It's a good concept on the surface, but Weber destroys the physics with his own lust for large numbers: ships are not fighting at "short-range" of a kilometer or two... they're at "short-range" of a hundred thousand kilometers. "Long" range stretches out to tens of millions of kilometers. Of course, he has to, when he has ships that can accelerate at hundreds of Gs, and missiles that can accelerate at 96 thousand G's.

I love the series, but Weber's constant need to go from "a ship firing 10 missiles at a broadside... no wait, 10 thousand missiles at a broadside! And they zoom off at a kilometer per secon- no, wait, a million kilometers per second!" is more than little silly, and certainly not a "pretty good job" of getting the physics right.

This also would help the hungry mouths grow their own food, faster, with less space, in damp areas that were previously prone to rot (one of the things discussed in the video is that through faster germination, less of the crop rots before harvest). This doesn't change increase the wealth of the people in the middle, but opens new areas to farming by hungry people.

Sure, and completely stipulated. The "do something well known and described in finance books" and "on a computer" stuff shouldn't be patentable... Rather, it's new processes (that are nonetheless, done on a computer):

What if it was a brand new process or business method, never been done before, on a computer. Like, say, calculating the value of some strange multidimensional factorial required to teleport yourself twenty feet to the left and six hours into the future? Certainly new, but let's assume it can be done with a TI-83. Should that be patentable?

Pseudocode and detailed* flow charts should be enough for any skilled programmer. You shouldn't need C+ code - and if you do, what happens in 5 years when you say "I don't know C+, I only know Swift" or whatever the next language is? Conversely, what about art from the 60s or 70s - if it had COBOL code would you know how to use that? No, pseudocode and detailed* flow charts should be enough of a disclosure, because from them, you can implement the program in any language.

*Many patent applications do not have detailed flow charts, but rather "flow charts" that just show a single series of steps in a line, as Prof. Lemley noted in one of the interviews linked from another comment. You're right - those are total crap and don't teach anyone anything.

Yes, and no... Patent Examiners are bound under the requirements of due process to present a prima facie case for why an application is not patentable, as the initial burden rests on the Office. How do you provide a prima facie case that an idea is abstract? It's a conclusion, not an argument supported by evidence, as the Courts have admitted when their evidence is "I know it when I see it".

Quite possibly, though it fails to answer my question about your definition of "actually inventive". It also points to part of the problem with Alice, since your first question is really about 112 written description, your second question is really about 112 enablement and unclaimed essential matter, and your third question (as you note) is really about 103 obviousness. Now, I agree, that if you meet 103 and 112, Justice Thomas would likely not "know an [abstract idea] when he sees it" and find the application invalid under 101, and maybe that's a fine answer from a pragmatic standpoint, but it's a terrible one from a jurisprudence standpoint.

Which is a shame, because Congress has already defined it in Section 100:

So, for example, a new use of a known machine - like, say, a new business method performed on a known computer - would fall under that statutory definition.

They've been great in the two major 101 cases, Bilski and Alice. Hardly anyone thought those claims were (or should have been) valid, as the methods were old and well known... But that's also like going back to the old obscenity cases and having your "test case" be Two Girls, One Cup. The old saying "bad facts make bad law" is true primarily because everyone agrees with the outcome based on those bad facts... but then it's used as precedent in cases where the facts aren't nearly so bad.

As an aside, patents have a historic tie to property law, hence things like permanent injunctions and willful infringement damages... but maybe that's not such a good thing, as they're primarily economic instruments. It leads naturally to equity-based judgements rather than concrete tests and rules... people would be outraged if judges were routinely invalidating contracts as a matter of law on a "I know it when I see it" justification.
If we did away with the property tie and abandoned permanent injunctions and what are effectively punitive damages, in exchange for compulsory licensing and reasonable royalties, a lot of the issues people have with trolls would go away, too.

Technically, one could easily argue that the District Court found the claims to be invalid under 35 USC 103 over an electronic device in view of Official Notice that "suggesting an additional good or service... based on certain information obtained about the customer and the initial purchase" is known in the art because "shrewd sales representatives have long made their living off of this basic practice" and it therefore is "purely conventional steps that are well-understood, routine, and previously known to the industry". Certainly, nothing in the decision points to it being abstract - rather, the judge repeatedly states that it is known.

In fact, one could argue that if something is routinely done, it's not abstract at all. It's just not new.

... at trial, yes. Not at the USPTO or before the PTAB.

And in KSR, SCOTUS pushed that way back. Now it's actually quite easy, unless the claims recite an element that you just can't find a reference for, anywhere.

That'd be an easy 103 rejection: you can prove it's been "done previously," right? You can prove that the platform existed previously, right? Where's the problem?

How do you define "actually inventive"? Currently, we have the 102/103 tests of novelty and nonobviousness, but if you're saying we shouldn't use those tests and should just determine, under 101, whether something is "actually inventive", what's the test? As Judge Wu said, "I know it when I see it"?

Those patents - of which I've to actually see an example - would already be invalid under 103: [known method]+[known computer/network/device]=obvious combination of two prior art elements that, between them, teach or suggest each and every element in the claim.

Sure, they're also invalid under Alice's interpretation of 101... but that's because Thomas' eligibility test is really just an obviousness test, hence his repeated references to "conventional techniques". Effectively, what Alice changed was to give courts an easy way to handwave something away as obvious as a matter of law, without requiring any actual prior art evidence, simply by calling it "abstract".

Agreed. I never used a case with my iPhone, and a protruding lens would've been annoying and probably gotten caught on things on my pockets.

... but I do admit that I'm the only person I know of my friends who doesn't have a case on his phone.

Although I agree and would rather have the additional battery, most people put their phones in a case, which adds some thickness... The lens will protrude into the case cross-sectional region, allowing the overall phone+protruding-lens+case to be thinner than a thicker-phone+flat-lens+case.

If you read the article, in the instances where the automation didn't know what to do, it pulled over and stopped:

The driver doesn't need to react in time - the car does that. The driver merely needs to make the next decision to start moving again and guide the car to where it needs to go.

In hindsight, everything looks trivial. That's why you need to find actual prior art that invalidates the claims. And in particular, mimicking something in the real world may still be patentable, if the patent goes to the method of how it's mimicked. For example, we're trained from birth to recognize faces, but would you say that a facial recognition technology for a computer would never be patentable, because it just mimics that real-world ability? No - it depends on what's actually in the claims, and whether they go to how that simulation is implemented, rather than just the general idea of "recognizing faces" or "unlocking something".

That's what the controversy is over? "Here's a list of 50 games, and oh yeah, this is one of them"? Geez. Are you going to start demanding long form birth certificates from everyone now?

Well, when you're done clutching your pearls, we'll get you a glass of water so you can calm down. I mean, the way you were carrying on, I thought there was a review, not a "here's 50 new Greenlighted games".