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Re: A thought about patents

2000-04-03 22:30:02
The problem is that a patent provides a presumption of validity. Thus,
even if the patent ignores prior non-patent art, the creator of that
prior (published) art has to spend time and money defending himself in
court. Ultimately, that favors the big corporation with a standing army
of lawyers over any small or not-for-profit outfit. I'm not worried
about the stupid ideas (yes, there's a patent on including a list of
destination network addresses in a packet header to do multicast), but
rather the previously published and slightly non-obvious results.

True. Which still doesn't say that any "peers" would be the more favourable
choice of review. What's needed is a prior-art database run by the PTO
into which people can submit their pointers. Without that the PTO can really
only well look up prior art that has been filed for patent. And the
knowledge of prior art by "peers" is very selective too.

Cheers
        Toerless



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