If said toilet had a double tap flush button to prevent you from accidentaly flushing your iPhone, that'd definitely be patentable. Sure, you don't patent user behaviour, but you can patent devices forcing a certain user behaviour.
Yes your are certainly right that all that is patentable.
My rant is addressed to the awakening pattent watch dogs that might be reading.
Software or specific usage patterns inherent to a certain technology..Good luck avoiding that overlap between "patentable" and what is supposed to be logic usage following a certain key technology.
And when something good gets going we have to fear the awakening patent watch dogs backed by their oiled law suite machine..
With the toilet example I'd point out that it shouldn't be patentable if a chimp given the device can figure it out (double tap or swipe).
Now I am off to check If I can secure my patent on all geometrical shapes to unlock, square, triple tap, swirl to unlock Morse code to send SMS and do simple things from lock screen w/o screen backlight on (army) and customizable app specific touch gestures on an overlay.
Even just the cost of defending spurious patent claims for a small company could be huge. A lot of patent trolls rely on the fact it's often cheaper to pay for a licence than defend the claim.
I wonder how much this has affected the design, features and global roll out of their first device?
lol
good luck (if it's already available as a product or the solution to the problem to be solved has been published, it can no longer be patented)
deep pockets (to file the patents, to defend them, to enforce them)
some things can't be patented, some things were patented a long time ago and the protection has run out, some things are on a product before any patent application was filed, and some things even get not patented to protect the knowledge on how they are working or are produced.
the patent watch dogs are trolls making their lives easy by assuming each technology on a product is actually patented. unless someone actually posts a link to a patent (all of them are available publicly, including applications pending) I won't worry. (Source: I have a patent pending and spent weeks with a lawyer, researching if my invention was published, patented or sold before)
and I see you have understood how patents nowadays work (worst are uboat patents imnsho btw)
And don't forget that US patents and EU patents differ. Most of the US trash patents in electronics can't be patented in the EU, as the patent law is not as permissible. Even the US is coming to terms with this (i.e. the summer rejection of Apples pinch-to-zoom patent in the US).
Since Jolla is not selling directly in the US, I assume patents can't be infringed on in that market anyway.
In other news, the EU has warned Nokia not to go down the road of a patent troll.
They're keeping a close eye on Nokia now. Google and Microsoft already had to learn what that means.
I didn't really understand the point of that warning. Nokia already became a troll (which even indirectly affected Sailfish with lack of VPx). Instead of warning, EU could take action to prevent any patent abuse.
I didn't really understand the point of that warning. Nokia already became a troll (which even indirectly affected Sailfish with lack of VPx). Instead of warning, EU could to take action to prevent any patent abuse.
I think that the warning is regarding patents that are essential for standards, and VPx sholuldn't fall into that category, nor rounded corners, if ever that were patentable in the EU.
