Enablement is a joke in software patents. I actually did research on this and "written description", and (from memory) some judges have said that you need "structure" in your application, and having a box on your diagram labelled "access control" can be that structure. A person of ordinary skill in the art could construct it from those words. There's no need to provide any further details on the access control.
Before someone points this out: obviously if "access control" is not part of the claimed invention, then you don't need to specify it beyond a box. But then you probably wouldn't have put it in the diagram in the first place.
There's an empirical test that the PTO could do: take some software patents and give them to a large sample of people skilled in the art (which, if I remember correctly, is often two years of relevant experience plus a BS degree in computer science). "Relevant experience" would mean "in the field of the patent," e.g. if it's automobile battery management software, experience in missile guidance doesn't count.
See how many are able to make and practice the invention with a "reasonable amount of experimentation."
Enablement is a joke in software patents. I actually did research on this and "written description", and (from memory) some judges have said that you need "structure" in your application, and having a box on your diagram labelled "access control" can be that structure. A person of ordinary skill in the art could construct it from those words. There's no need to provide any further details on the access control.
There's an empirical test that the PTO could do: take some software patents and give them to a large sample of people skilled in the art (which, if I remember correctly, is often two years of relevant experience plus a BS degree in computer science). "Relevant experience" would mean "in the field of the patent," e.g. if it's automobile battery management software, experience in missile guidance doesn't count.See how many are able to make and practice the invention with a "reasonable amount of experimentation."