RE: Patents can be for good, not only evil

Looking at the final office actions from some of my own applications I 
absolutely agree with Steve here.  It is pretty clear that the only database 
that the USPTO can search effectively is its own.

One of the reasons I file patents is to smoke out patent claims filed by 
others. The USPTO is the most effective method available. Compared to the 
expense of a patent lawsuit the cost is negligible.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:smb(_at_)cs(_dot_)columbia(_dot_)edu] 
> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 7:49 PM
> To: lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com
> Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
> Subject: Re: Patents can be for good, not only evil
>
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:02:10 -0700
> "Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com> wrote:
>
> > Eric Burger wrote:
> > > I specifically applied for patents underlying the 
> technology behind 
> > > RFC 4722/RFC 5022 and RFC 4730 specifically to prevent third 
> > > parties, who are not part of the IETF process, from extracting 
> > > royalties from someone who implements MSCML or KPML.
> > That was a waste of your time and money. Publication of those 
> > inventions by you, at zero cost to you and others, would have been 
> > sufficient to prevent someone else from trying to patent them. Next 
> > time, get good advice from a patent lawyer on how to achieve your 
> > goals without paying for a patent.
> You're obviously right in theory on this point.  I wonder 
> whether you're right in practice.  We've all seen far too 
> many really bad patents issued, ones where prior art is 
> legion.  The (U.S.) patent office seems to do a far better 
> job of searching its own databases than it does the technical 
> literature.
>
> I know there are many philosophical reasons why many people 
> oppose software patents.  But for others, there are very 
> practical reasons:
> there are too many bad patents issued.  I think we can all 
> agree that stopping bad patents is a worthwhile goal, even if 
> for some it's just an intermediate goal.
>
>
>               --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
>
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