[Ron99]

I am aware of how patents work as I have been involved in several and have read many more.

In order to patent something there does have to be some invention. You can get priority for an idea using the PPA (provisional patent application) which gives you a year to file your RPA (regular patent application. The RPA usually does have to have some supporting information to support your claims. To use your wheelbarrow analogy, I can't just say that the existing wheelbarrows are rectangular so I am going to patent an icosahedral wheelbarrow. I would have to describe or show how the icosahedral wheelbarrow is an improvement over the rectangular wheelbarrow. Also, if the icosahedral wheelbarrow would be an obvious application of wheelbarrow technology to anybody skilled in the art of wheelbarrows it would not be patentable.

Thus my opinion of Orbitec's patents. Using LEDs as light sources for aquariums is obvious. It is a natural evolution as new forms of lighting become viable. Just like CF, MH, T5HO, plasma lighting etc. As lighting improves or changes it gets adopted for aquarium use. Now they are trying to claim some spatial and spectral control that leads to better growth. So they should have shown exactly how that spatial and spectral control affects growth and is an advantage over other light sources etc. The patent is way to broad and if issued should have been for a specific set of wavelengths and time periods demonstrated to have an advantage over other set ups.

In any case, I am going to read the full patents when I have a chance in the next day or two and give you a summary then. But from first glance they are not accurate as they imply that other forms of lighting have not been used to promote growth in corals which is wrong. The problem is that patent examiners are usually not experts in the fields of the patents they are reviewing and rarely do the research necessary to understand and qualify the information in the patents. It goes both ways. We had a horror of a patent examiner once who didn't understand our patent, didn't understand the responses to her comments and held up our patent for a while because she was disinterested in doing her job properly and was completely wrong about her understanding of the technology. We finally had to complain to the USPTO about her conduct to get the patent issued.