Re: Brilliance

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> schrieb:

Yeah, I have absolutely no issue with ideas that are only obvious in
hindsight, they deserve praise. My real problem are those things that
are new, but only because of the environment, as in the idea would be
obvious to anyone "versed in the field".

"skilled in the art" (which has a nice ring to it) is the technical term
in English (see
https://www.epo.org/en/legal/guidelines-epc/2024/g_vii_3.html ).

But presence or lack of an inventive step can be quite difficult.
Examiners have argued that "This solution is so simple, somebody
must have come across it before"...

In one particular case, a colleague and myself were cooperating
closely on a related group of inventions.  It was quite amusing
that one particular point was quite obvious to him, which I found
out when I told him about my "new" finding.  Even more amusing
was that the same thing happened vice versa - something that was
completely obvious to me wasn't obvious to him at all, and needed
an explanation.

I.e US vs Norwegian (European?) patent law.

I think the US has now gotten closer in patent law to what the
rest of the world is doing.