Andrew Ho wrote: > > On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Tim Churches wrote: > ... > > Indeed. Patents like US patent 6,148,342 (go to > > http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm and search for 6,148,342 > > entered with the commas). > > Tim, > You can simply search the OpenHealth archives for 6,148,342. :-) > Horst reported this to the OpenHealth list back in Feb 17, 2001. Horst's > comment and my response (total of 4 messages in that thread): > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03321.html
In that thread you request prior art. The basic idea, applied to cancer registries and using a two-way split only, is fully described in Pommerening K, Miller M, Schidtmann I and Michaelis J. Pseudonyms for cancer registries. Methods of Information in Medicine, 35(1996) pp112-121. I think your patent represents a useful re-exposition and minor generalisation of Pommerening et al.'s idea, but it would have better served humanity had it been published in a peer-reviewed journal indexed in Medline/PubMed, rather than as a US patent. I know you also published it in the computer science/database literature, which is fine, but people working in health informatics don't routinely search sources in those disciplines (and v-v), although they probably should. Anyway, I don't think that particular patent will make you rich - it's more likely to send you broke if you ever tried to defend it (almost certainly unsuccessfully). Nevertheless, the original idea is a good one, but as Adrian M commented, the claims in your US patent don't represent any impediment to anyone outside of the US. Tim C
