The Patent Multiple: a case for the document-object is a presentation of a working paper at 4S 2011 in Cleveland, OH. This is a working version of the talk.

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The questioning of patents is by no means a new project. Numerous authors who study technology have studied these documents to uncover what they tell us about science, technology, and society. Most have explored the legal uses of patents: how patents are deployed in debates over innovation¹; how the legal status of patents produce an “anticommons”²; how patents legally bind progress, innovation, and R&D.³ Others have historicized the claims within patents against real practice either in tracing the closure of a technology⁴ or in tracing knowledge transfer.⁵ And still there are more.

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studies of differences in research geared toward patents versus pure research and development⁶; the effect of patents, as markers of innovation, on stock prices⁷; and so on.

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While the aims, approaches, and arguments are diverse and sometimes contradictory, one feature remains unquestionably consistent: the focus of these discussions involving patents is not patents, but patented objects, whether those objects be mining processes or drill bits. In other words, patents are defined by this use as documents about objects, or more concisely, object-documents.

The patent as object-document denotes many things, a few of which are worth highlighting. First, since patents and patented things are discussed so inextricably tied, patents appear to have the same sociotechnical network as the patented thing. In this dependent situatedness, patents exist as embedded waypoints for technologies. To account for patents is nothing more than to account patented objects and a process of patenting. Second and derivative of the first, arguing with patents is really deploying arguments about objects. When one brings a patent into debate, the patent serves as another, though certainly official, constitution of an object. Geof Bowker provides a prime example of this, claiming that patents “give internalist and Whig accounts of the development of the process or apparatus that they describe, and as legal instruments they attempt to impose that interpretation on the material world.”⁸. The patent is a manifestation of some version of an object: an internalist and Whig version for some or maybe an externalist and socially constructed for others. Regardless of what the object is, the patent deploys it. Third, the object-document patent self-effaces. The background discussion, the description, the claims, the drawings, and the search report enter to point away from the patent as an artifact and toward the patent as a fact. This is not to say patents are true–Bowker does a fine job of debunking the veracity of patents by making its text exactly such. Instead, patents are reduced–the patent is what it says. Lastly and most subtly, when entered into debates, patents appear as immutable matters-of-fact. Certainly the interpretations can render the text differently, but the patent as a document does not change.

These understandings of patents have their rightful place as dominating the discussion involving patents. Patents do describe objects, and, in debates about those objects, patents shed light on what is and is not protected, or innovative, or historically accurate. Likewise, patents necessarily self-efface and appear immutable–what legal relevance would they have otherwise? But these understandings beg questioning themselves: Are patents really so tied to their purported innovation? Can a patent make claims beyond claims about its object? Are they not objects themselves? Are they immutable? Are they so one dimensional?

The present paper does not answer these in full, but posits a complementary notion: patents are objects that happen to be documents, that is, patents are document-objects. Accordingly, a study of patents does not need to be brought back to the objects described, but can and should explore the patent itself.

This paper focuses on four specific aspects of one specific patent. These aspects are litanies, drawings, associated documents, and language; the patent is Security system for screening people. The paper is structured around description, and specifically trying to describe what the patent for Security system for screening people is beyond the object the patent itself describes. These aspects provide counterpoints to the traditional notions of patents. In exploring patents outside of the traditional object-contextualization work, the paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion within STS as to how to, as John Law puts it, decenter the object.

For the purposes of the presentation, only discuss associated documents will be covered.

To begin, we need to start with the patent: Security system for screening people. An excerpt from the abstract:

“The present invention is directed towards an X-ray people screening system capable of rapidly screening people for detection of metals, low Z materials (plastics, ceramics and illicit drugs) and other contraband which might be concealed beneath the person’s clothing or on the person’s body”⁹

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In an exemplary embodiment, the scanning system has two scanning modules that are placed in parallel, yet opposing positions relative to each other. The two modules are spaced to allow a subject, such as a person, to stand and pass between the two scanning modules. The first module and second module each include a radiation source (such as X-ray radiation) and a detector array. The subject under inspection stands between the two modules such that a front side of the subject faces one module and the back side of the subject faces the other module.”((http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=EorYAAAAEBAJ))

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The device of Security system for screening people is one associated with the Transportation Security Administrations’ program called Advanced Imaging Technology. While many are aware of the controversy about the TSA program, the device described in this patent is only a piece of the system: the device of Security system for screening people only produces the raw detection data by way of X-rays and not the hotly contested images of AIT. The digital computer and software processes are elsewhere. While the patent mentions the device as generating and displaying images and is categorically aligned with imaging, what this might entail is bracketed as demonstrated by figures 1-3 where the words “digital computer” and “image display monitor” appear in within aptly designed black boxes.

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Here are three diagrams that bring this abstract into some visual form. The first diagram shows “a side view of the screening system of the present invention, further illustrating the position of a subject under inspection”. The next diagrams show “a side view of the screening system of the present invention, further illustrating a subject being scanned by the first [and second] module”. These drawings show “a mechanical means for generating a horizontal [and vertical] sweeping pencil beam of X-rays”.¹⁰

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Filed in December 2008 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and issued in November 2010, a provisional application is listed as filed in December 2007 under the same name–save different capitalization. The listed inventors–Andreas Kotowski and Ronald J. Hughs–are located in California–Ranchos Palos Verde and Garden Grove, respectively at the time of filing–and work presumably for Rapiscan Systems, Inc., located in Torrence, California.

The originally published patent is 14 pages long as a printer-ready PDF. The first page is a standard overview of a patent including one drawing, the abstract, the inventors, the assignee, the filer, the referenced patents, etc.; the second page is a continuation of the referenced patents (there are 162 cited patents in total, spanning 34 years from 1970 to 2004); the next five pages are drawings; the last seven pages are written text divided into sections. The patent contains 6 drawings and 18 claims. A fifteenth page was added in August 2011 detailing an error reported within the body.

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Two foreign patents–one with the European Patent Office and the other with the World Intellectual Property Organization–are listed as being foreign patent documents. The former is a patent from 1988 and the latter is a patent from 2007. (We will revisit this second document later.)

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Online and through Google’s patent database, the patent can be viewed primarily as a combination of two-column webpage with sequential scrolling PDF pages (all fifteen) or as converted, and rather buggy, rich-text. The 14-page patent can also be downloaded from Google Patents. The USPTO website offers different options: the patent primarily displays as simply formatted HTML without the drawings or secondarily as scanned 15-page PDF. The USPTO does not offer a downloadable version of the patent at all.

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The patent is listed within the international subcategory of G01N 23/201. The category holds patents dealing with “[i]nvestigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation [...] by using diffraction of the radiation [... and specifically] by measuring small-angle scattering”.¹¹ The patent as list with this category is defined negatively as grouped with those patents “not covered by group G01N 21/00 or G01N 22/00, e.g. X-rays, neutrons”.¹² Within the US, the patent is cross-categorized in classes 378/57 and 378/87. The former groups patents for inspecting closed containers¹³; the latter groups patents for imaging¹⁴. The patent is here defined in three non-intersecting ways–by its method, by its subject, and by its product.

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Now that the patent has been laid out, we arrive at a question: what does this tell us?

Litanies:

In revisiting the first sentence of the abstract we find a curious thing:

“The present invention is directed towards an X-ray people screening system capable of rapidly screening people for detection of metals, low Z materials (plastics, ceramics and illicit drugs) and other contraband which might be concealed beneath the person’s clothing or on the person’s body.”

Worth noting are the two lists, or litanies, within this single sentence: one containing “metals, low Z materials and other contraband”, and another parenthetical litany refining low Z materials, “plastics, ceramics, and illicit drugs”. Focusing on the second litany we seem to be given a definition by example of what low Z materials are. Put directly, low Z materials are materials that are composed of elements with a low atomic weight, such as carbon and nitrogen. While plastics, ceramics, and illicit drugs are most certainly low Z materials, so are sandwiches, people, and leather belts. That is to say, low Z materials define a large number of things that are commonly occurring. Within the context of airport security, plastics, ceramics, and illicit drugs certainly rise in particular interest since people are asked to remove all of these other items when passing through a checkpoint, leaving, say, a ceramic pistol to the gaze of the machine. But this litany is not simply a list that describes what the patented machine detects since it will detect watches if given the opportunity. Instead, the litany does something else, namely presents what a threat is more abstractly.

This form of list is often called a Latour litany in object-oriented philosophy. In general, Latour litanties, as philosopher Graham Harman writes, “establish the autonomous force and personality of individual actors, rather than allowing them to be reduced to or swallowed up by some supposedly deeper principle”,¹⁵ or, as philosopher Ian Bogost states a Latour litany “underscores the rich diversity of things”.¹⁶ In terms of arguments, litanies explain the composition of the world, i.e. an ontology, by demonstrating the heterogeneous co-existence of things. Plastics, ceramics, and illicit drugs define a world that is complicated, changing, and categorically blurry, but also what one that is detectable and distinguishable.

More over, the parenthetical litany is further exaggerated by its containment in another litany–metals, low Z materials, and contraband. Here, again, is a description of the fluid and fuzzy being of threats. Metal is not necessarily contraband, nor are low Z materials. The patent collocates these, and so correlates them. In a post-9/11 world where insurgents and terrorists intermingle with allies and freedom fighters, the state of being a threat is not simply being deductively dangerous, but inductively threatening. Shampoo, nail clippers, and tennis shoes exist alongside glocks, carbon-fiber knives, and plastic explosives. Security system for screening people, the patent and not the object, describes (shall we say patents) a world view as being composed of ever changing requirements and sites of security.

There are more however: the list of categories, the list of locations, the list of claims. As for the first, imaging, closed containers, and small-angle scattering assemble to define the patent as Venn diagram, the genetic intersection of separate objects. The second defines the patent as a geography. As much as it and the patented apparatus can be located, the patent also has an opposite vector–placing people, companies, linked files, and governments in space. The third defines Security system for screening people as a rich collection of sentences beginning with phrase “The imaging apparatus” as much as a litany of who and what has efficacy in airports.

Other documents:

As previously mentioned, Security system for screening people has two associated patent documents. The later document, as it turns out, is an international dzygotic twin titled Improved security system for screening people. This document, despite its titular amendment, was filed in parallel the US patent and subsequently published a year quicker.

Improved security system for screening people is 27 pages long. The only internal changes to the content (at least in English) are additions: an international search report added as an appendix and one additional claim inserted between claims 5 and 6 of the US version. The descriptions, the drawings, inventors, and the other 18 claims are identical Security system for screening people save minor changes such as replacing the abbreviated “FIG.” with the full word “figure” when discussing the diagrams.

The length increase is more due to formatting than additions: The US patent of Security system for screening people is two-column justified type with tight leading and 9 point font. Line numbers placed between the columns, and the top and bottom margins are tight at only a 1-inch and a half inch respectively. On the other hand, the WIPO patent is one-column justified type with more open line spacing, a slightly larger font, and a widened left margins to account for line numbering. The top and bottom margins are significantly larger at 1.5 inches and 1 inch respectively.

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Additionally, the online format is a tabbed javascript enabled page, separating out sections and excluding drawings. A PDF and an XML with TIFF images are downloadable.

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As for the the added claim–international claim 6–it simply states “The imaging apparatus of claim 1 wherein said processor processes programmable code that causes the first module or the second module to move vertically.”¹⁷ This is truly the only distinguishing feature of the international patent, maybe accounting for why is improved. Without judging whether this is significant enough, the unchanged descriptions, diagrams, and field of invention make this puzzling. Not only are there are no added features described, nor processes of mechanical articulation, the US patent actually includes vertical movement in the optional features, though without specifically highlighting this as unique.

Regardless of whether it actually improves upon the US patent, the WIPO document does something else. Proceeding the unchanged body text is a note that states “The present invention relies on, for priority, United States Provisional Patent Application Number 61/016,590, of the same title, filed on December 25, 2007.”¹⁸ The referenced provisional title, however, does not actually contain the word Improved.

What this demonstrates is that as artifacts patents are rather mutable both internally and externally. A patent can be improved upon not by being different, but by separating claims into smaller parts or enumerating claims that are always there. Innovation appears combinatoric through internal reconfiguration.

Externally, the patent can change as well. While the international patent appears to incorrectly state the title of the provisional US patent, it is the international patent that moves most widely, re-filed with Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia, and protected in most countries around the world. From this perspective, it is the US provisional patent that got it wrong. To clarify, the international patent assembles a network of consenting organizations, secondary-tier documents, patent officials, obliging governments, eager lawyers, and search results. If facts are merely those things that gain enough observational consensus, then the international patent has constructed a fact about the provisional patent regardless of the provisional patents’ disagreement.

What matters in both these cases is that the patent as an artifact is not simply built upon, but recombined and reconstituted as other objects by other objects, some of which are documents. Where Bowker recognizes the patent is a text that can be deployed with interpretation, there is an assumption that the patent does not itself change. Bowker stresses how the non-neutral patent-text can be looked at in terms of its falsehood, i.e. how it is out-of-sync with the world at large, and in this space of discord formulates a rhetorical device on this at the level of content. These examples claim otherwise: the patent composes a rhetorical device in how it moves through these networks, such as how one document appears by way of another or how the text can be reused. The object described in both is the same, but the patent is not. The inextricable ties seem to be loosening. Even more these deployments appear as matters-of-fact, further strengthening their potency: the international version can be distributed as an XML document with TIFF images. Unassuming enough, this format disguises that the bulk of its composition enumerates geographies of protection rather than what it protects.

To briefly conclude, I pose a question: what does this say about patents? While patents are often primarily understood as descriptors, patents themselves are partially, and by no means primarily, themselves descriptors. If STS is concerned with failures and flops, marginalia and minutiae, then preferencing the descriptive capacity of patents denies the many other ways to concern one’s self with document-objects in general and patents in particular. As objects, patents in many ways move move independently of their objects. As an example, Security system for screening people provides insight into how we can decenter objects, whether those be the patented objects or patents themselves.

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10. http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=EorYAAAAEBAJ [↩]
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12. http://www.wipo.int/ipcpub/#symbol=G01N0023201000&refresh=page [↩]
13. http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc378/defs378.htm#C378S057000 [↩]
14. http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc378/defs378.htm#C378S087000 [↩]
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17. http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2009082762&recNum=1&tab=PCTClaims&maxRec=&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=&queryString= [↩]
18. http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2009082762&recNum=1&maxRec=&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=&queryString=&tab=PCTDescription [↩]