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Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

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Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#101

Post by johndhi »

_ggwa wrote: post #93

My experience working as a patent examiner agrees fully with the title: legal texts tend to be hard mostly because they're poorly written. (DOC lawyers make me add this: This post is just my personal opinion, not that of the USPTO, DOC, US govt., etc.) I've been trained in patent legal terminology, which isn't that bad. Patent documents are still frequently difficult to understand. I have one application on my docket…

If the examiners can't enforce enablement, doesn't that mean it isn't a true requirement? And that in fact patents wind up being drafted not for the layperson?

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#102

Post by mistrial9 »

akie wrote: post #8

This is the same in any advanced academic field. Ever tried talking to a sociologist or a philosopher?

how about a museum historian !! I have a large vocabulary, and after a certain presentation, it seemed obvious to me that anytime one word could be used, three obscure words were its replacement.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#103

Post by torstenvl »

Consider the following two function definitions:

    int add(int a, int b) {
        return a + b;
    }
    
    
    int add(int a, int b) {
        if ((a > 0 && b > 0) && (INT_MAX - a  b)) {
            return INT_MAX + (b - (INT_MIN - a - 1));
        } else {
            return a + b;
        }
    }
Which one expresses the intent more simply and understandably?

Which one is more robust?

Which one would you bet the future of your company on?

I offer that, sometimes, simplicity of expression is at odds with protection against edge cases.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#104

Post by dctoedt »

_ggwa wrote: post #90
pclmulqdq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American patents are written in a language that isn't English. It's very precise if you can learn to read it, though. The same seems to hold for contracts, but to a lesser degree.

I'm a patent examiner and I can't agree with "It's very precise if you can learn to read it". A large fraction of patent applications I've worked on are unclear. I even wrote a linter to help catch some problems. (DOC lawyers make me add this: This post is just my personal opinion, not that of the USPTO, DOC, US govt., etc.) Edit: I will agree that patent claims can be precise, but so can normal English. I think pate…

I'm curious what you think about a post I did ten years ago, on "defying" the Single Sentence Rule when drafting patent claims: https://www.oncontracts.com/multi-sentence-claims/

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#106

Post by pbhjpbhj »

amilios wrote: post #96
gnicholas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the ballotopedia summary [1] isn't much clearer! Looks like it passed overwhelmingly (87%), so presumably folks knew what it meant from TV ads? Or they were all successfully and massively misled by the other side's ads, and they had no idea what it meant! 1: https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_Proposition_1,_Property_Tax_Li...

The ballotpedia summary shows that there wasn't really a campaign opposing the measure it seems? In which case presumably it makes sense that it passed overwhelmingly, if no one was voicing any arguments against it

Or people didn't understand it enough to oppose it, or interpreted it opposite to the received interpretation and so were for it, or didn't have enough money to mount a campaign, or assumed others would campaign against it, or ...

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#107

Post by jmugan »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

Wow, I actually had to vote on that and couldn't parse out what it was saying, so I left that one blank. I have a PhD, it's in computer science, but still.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#108

Post by slowmovintarget »

actionablefiber wrote: post #95
_raoulcousins wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that I was about to comment "it doesn't seem so bad, just draw a directed graph to work it out". Reading your comment it does seem a little unreasonable.

No ballot initiative should require back-of-the-napkin syntactic analysis to understand.

They were deliberately torturing themselves to avoid saying "raise taxes."

What they seem to be saying, if I parsed it correctly:

"We now get to include tax breaks from the previous year as a factor in property value when taxing the elderly."

That seems awful. I kind of get the hyper-technicality they're going for, but it still seems like they're sticking it to seniors... again, if I understood it correctly.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#109

Post by deanmen »

torstenvl wrote: post #103

Consider the following two function definitions: int add(int a, int b) { return a + b; } int add(int a, int b) { if ((a > 0 && b > 0) && (INT_MAX - a b)) { return INT_MAX + (b - (INT_MIN - a - 1)); } else { return a + b; } } Which one expresses the intent more simply and understandably? Which one is more robust? Which one would you bet the future of your company on? I offer that, sometimes, simplicity of expression i…

Why not

    int add(int a, int b) {
        unsigned res = (unsigned) a + (unsigned) b;
        return (int) res;
    }

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#110

Post by cwillu »

chx wrote: post #98
AlbertCory wrote: post #88

IANAL, but I AM a patent agent, which means I passed the Patent Bar. So I haven't dealt in contracts, but a lot of the same considerations apply to patent claims. There is some claim language which is absolutely not required and any lawyer who uses it is just showing off. The article mentioned "aforesaid" which is a prime example in contracts (in patent claims, it's just "said"). For example: A TCP packet, comprising…

This here reminds me of George Carlin: > People add extra words when they want things to sound more important than they really are. "Boarding process". Sounds important. It isn't. It's just a bunch of people getting on an airplane. People like to sound important. Weathermen on Television talk about shower activity. Sounds more important than showers. I even heard one guy on CNN talk about a rain event. I swear to God…

My personal peave is “utilize”: it's just an excuse to use the letter “z” in a sentence.
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