Technology and Law

The intersection between the frequently separate worlds of law and technology occurs in the vital field that deals with the securing of and implementation of patent laws. In their basic conception, the rules passed for securing a patent claim on a new device or method for implementing technology are intended to function in the field of technology and law by providing a legal means for the inventors of new technology to assert their ownership in a way that encourages them to make the new technology available to the wider public and allows that wider public to realize the intended purpose of the new technological method. One crucial issue in the implementation of a law and technology program consists of the manner in which that system’s regulations and courts deal with the concerns arising from the tendency of one new kind of technology to inspire other inventors and give rise to new devices.

Historically, the field of technology and law has found that questions related to this issue can be more difficult to satisfactorily and fairly resolve than might be thought from the basic nature of patent law. The problem lies in determining the true relationship between a device that is already covered by a patent claim and a new kind of technology that the previous inventor feels to be similar to that which he developed. Because the patent field of law and technology also outpaces the development of an understandable and usable vocabulary for describing a new technology, the wording of a patent application can be found inadequate to the task of showing its relation to technology which are developed at a later date. A common approach taken in some, though not all, technology and law philosophies, including that of the United States, is the doctrine of equivalency, which allows a space for interpretation in the implementation of technology and law regulations for determining whether some degree of patent infringement has taken place.
Prior to the development of the concept of the doctrine of equivalency, the world of law and technology took a rigorously literal approach to comparing the wording of a patent application on a kind of technology to the technology which is claimed to be infringing on it. Even after the concept took hold in some approaches to technology and law, other countries continued to employ other methods for determining the occurrence of patent infringement. The field of law and technology in the United States is one that is governed by the application of the doctrine of equivalents. Other systems for dealing with technology and law questions, notably the legal system of the United Kingdom, differ in their approaches. The U.K. is marked by the use of the “pith and marrow” law and technology approach for distinguishing between essential and non-essential aspects of a kind of technology under patent, whereas the doctrine of equivalents requires that courts deciding technology and law patent questions look at the function, manner, and result of a kind of technology as a whole.