LegSteer (hands-free) modified Segway

[Bob.Kerns]

I'm glad you guys have agreed to disagree. But let me point out a bit about patent law.

I'm going to be unintentionally US-centric here; European patent law differs in some ways; probably not important to what I'm saying, but I don't really know.

First, as someone pointed out, there are design patents and utility patents. Design patents protect the form -- shape, color, etc.

Utility patents cover how something works. The fact that, say, a hands-free leansteer device is patented tells us nothing. You have to read the patent, and the specific claims, to know what would and would not infringe. While it *might* cover every conceivable approach to steering without hands, it probably does NOT cover the actual concept of steering without hands.

Most likely, it'd cover something like how to make the saddle parts comfortable and keep you from tipping forward or backward off your platform as you move your weight fore and aft. Specific design points.

So it would be quite possible for Karl to come up with a new way to do this, and not infringe. Or to infringe but not know it. Or to even infringe on a patent which has been applied for, but not yet issued.

A patent for which there is prior art on a particular claim, may have that claim invalidated. If I recall correctly, this can occur both via USPTO review and via the courts. Prior art is a bit tricky, but in the US, if it's been used or known prior to the act of invention, or in use or published within one year before the patent application, it's prior art.

Years ago, a certain modem company had some patent application they struggled to get through the USPTO. But by the time they succeeded, the only claim that made it through was the one the USPTO didn't understand. All the hardware claims were gone, but they managed to patent the idea that if you sent nothing for a few milliseconds, then sent some code sequence (AT), and then paused again, you could distinguish between commands and the actual data being sent.

I had prior art. I even dug it up at the request of the attorneys, but they flaked out on me, so I didn't get involved further. But it could have been overturned.

It also shouldn't have passed the obviousness test, in my opinion, but given that it did make it through the USPTO, other companies could make similar modems, but had to have a license to use this command technique. But if you came up with a different way that didn't fit the claims (say, surrounded by uninterrupted @@@@'s, and inserting a pause from the software if @@@@ was found in the data), then you'd not infringe, even though you were doing effectively the same thing -- just not in the particular way covered by the claim.

Anyway -- without looking AT THE ACTUAL PATENT, none of us can say whether Karl's design would infringe or not. Or whether there's prior art or not. Indeed, what is actually patented, and whether the patent actually protects anything useful or not.