Can you patent a style of writing?

[javasaurus]

If you came up with a truly unique writing style, meaning peculiar language usage, or chapter format, or character use, or whatever. Could you patent the style if you could show it wasn't derivative of other styles?

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Technically, philosophically, pragmatically, no, you can't patent a writing style. Just like you can't patent a mathematical algorithm or a software product or a "business process" or even something as stupid as a laser pointer as a cat toy.

Legally, however, the current patent office will patent damn near anything you throw at them.

and you can and most certainly would have to show styles you are derived from. you couldn't patent those styles, but by doing so you assert that your writing style is not "prior art".

The real abuse of the PTO is not just that you can do this, but that someone else can take your writing style patent, written for, say, a fiction novel, and "specialize" it for "mystery" writing and get their own damn patent on the same thing.

Don't laugh. In the software industry this is exactly what happens. "Shopping Carts" are now "specialized" for particular types of stores and each has their own patents out there even though as far as real code goes, they are no different from any other shopping cart example you can pull from a cheap used web application book from 10 years ago.