Paul Lowrance wrote:
It's my impression the court merely wants proof of Prior Art. Perhaps web forums, yahoo & google websites, and wikis don't count as much proof. What if I handed out a few thousand xeroxed papers to various people?
I do not know anything about patent laws, but if you were talking about a business arrangement, I would recommend you make 10 copies, have them notarized, and give them to lawyers and people like that.
I recall hearing that the Patent Office has a method of registering a discovery that you want to put in the public domain. That is to say, you do not wish to patent it yourself, but you want to prevent others from patenting it. I recall this is much easier to do than getting a patent. There are no challenges by the P.O.; you simply register the invention. A company might do this with a minor invention. Suppose the company wants to use the gadget, but the thing has no significant intellectual property value, perhaps because it costs only pennies per machine. They register it to prevent others from patenting and harassing them for royalties.
- Jed
