Gregory Mandel – Nonobvious standard is too low and too high…
1. What is the quantum of innovation necessary to satisfy section 103?
2. What is the baseline for a person of ordinary skill?
3. What are the time and resource limits for finding something obvious?

Solutions: substitutive probability standards

Highlights: Curse of Knowledge – once someone has knowledge they are not able to view things from a their former ignorant perspective.

Brian’s response: These are line drawing problems, I am not sure probability adds definition, but it is an interesting idea.

Random word count: Patent troll = 3

Given the $220,000 windfall that Capitol Records got yesterday, one wonders if their executives aren’t taking a closer look at the “patent troll” business model.

Companies like Intellectual Ventures are patent trolls. They create patents and sue others for infringing on them, while never bringing a single product to market.

It would be entirely within the law for Capitol Records to do this as well. A litigation-only business model would relieve them of having to actually sell any of the music to which they have the rights. If they don’t make it available to consumers at all, then they can focus their efforts on extracting $220,000 from every person who gets access to their songs.

Sounds like a legal, profitable, easy plan! Right?