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@ Tufty Sylvestris
2025-04-25 21:29:33
Sometimes it matters what order you put things in. In the Faketoshi03 opposition, I failed to notice that the problem with the patent was not just that it wasn't novel or inventive, but that it was also fatally flawed because it had been amended badly.
The Opposition Division (OD) helped out with this when they raised an objection of added matter, which in the end was enough to kill the patent. The patentee has appealed the decision and is trying to get this overturned. This will, I expect, not work.
The problem comes down to how the features of claim 1 were ordered - as set out by the OD in their decision. Feature F1.6 has to come after F1.5 because you can't provide the further blockchain transaction if you haven't first searched for it.
We argued this in the opposition and objected that the claim was impossible to implement because the further transaction could not be provided if it was absent. The patentee then deleted the words "or absence" from F1.5, thereby admitting that this was the intended order.
This seems to have triggered the OD to look more closely at where the features all came from. Here are the original claims the patentee said provided basis for claim 1 of the patent: 1, 3, 6 and 7. See what the order is?
A plain reading results in the "monitoring or searching" step coming *after* the "providing a further blockchain transaction" step, contrary to how it was presented in claim 1 as granted, thereby adding matter. This was enough for the OD to find the patent invalid.
The patentee is now arguing on appeal that the order doesn't matter, even though they had made an amendment that depended on the order we argued for. In reply, we will be saying that they are wrong and that they are now trying to backtrack from their own admission.
This is another case that is going to take a while to resolve, possibly a couple of years, but it seems clear already where this is going.
https://m.primal.net/QdOV.png
https://m.primal.net/QdOc.png