From: Halvar Flake (HalVargmx.de)
Date: Fri Jul 02 2004 - 14:16:32 CDT

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Hey All,

> > Right, but that doesn't help bobsfish.com when some SCO sues them for
> > patent violation. What would help them would being able to go to EFF and
> > say "Hey, I'm being SCOed for this patent, can you invalidate it?" and
> > EFF saying "Yes." At which point the SCOer has wasted 25K (or however
> > much they paid) for their patent.
>
> Perhaps the overworked, underinformed Patent Office could simply start
> accepting outside public opinion on prior art before issuing the patent?

IMO the problem is not only the prior art thing but also nontriviality
of solutions. I don't mind giving a 3-year patent on a truly good idea,
but the problem is that US lawyers argue that the sole fact that nobody
else has applied for the patent yet must imply that the idea was
"nonobvious".
A good example for this is structure reconstruction based on following a
pointer: Completely obvious, easily implemented -- people just hadn't done
it a lot before. One could've patented that by US rules, which is just
insane.

Cheers,
Halvar

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