Apr 20, 2025 10:35 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
...
Jean,
A patentable idea doesn't actually need to be implemented. It must be new, useful, non-obvious, and "enableable" (feasible) in Australian law. I have a few patents that we proved were technically feasible but never made it into the final product.
The non-obvious part is quite difficult to prove with enough legal precision to satisfy the patent departments. "Here is why the new idea goes beyond the prior art in a novel way to achieve an objective..."
This is very pertinent to your original point about GPS as a concept or technology. There is an amazing amount of specificity required for GPS to work as we know it today. Issues such as frequencies, data encoding, position calculation, etc. must be solved and integrated into a functioning system. Even Einstein's special relativity actually matters.
The Systems Engineering discipline is in large part dedicated to how you define all those things that make the difference between an interesting idea, and a workable design.
Keith
