</a>Developing the case

Einsteins Implicit Theory of Relativity - of Cognitive Property? Unexamined influence of patent office procedures (Part #5)

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With such pointers, and careful consideration of the articulations of the nature of intellectual property and of the special theory of relativity, it would appear that a case could be made for there being a significant degree of influence of the former on the latter in the case of Einstein. With the semiotic and philosophical skills of Umberto Eco, the case could be made especially interesting, even if the influences on Einstein were unconscious rather than, to some degree, a conscious effort to disassociate himself from the alienation of the procedures of the Patent Office mindset. It would be especially ironic if the special theory had fortuitously emerged as a mathematician's fantasy like that of Edwin Abbott Abbott (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, 1884). The Patent Office as Einstein's "flatland" -- from which he so successfully escaped?

There is a further potential irony to the relationship:

• the doctrine of equivalents is a legal rule in most of the world's patent systems that allows a court to hold a party liable for patent infringement even though the infringing device or process does not fall within the literal scope of a patent claim, but nevertheless is equivalent to the claimed invention.
• in the physics of relativity, the equivalence principle is applied to several related concepts dealing with gravitation and the uniformity of physical measurements in different frames of reference; a fundamental feature of the theory of relativity is the concept of mass-energy equivalence, namely that all mass has an energy equivalence, and all energy has a mass equivalence. Special relativity expresses this relationship using the much cited mass-energy equivalence formula

In what way might "mass" and "energy" be understood as characteristics of invention in "knowledge space" or "patent space" that would suggest a further generalization of that embodied in the mass-energy equivalence formula?