Re: Architectural implications of locate mode I/O and channels

Thomas Koenig wrote:

MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:

Thomas Koenig wrote:
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John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
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IBM patented the 709's channel: US Patent 3,812,475 filed in 1957 but
not granted until 1974. The patent is 488 pages long including 409
pages of figures, 130 columns of narrative text, and 91 claims.
>
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3812475A/en

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What a monster.
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I've written long patents myself, but this one surely takes the
biscuit.

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The amalgamation of the figures and the placement of the figures
via the figure placement "figure" enable one to directly implement
the device in logic.

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That is, of course, very nice.
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But the sheer number of claims, 91, with around than half of them
indpendent (but quite a few formulated as "in combination", so there
may have been some dependency to other claims hidden in there...
must have taken the competition quite some time to figure out
what was actually covered, and if their own designs fell under
that patent or not.

It was the first !

>
And then it was granted after ~ 20 years, and continued to be
valid for another ~ 20 - US patent law used to be weird.

Much of the time, it is USPTO that has to bring an examiner up
to speed and completely digest the topic, this sets off a flurry
of notifications for clarification, followed by changes to the
text, claims, figures. All the wile that is going on, the examiner
is looking across his library for similar already patented "stuff".
All of that takes time measured in months and years.
During my tenure, I averaged 5 years from invention to grant or
reject, with 18 months from "at USPTO" to first correspondence.
Generally the examiner has found dozens to hundreds of discrepancies,
claim formation violations, figure violations,...and you get to
fix them all before [s]he begins anew--this goes on multiple
times.
After my tenure, I wrote my own patent and submitted it via my
patent lawyer, and waited and waited. Finally after 26 months,
I got my first correspondence: [S]he complained about one
sub-clause on one claim, and did not like the wording of one
paragraph. We fixed that and had the patent granted in 2 months.