keyboard layout

[patentkeyboardlayout]

Hi,

First of all, I am a completely ignorant of legal issues, let alone about the procedure to follow, therefore for now I'll be concise, inviting you to ask whatever additional information I should provide. Furthermore, please elaborate your reply as much as possible.

I am and live in the European Union. I'd like to patent a keyboard layout for a language which uses a non-latin script. Apart from a brief description, I've thought a couple of drawings showing the distribution of characters would suffice it.

USA 'upsto' obviously seems the most international office. I'd like to know as much related to my quest as is available, especially how to figure out the total fee to pay during the whole period the patent is protected.

Hope to hear news soon.
Thank you so much in advance.

[NJ Patent1]

Keyboard:  You are in the EU and I'm 99%+ confident that your home country is a party ("contracting state") to the European Patent Convention (EPC).  Most if not all member states likely have a "file at home first" requirement.  I can't say for sure, but it's most likely that filing in the EPO would satisfy "file at home first" requirements.  The EPO is just as international as the USPTO, and if you are thinking of multi-national patent protection (where do you think the market would be?), an international patent application ("PCT application") might be the way to go.  You couldn't file such application in the USPTO as the so-called "receiving office" unless you had the necessary connections to the US. 

Fees?  If you mean US only, maintenance fees are on the USPTO website.  Other countries have their own maintenance fees, and some charge maintenance fees just to keep the application – let alone the patent – alive.  The possible combinations are too diverse for me to guesstimate.  But we're talking about real euros here. 

Keyboard layout?  On first consideration and in US language, seems more like a candidate for a design patent (the way something looks) rather than a utility patent (nuts-and-bolts and how they work to produce an unexpected technical effect)

[Robert K S]

You may want to read up on "printed matter" doctrine (aka "nonfunctional descriptive matter") if you choose to pursue U.S. patent rights for a new keyboard layout.  A case of particular relevance is In re Xiao, 462 F. App'x 947, 950-52 (Fed Cir. 2011).  In Xiao, the applicant sought to patent a combination lock having tumbler rings marked with letters rather than numbers; the lock could be configured to open when a user aligned the letters on successive tumbler rings to spell a pre-selected password, under the theory that this would prove easier to remember than an arbitrary series of numbers or letters.  The invention was held unpatentable under the aforementioned doctrine because the changing of the marks on the lock could not distinguish the lock over the prior art:

patent applicants cannot rely on printed matter to distinguish a claim unless "there exists [a] new and unobvious functional relationship between the printed matter and the substrate." In re Gulack, 703 F.2d 1381, 1386 (Fed. Cir. 1983).  Relying primarily on In re Miller, 418 F.2d 1392 (CCPA 1969), Appellant argues that the wild-card position labels exhibit a synergistic functional relationship with the claimed lock and should thus be accorded patentable weight. ... Specifically, Appellant asserts that (1) the wild-card labels render the claimed lock physically different from and improved relative to preexisting designs, (2) the wild-card labels function as more than simple position markers because they can represent any letter and thereby enable users to select any desired password even where each tumbler ring has less than twenty-six positions, and (3) the Board created an unsupported and improper rule categorically excluding "mental distinctions" from the patentability analysis.

The appeals court went on to shoot down these three arguments one-by-one.  Particularly:

the wild-card labels lack a true functional relationship with the claimed lock. In Miller, a patent applicant had claimed devices for preparing fractional portions of recipes, such as measuring cups bearing (1) volumetric indicia different from actual volume and (2) a legend providing the ratio between the actual and indicated volumes. ... Thus, to prepare a one-third portion of a given recipe, a user could select measuring devices bearing a "1/3 recipe" legend and follow the recipe as written, measuring each ingredient using the false indicia printed on the device but actually obtaining one third of each specified amount without performing any calculations. ... The claims had been rejected, with the "false indicia" and legend considered mere printed matter, but our predecessor court reversed and held that the functional interaction between the claimed cup, indicia, and legend yielded a new and nonobvious invention.  ... Similarly, in Gulack, we reversed rejections against an educational device comprising a band or ring printed with numbers tracking a cyclic mathematical formula. ... We held that the band and digits were functionally related because the band not only provided a substrate for the printed digits but also presented them as an endless loop, thus illustrating the cyclic nature of the formula. ...  Miller and Gulack thus both concerned printed matter interrelated with its substrate to an extent that the overarching invention's function depended on their interaction.  Just as a cook would have found Miller's measuring cup counterproductive without its matched indicia and legend, Gulack's mathematical device relied on combining its physical circularity and cyclical printed matter to achieve its educational utility. In contrast, Appellant's claims demonstrate no such functional relationship between the wild-card position labels and the underlying lock.  The claimed lock's function turns solely on the physical alignment among tumbler rings, regardless of what may be printed at each position or how an individual user subjectively perceives any particular position label.  In short, the presence or identity of a given position label has no bearing on the lock's ultimate function, and the claimed device can be used in the same way and for the same purposes with or without wild-card position labels.

I would think that, similarly, the presence or identity of a given keyboard key label has no bearing on the keyboard's ultimate function.  No matter where you assign each letter on the keyboard, the keyboard still works the same, in that pressing the key results in the assigned function being performed, e.g., printing the letter on a screen.

[Dazed-n-confused]

Hi Robert K S.  Do you think arranging the claim as a method-of-typing using the new layout would fly?  Of course, you'd be more limited in protection (inducement or contribution for makers/sellers of the new keyboard).

[Robert K S]

Not enough information to say.

There have to have been some keyboard layout patent applicants in recent years.  If I were trying to patent a keyboard layout I would try to track down some of those applications, if public, and see how they fared and what pitfalls they ran into.  If necessary, you might even want to personally call up some keyboard layout inventors and ask for their application numbers and/or any other information they can give you that might help you to avoid wasting time and money.  And if you're lucky enough to find a recent patent on a keyboard layout, it may provide a breadcrumb trail for you to follow in your own quest.

[Robert K S]

Here are a couple of grants but they're a little old.

https://www.google.com/patents/US5584588

https://www.google.com/patents/US6900794

Here's an article on the Dvorak layout patent (older still):

https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0512dvorak-keyboard-patent/