There aren't relevant tags. The question is off-topic. Further, its too broad or too localized.
I'm pretty sure the person who answers "can this be patented?" is a patent lawyer. Or a combination of patent lawyers and examiners at the Patent and Trademark Office. It's a legal question. It also varies by country (or worse). Answering for all countries is far too broad; answering for just one would not be generally applicable to the worldwide audience.
I suppose as far as the culinary community goes, maybe food scientists would ask, or process engineers working on food plants, though that's getting pretty far from the culinary community. We certainly wouldn't accept a lot of questions from process engineers ("my thingamajig is extruding product faster than my whatsit can process, how do I adjust the timing?")
I think we just don't want law questions here, even if they involve cooking:
- While cooking styles and tastes vary from region to region, boiling pasta actually works the same regardless of political jurisdiction. And the styles and tastes of e.g., North Carolina, USA are interesting (and apply) to someone in Bavaria, Germany. The laws, however, are not and do not. So cooking crosses borders, but law generally does not.
- Law is actually a very different discipline, and we just don't have the expertise in it. Further, getting it wrong can be very bad. Our audience generally shouldn't be expected to know a right from wrong legal answer, and its very hard to observe the difference until its too late, so voting is unlikely to help select only correct answers.
