Armin:
"Questions: Are patents granted also on theories or does the underlaying invention have to
work in practice?"
From a practical point of view, the Patent Office, like most government offices, must process so many claims that they often cannot verify whether or not the processes actually work. This isn't very important, though; if the process does NOT work, the patent is worthless.
Technically speaking, the process must be "reduced to practice", though. That means that if you have a brainstorm in the shower one morning, you cannot simply patent the "idea" you had. You must be able to ducument it as a working process, product, etc., in some way.
I am not an expert on this, just one who has filed patents before. There is a book called "Patent it Yourself" which explain all these things very nicely. It is a good book to have even if you don't file patents yourself, just to understand the patent laws and system. I believe it is published by Nolo Press.
regards,
Larry
p.s. I and a number of other communications engineers have analyzed the problems with DWM in great depth on the original IAS thread on SI. If you'd like to see what was said (some of it is very technical, some is not), go to the original thread and read through some of the messages from last fall, etc. |
