Cat Lasers

One of the great mysteries of my trade, as seen from the outside, is how to actually read a patent. We drench everything in such thick legalese and technical jargon that even other lawyers find our work impenetrable. As a result, nobody knows if they’re actually infringing a patent unless they hire a patent lawyer to tell them!

So today’s post serves two purposes: We are getting back to basics with some cat content, and I am going to show that most of you have infringed a patent at least once in your lives. Behold the method of exercising a cat:

I am going to walk you through one of the claims here, and show how you, personally, violated the inventors’ rights. Consider this a quick lesson in how to read like a patent lawyer.

This is the text of Claim 1:

1. A method of inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat comprising the steps of:
   1. directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat; and
   2. selectively redirecting said beam out of the cat’s immediate reach to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light around an exercise area.

Let’s do this piece-by-piece. First we have what is called the preamble, which generally describes what the claim is about. It says, “A method for inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat comprising the steps of:”

“Method” identifies what class of subject matter we’re looking at. Patent statute 35 U.S.C. 101 defines the types of things you can get a patent for as, “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” A method is regarded as being a type of process, which lays out steps that someone (or something) performs.

The next part, “for inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat,” is often referred to as an intended use limitation. It describes why one might perform the method, and likely would not be regarded as limiting by itself. One part, however, might be regarded as a structural element that puts a meaningful limitation on the claim: That the cat be unrestrained. Presumably performing this method on a restrained cat would not be an infringement.

The final part of the preamble is the transitional phrase, “comprising the steps of.” This has a hyper-specific meaning in patent law. If you use the term comprising, then an infringement of the method can perform other steps in addition to the recited steps. By way of contrast, if you use the term consisting of, then it is an infringement if you perform only the steps recited. Most patents use comprising, because consisting of tends to make the claim way too limiting.

So the preamble starts us off by saying that this claim is a method about doing things to unrestrained cats, including at least the following steps.

The first step is: “directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat.” Let’s break that down clause-by-clause.

directing – This is the active verb, the thing you’re doing. It’s a pretty broad term, so it’ll cover any kind of pointing.

an intense coherent beam of invisible light – So “invisible light” is tricky here. Handheld laser pointers are generally red or green light, which I understand as being visible light. However, the specification clarifies that it is “invisible” in the sense that all light is invisible until it reflects off of something. So really it’s just any laser light.

produced by a hand-held laser apparatus – This one is straightforward. Any laser that is held in the hand.

to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light – This is arguably redundant, since that’s just what happens when you shine a laser in the visible spectrum at something. But I guess it excludes infrared or ultraviolet lasers.

at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface – Again, this is just what lasers do. But this does limit the claim to so that it only counts if you shine the laser at something opaque, rather than at the sky or through a glass door.

said pattern being of visual interest to a cat – This also seems inherent to lasers, but no harm in having it in to give some color to the claim.

So what does all that mean? The first step is just pointing a hand-held laser at a surface. You perform this step basically every time you use a laser pointer.

The second step is: selectively redirecting said beam out of the cat’s immediate reach to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light around an exercise area. Here’s the clause-by-clause breakdown:

selectively redirecting said beam – Just means pointing the laser beam somewhere else. The term “selectively” is curious, as the specification doesn’t provide any explanation for how you select the new direction, but the rest of the claim provides enough information to understand it.

out of the cat’s immediate reach – This clause limits the selective redirection, so that the user is moving the laser spot away from the cat.

to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light – This is another intended use and doesn’t seem to limit the claim. For example, if your cat is bored and doesn’t actually chase the laser spot, you’d still be infringing.

around an exercise area – This seems to be inherent, because any area where the cat is exercising could be interpreted as an exercise area. This is a method for inducing aerobic exercise, after all.

So all together, we have the first step that says, “point a laser beam,” and the second step that says, “moving the laser beam away from the cat.” Pretty much any time you use a laser pointer in the presence of a cat, you are performing this method.

Hopefully this illustrates how we patent attorneys take dead-simple content and dress it up to make it excruciating for anyone else to read. Why do we do that? Some might say it’s because a patent’s claims need to be exactingly precise. Cynics might say it’s for job security.

Anyway, the patent was in effect from 1995 to 2007. If you ever played with a cat during those twelve years, you probably owe the inventors some money.