[ExI] comprisition, was: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 216, Issue 27

[Anton Sherwood]

On 2021-9-19 09:06, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote:
> On the other hand, if you write in your patent application, "my
> invention, the electric light, comprises

Oh, what's that word again?  Is it active or passive here?

> a light bulb, a battery, and
> wires in a circuit", then somebody who adds a switch or diode to the
> circuit is still using your invention and it is infringing your patent
> rights.
> 
> So in patent law "comprised" infers

(or even implies)

> that the components listed are not
> all there is to the invention, simply that any additional components
> are ancillary to the invention. While composed suggests the components
> listed are in total, the complete invention.

I have at least once seen «comprise» defined as ‘include exhaustively’, 
as in “Japan comprises four big islands and many little ones” but not 
*“Japan comprises Hokkaido.”  But that restriction is not consistent 
with the French usage.

> Applying patent law to the OP's use of comprised: A burger comprised
> of wooly mammoth meat might also contain beef, soy, or other fillers
> in addition to mammoth meat, but a burger composed of mammoth meat
> would have to be 100% mammoth meat and nothing else.

Well.  If «[is] comprised of» here means the same as «comprises» above, 
why not be gone of all the way?  If it's right to be used of a passive 
verb with «of» as equivalent to the corresponding active form, one may 
as well be converted of all of them.

-- 
*\\*  Anton Sherwood  *\\*  www.bendwavy.org