My thought is this: I'd like to see a presumption of lack of novelty if an
idea gets raised in a public forum, even if it happens _after_ a patent has
been applied for, unless it can be shown that the information came from
leakage of proprietary information.
intersting idea
i would liek to offer another:-
perhaps the length of patent protection should be directly related to
the cost of developing an idea - in pharmaceutical industry, long
patents make sense because of the large investment in testing a new
drug safely - similar i nthe automotive and aero industries
in software, its pretty obvious that this is silly - one-klik took
someone about 6 nanoseconds to think up, and 3 to test...
Maybe such an approach might ameliorate the "gold rush" mentality to be the
first to slap a patent on an idea or technique that is coming to be
accepted art in the normal process of technology evolution.
the ietf has a very good protection in principle against people who
think that a patent is power to "own" a standard - it would be nice
to try to identify the mistaken "stakeholders" who belive that
patents are a weapon...
cheers
jon