Engineering Expert Witness Blog

      One of my favorite toys as a kid was Mr. Machine.   He was a windup mechanical man that swung his arms when he walked while repeatedly squawking a strange YAK! sound.   His body was transparent, so all the gears and levers inside were visible, and he even came with his own repair wrench.   Alas, his wrench was of little use when Mr. Machine took a tragic fall down the basement stairs.

      Mr. Machine was aptly named.   There’s no question but that he was a machine, because his inventor received a US patent, No. 3,050,900.   In order to accomplish this he had to have met guidelines set out in federal statutes, specifically those contained in 35 USC § 101.   He had to prove that Mr. Machine was a bona fide machine.

      If you’ll recall from last week’s discussion, in order to secure a patent, inventions must prove to be original technology that is classifiable as a machine, an article of manufacture, a composition of matter, or a process, or an improvement upon same.   Last week our focus was on utility, the first hurdle that an invention must jump for it to be patent eligible.   Let’s continue our discussion on patentability by examining the second hurtle.

      When you consider the word machine, you might imagine something containing mechanical parts, like my childhood mechanical friend.   But in the world of patents that’s not necessarily the case.   There, a machine can be mechanical, electrical, electronic, or electromechanical in nature.   In other words, a machine can include anything from a cell phone to a rocket.

      To be precise, under patent law the definition of machine includes any physical device consisting of two or more parts which dynamically interact with each other.   For example, a purely mechanical machine, such as a diesel engine, has many moving parts.   Those parts, the pistons, connecting rods, etc., are mechanically linked to dynamically interact, or move together, when the engine runs.

      Next week we’ll consider less obvious examples of what constitutes a machine under patent law.

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