The Supreme Court has held that "abstract ideas" can't be patented, but then has deliberately refrained from defining what an "abstract idea" is!
In the latest Alice decision, they write: "In any event, we need not labor to delimit the precisecontours of the “abstract ideas” category in this case. It is enough to recognize that there is no meaningful distinction between the concept of risk hedging in Bilski and the concept of intermediated settlement at issue here. Both are squarely within the realm of “abstract ideas” as we have used that term."
So you can't have "X", where "X" is undefined.
I'm shocked that top government officials are using secret government email addresses. We should insist that they turn over every email address so that they all have to waste hours each day deleting spam and irrelevant stuff like the rest of us!
I have been reading Jack Vance since I was about 11, many years ago. I knew that he was in his mid 90's and blind, and I never expected him to write anything again. However when I was looking at his works on Amazon a few weeks back, I saw that last year, at the age of 95, he was still in good enough shape to have written (or at least dictated) a biography called "This Is Me, Jack Vance! Or More Properly, This Is I".
So, thinking that this would be a good way to show my appreciation for all the fun his works had given me, I purchased it. Now I am glad that I did. Hope that some other fans also did the same! Not a bad way to go, hearing about your latest Amazon sales figures for work that you published at the age of 95.
One of the reason why California has so many startups is that California State law clearly states that work done by an employee for the employee's own time and business interests belongs to the employee. It is very clear that the author of this article has no experience with startups.
If the default "inventions belong to the employer" rule was in effect everywhere, then the net effect would be to lock up employee ideas with little actual benefit to the employer. This is because most big companies are not very innovative, and thus fail to exploit most employee inventions. Most of the modern world as we know it would never have happened.
Dangerous and bad idea. I hope that the article remains forever ignored after this.
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.