigs with you and enjoyed watching.

So there are levels of cruelty and oppression but you get it anywhere, the world is far from perfect. Of course small countries are run by the special services of larger ones. My story similar to yours "we want no commies here" (I am the opposite of a communist, my family has been persecuted, some jailed, some camped, for no other reason but being unpleasant to the Russian servants here) goes like this:

About 20 years ago I had an inquiry from a customer who had previously bought some of the first Nukemans

) for some similar stuff. We had been just finishing the second Nukeman , ) so I offered it; I was asked to write the spec for the tender, the guy (CEO of the plant) wanted to deal with us, so I wrote it. It was nothing huge, about 50-60 k total. And then when the tender had to be decided the then *minister* of energy and another high placed figure (some unit to which the plant belonged or something, someone Russian connected/bred) intervened and decided against us (one of our US competitors got the deal). You tell me how a minister gets involved in a 50k euro deal. They must have paid 2-3 times that to our competitor, some bribery has taken place of course (we never do that sort of thing) but still, *why* at such a high level, these people have much bigger fish to fry. I can only speculate but I can't think of another reason than wanting to stop *us*, the competitor which got the deal is anyway generating losses and was bought by a larger entity decades ago to be kept alive. Someone somewhere must have decided we can become dangerous? Your guess is as good as mine. From which side (Russian, US, whatever) must this have come? Your guess is as good as mine. All I know it was not just local, the local peasants are way too stupid and obedient to one or another master to be able to take such decision. Just like you observe it about your local peasants in their cabinets. It is always obvious - and disgusting - when someone's servant wants to come across as important and self confident, which they are not of course, they just do as told.

On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:04:42 +0300) it happened Dimiter_Popoff snipped-for-privacy@tgi-sci.com wrote in <slkc1c$148$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Yes when the cold war was at its maximum... I remember that Was never into politics myself but having a business makes you think more the 'capitalist' way I guess. But recently I get more and more irritated by the mass hysteria about covid shots. There is such a thing as personal freedom, and the whole 'jab everyone again and again' as a 'religion' is provably false and dangerous, and smells like the Medical Industrial Complex, bringing more and more people under control (or covid drugs dependent). Wait until everybody gets chipped.

it is RT so maybe some will be critical, but it is an UK study.

As to that nuclear stuff, I have boxes full of scintillators, some plastic ones some NaI(Tl), and PMTs and some of that stuff from Russia via ebay, It is not rocket tech (anymore?) there is for example:

everybody interested can join.

So, wars, the purpose of those is to break down the insane crystals forming that destroy a flexible society. Wars have a purpose in evolution, may the best one win. After the full nuculear exchange survival and sanity and ?

When taking distance [ it is ] one ant heap against the other, and the little ant-soldiers and queens .. will maybe merge into a new ant heap.... History has this tendency to repeat itself, sort of a self healing self correcting mechanism until the Military Industrial Complex changes earth into a black hole or little Joe accidently creates a man eating monster with his Walmart DNA kit... Maybe I will sail away and watch the fireworks from an island ... But world is so small these days, Stars are born and stars die, not only in Hollowood, but in the universe. Is all deterministic, including what we think and do? If do, nothing to worry about!! Let's Party! And RESIST the covid mass hysteria.

NaI etc. scintillators are no rocket science, have never been during my career. Very few makers of semiconductor (HPGe, Si) detector capable MCAs exist though, most of them having only sort of working devices.

Hysteria is always a bad thing but the disease is quite real, here (Bulgaria) the % of the vaccinated population is very low, mostly thanks to Russian troll activity who spread nonsense about chips etc. and now the hospitals are almost out of intensive care beds due to the surge of the infection. I set myself a date to get vaccinated (Nov 10), I just had not got around to do it before and saw no need (I have limited contacts with other people). Nothing wrong with mandating this vaccine like so many others if the medical community (not politicians) decides so, like you say we are just ants in the ant colony after all.

On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Oct 2021 13:18:45 +0200) it happened Dimiter_Popoff snipped-for-privacy@tgi-sci.com wrote in <sllu2n$28g$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

I have seen some youtube video of a video camera being used, the radiation causes random pixels to light up.

semiconductor detector, easy to count the dots with say a PIC micro in analog output FBAS.

Not much more than the flue was some years ago, even then gov here bought many anti-flue shots but much of it was never used. I got a call to get a shot and told the doctor to stuff it, same for covid, never showed up. Have not had the flue since I was 12 or so.. Actually have not been really sick since then. Last time I was sick for 2 weeks was when some idiot doctor gave me an adult shot against something when I was a kid.

Not everybody is the same, and that is the danger of mass hysteria inoculation. Some have antibodies (I do) and I also know WHY I am resistant, Many how now died because of the covid shots, hundreds if not thousands and many have lasting effects like blood clots causing brain damage. This is then blamed by the clueless evil ruling Medical Industrial Complex on covid. I do not trust doctors unless I know them a lot better, can get into discussion with them, have worked in a large university hospital .. The sentence 'The risk outweighs the danger' does not bring any of the jab victims back to life. One can ask those jabbing criminals if they play the lottery.

Here the positive tests are also rising, Seems to be season related.

For serious cases where people get ill from covid (many do not even notice they have it) there are very good medicines you can take orally such as molnupiravir. And it seems anti-worm medicines work too. That is what Trump did was it not?

Much simpler and cheaper to take a pill when ill than jab a large part of the world population to death. But anyways, it is up to the individual, but take this as warning.

The shit is global, nothing to do with Russia, in fact Putin, now sort of re-elected, is also playing the forcing game and as far as I care and that includes Xi from China who is killing enterprises to 'spread wealth' can be replaced. :-)

So, now how fast can I go to Mars to start my own ant heap... We are ready for a gobal war, last month I was thinking 2023.

Plenty of people toying with all sorts of stuff. This on the video has nothing to do with what I was talking about as you probably know.

True of course. However the victims are really not that many. My sister and my mom got a Moderna vaccine, my sister subsequently got infected (a month or two ago), had a running nose for 3 days and that was all.

I do share your distrust to doctors, most of the time they know less than you do. Some of them are useful in hospitals to perform surgery and other sorts of manipulations, then much of the population is defacto illiterate so even GP-s are necessary. I have not seen a doctor for 20+ years now, then I had damaged a muscle on my calf (turned fast to run to chase a barking dog, dog ran away, I pulled my muscle :-).. But I am susceptible to infections, had a real flu during the 2014/2015 winter, had never had one, at some point I though I was dying... Felt similarly next winter when I had some kind of covid, was very bad, Lucy wanted to get me a doctor... She did not get too sick but perhaps this was what triggered her cancer then, how can you tell. Anyway, the doctors were useful then, the chemo she received gave us one more year together.

The shit is global indeed, Russia is just part of it like the rest. The western civilization seems to be in danger, people have to relearn to work and be brave and tough.

Once I have my hyperdrive up and operational I'll ping you :-).

Looks increasingly so, let us hope whoever is pulling the strings (if there is someone, at times it looks this way) manages to get us through this crisis without too heavy losses of knowledge etc.

The point is not to simply detect something. The point is doing spectroscopy. That doesn't work with a video camera chip or simple semiconductor detector. You need the scintillator and an MCA.

Jeroen Belleman

many years ago I worked on X-ray fluorescence using a Fe55 source and a CCD as detector

What energy resolution did you get?

The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

And yet, the clueless John Doe troll has itself posted yet another incorrectly formatted USENET posting on Mon, 1 Nov 2021 01:51:35 -0000 (UTC) in message-id <slnh77$85l$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me.

JQOh/YNpbSfl

Hey Eddie Hernia, I am SURE you have SOMETHING more interesting to say than that repetitive crap - get with the program, already. The only thing you've changed is the same damn spelling mistake I pointed out.

Now the half-witted trolls are ganging up on one another. It's sort of ironic to see Tom S. complaining about other people's repetitive crap.

With any luck he'd cast critical eye over his own output, and retire abashed. Pity about the critical eye ...

On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Oct 2021 21:33:44 +0100) it happened Jeroen Belleman snipped-for-privacy@nospam.please wrote in <slmuj9$1m4e$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org>:

I know that, the idea of using the Ge transistor for spectroscopy is just that I still think it is possible, the kV needed Dimiter points to is proportional to the size of the Ge body? So no need for kV across a few mm Ge. The small Ge body gives less volume to detect that is all. Doping, contamination may have some effect, no idea what, but it would be a constant no? Any constant in the results can be removed I'd think. I could be wrong of course, need to try. If all else fails, 100 Grams Chunks of Pure Germanium Metal 99.999% Ge Element Sample Pure Crystal:

My gamma spectrometer with plastic scintillator and Russian PMT, plus geiger counter in the back: