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From: asylvain@felix.UUCP (Alvin "the Chipmunk" Sylvain)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Way to fight trivial patents
Message-ID: <152362@felix.UUCP>
Date: 15 Oct 90 18:57:44 GMT
References: <1990Oct7.175737.12808@agate.berkeley.edu>
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: asylvain@felix.UUCP (Alvin "the Chipmunk" Sylvain)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Foundation to Save the Chipmunk
Lines: 46

In article <1990Oct7.175737.12808@agate.berkeley.edu> larry@belch.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Foard) writes:
"It seems that recently the computer industry has been assaulted by a wave
"of frivolous patents.

Not true ... the whole nation has been assaulted with a wave of litigation
fever, not just the computer industry.  You can be sued for wearing the
wrong color hat, and spend $6000 to prove your right to wear any silly hat
you want!  The wave of frivolus patents is but a single symptom of that
disease.

"                      Many of these are trivially obvious things such as
"storing the data behind a window in a windowing system. If all trivial things
"are patented programming would be like trying to write a book if half
"of english words where copyrighted. 

Hey, you can't say "English", that's belongs to the United Kingdom!!   ;-)

"The network provides an interesting way out of this problem, most trivial
"(and not so trivial) ideas have been discussed on technical news groups
"at one time. It would seem (lawyers correct me if I am wrong) that one
"could print out all newsgroups and have the contents notirized (sp?) to
"provide proof that an idea was already in existance before a given patent
"was applied for.
[...]

I'm not a lawyer, but it is true that you can't patent an idea that's
been discussed before in a public forum (e.g, USENET).  That is, to be
patent-able, it must have *never* been available in published form.

It reminds me of an anecdote I heard, where this fellow wanted to patent
an idea for raising sunken ships.  He was going to pump them full of those
styrofoam "packing peanuts" you get in your TV box.  Unfortunately, many years
prior to that, Scrooge McDuck and his nephews Hughie, Dewie and Louie had
raised a sunken ship by pumping it full of ping-pong balls.  Yes, the judge
(or whoever decides these things) thought it was close enough.  No patent.

Your problem here is that I doubt that most computer centers hang on to
the news for more than a limited time.  If you see a patent, and say,
"Hey, I saw that on USENET three years ago!", well good luck locating it.
It's probably been in that Great Bit-Bucket in the Sky for a long time.
--
=============Opinions are Mine, typos belong to /bin/ucb/vi=============
"We're sorry, but the reality you have dialed is no   |            Alvin
longer in service.  Please check the value of pi,     |   "the Chipmunk"
or pray to your local diety for assistance."          |          Sylvain
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