Our opinion

Our opinion about the IsNot patent application can be summarized as follows:

• The IsNot patent application would, when granted, lead to a trivial patent and its inventive step does not differentiate itself from the manifest prior art given above. It is hard to understand why this application would be granted. When granted, this patent could indeed be very harmful for further development.

• In a similar fashion as each scientific publication needs a rationale, we miss a rationale for this patent application.

• It is undesirable that others would have the obligation to find prior art. Given the fact that US patent applications are required to disclose prior art, it is at least curious that this application gives none.

• It is unclear what an infringement of this patent (when granted) would mean. Is the design of a programming language that contains an inequality operator an infringement? Is every program that uses an inequality operator an infringement? Is the mere notion of an inequality test in any form an infringement?

• We don't see a convincing argument why a major company would need this patent, apart from tactical considerations where this patent may clearly play a role.

• Is this a typical patent application? It could be argued that this patent application is one of a kind, and that our analysis of it is thus irrelevant. Although we agree that this is one specific example of a trivial patent application, it is an application from a large firm with a large patent practice, and certainly sufficient resources to determine whether an "invention" is trivial, and to identify prior art, prior to submitting a patent application. So we believe that if IsNot may not be a typical patent application, it is certainly potentially typical.