In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

In article ,
"Existential Angst" wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
. com...

Tom Gardner wrote:

"Existential Angst" wrote in message
...
Case against patents:
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf
Lots more of this, as Lancaster is prolific, to say the least.

Whaddaya think? Certainly an original inneresting take, that I can
find
nowhere else on the web.
Most of the search retrievals involved the ethics,
constitutionality,
economic-growth-type implications, but not pure CYA effectivenss of
the
patenting process.

Here or elsewhere, he does peg a kind of "break-even point" for a
patent,
as $12 mil is sales -- if you expect to sell $12 mil worth of your
product, then mebbe patent it. This was in 1993, tho.
--
EA



Every one of my nine patents has been stolen and produced in China.
My
lawyer asked me how much money do I want to throw away.

Consider yourself lucky, someone could push through a nebulous patent
and then once they receive it turn around and sue you claiming that
your
long established products infringe their (bogus) patent. I've seen it
personally and the offenders made tens of millions.

How can they do this if your patent (the person being sued) was filed
first?

Because the rule until this year was "first to invent" not "first to
file".

Only the US used first to invent. Congress recently changed the US
patent system to first to file. What comes along with that change is
that patent applications are no longer secret. There is a period of
time after publication when the public (people and companies alike) are
asked to file comments pointing to existing art that would preclude
issuance of a patent.

This was done to align us with the rest of the world, to shut down all
those patent-pending games, prevent submarine patents, and to get the
patent office out of having to judge claimed inventions on the edge of
current technology, where the patent office's expertise is thin or zero.

Joe Gwinn

It is still first to invent, you can't patent something that is already
in existence and use somewhere else, or has even just been published.
You also can't (aren't supposed to be able to) patent something that
would be obvious to someone in the relevant field and this is one of the
areas that is the greatest problem with the current corrupted patent
office where the skilled examiners have been replaced with bureaucrats.

Umm. You may be right, but it does not matter. The law has changed.
Who gets the patent now depends *only* on the date of filing, not when
inspiration hit.

Joe Gwinn