Product documentation and schematics

Antonio> I'm not sure that's quite it. I thought that the patent Antonio> would be invalid if somebody "competent in the art" could be Antonio> reasonably expected to have thought of it (but not Antonio> necessarily done it) so you'll obviously never see a patent Antonio> for moving a cursor by using an xor :-) Antonio> The few patents I've seen try to be as broad as possible Antonio> (without going quite far enough to be thrown out as too Antonio> broad) and give a few specific examples. There are a bunch of requirements -- as I understand it (IANAL), they are roughly like this: 1. It must be useful. 2. It must be "not obvious to one skilled in the art" (that's the one you mentioned). 3. It must be novel. 4. The description has to disclose the invention sufficiently for one "skilled in the art" to reproduce it. 5. The description has to be of a "preferred embodiment", i.e., one you'd pick, not a variant you'd reject in favor of something better you didn't describe. 6. You can't claim what you didn't describe. That's not to say that reality is all that close to this, but this is what I've been told the rules are. paul