England's Court of Appeal Rules On Meaning of 'One'

[StevieTNZ]

Their lordships concluded that “one” includes anything greater or equal to 0.5 and less than 1.5

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...nt-on-thorny-mathematical-issue-10350568.html

Thoughts?

 

[Drakkith]

Since the ruling is about the legal patent of a concentration of a solution and not the mathematical treatment of the integer, I don't really know what can be said.

 

[atyy]

That's what I learned in school. May be it's a British thing - I went to school in Singapore which was quite heavily influenced by Britain.

 

[StevieTNZ]

I guess what wider implications it has... the article was raised in the English Common Law Coursera course, and someone posted on the Professor who runs the course Facebook page "...so...if your employer agrees to a 1% increase he can give you 0.5 and are still within the legal limits". Whether the courts will enforce that, only time will tell. Has it set a precedent, regardless if its about patents or something else? Again only time will tell.

 

[Drakkith]

I guess what wider implications it has... the article was raised in the English Common Law Coursera course, and someone posted on the Professor who runs the course Facebook page "...so...if your employer agrees to a 1% increase he can give you 0.5 and are still within the legal limits". Whether the courts will enforce that, only time will tell. Has it set a precedent, regardless if its about patents or something else? Again only time will tell.

Hmmm, I didn't realize the ruling was that broad. I guess there's much to be said after all!

 

[zoobyshoe]

I guess what wider implications it has... the article was raised in the English Common Law Coursera course, and someone posted on the Professor who runs the course Facebook page "...so...if your employer agrees to a 1% increase he can give you 0.5 and are still within the legal limits". Whether the courts will enforce that, only time will tell. Has it set a precedent, regardless if its about patents or something else? Again only time will tell.

One of the judges, Lord Justice Christopher Clarke, admitted that it may seem daft to suggest that 0.5 now falls between 1 and 25. “To jump to that conclusion would, however, ignore the fact that figures, no less than words, may take their meaning from the context in which they are used,” he wrote in the final judgment.

“A linguist may regard the word ‘one’ as meaning ‘one – no more and no less’. To those skilled in the art it may, however, in context, imply a range of values extending beyond the integer,” he explained.

In other words, he's saying this redefinition of "one" only applies in "contexts" where someone is trying to exploit the letter of the law to violate its spirit. The patent violators, in this case, were, in fact, infringing on the original patent, outright copying someone else's recipe, but pretending they weren't, by using an amount of an ingredient just barely outside the parameters covered in the patent. In that 'context', the judges decided to protect the patent with a bit of counter-legalese. The phrase he uses, "To those skilled in the art..." refers, I'm sure, to the 'art' of legal interpretation. Were he permitted to speak freely, which he isn't, I believe Lord Justice Christopher Clarke would explain that Smith & Nephew were infringing on the ConvaTec patent by exploiting a technicality, so he and his colleges cobbled up a legally plausible sounding protection of the patent, using some gobbledegook about rounding numbers up and down.

 

[WWGD]

Maybe they can refer to Bill Clinton's thoughts on "what is is" for context.