On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 10:30:38 -0500, Don Foreman
wrote:

The idea behind patents is to enable one who invests the effort and
money to develop an idea to have exclusive use of it and fairly
profit from his labor and investment for a limited time. This is
granted in exchange for "teaching" the idea in the patent so it's
available to all after the period of exclusivity has expired.
Inventors are thus encouraged to innovate and disclose for the
long-term public benefit by having a chance to exclusively profit from
their work for a fixed period.

The problem isn't with the concept but with the implementation. If
the USPTO did a rigorous and concientious job of examining,
likelihood of successful challenge or infrigement would be low. If
the likelihood of winning such attempts were low, people would be
more reluctant to invest in legal services to abuse the system.

Well said and should be foremost in mind when criticizing patents.
Found out the Tiff program only works with the browser you got it
from. Now I can see the drawings and went through half of them. Still
seems weak from what is implied of prior art and more like a design
patent. If its seems serious I would get hard copies of the patent and
all he cited and read them. The claim is not very clear to me without
knowing the art and reading all else necessary. IIRC he goes back to
the late 40's with examples of prior art. The guy worried about it
probably does the same type of thing , but not exactly the same way
and shouldn't be worried about it , but ya got to check it out if your
getting letters.



His patent is bogus or don't do it that way. Send the prior art to the
holder and the PTO. Hell, you almost have to be an attorney to cross
the street now days. They just might cancel that puppy.

I see that applications are available now which means they did change
a lot of laws for the new world order so showing prior art wouldn't be
good for the patent holder. *maybe*


I believe this is still the case in Europe.



On 02 Aug 2004 05:31:52 GMT, (MKloepster)
wrote:

SNIP
I came across this site http://www.vabiker.net/html/article86.html

from a guy who has offered this machining service. He has been hit by

a patent lawsuit from this guy at
SNIP

Seems to me you could get the patent number, get the images and descriptions
from the PTO website, and do it for yourself for free! I really dislike the
patent conept anyway--how can you own an idea? I say let all who wish to
manufacture an item compete in the market. The current system just damages
consumers by encouraging patent holders to gouge. Of course the pro patent
people say no new products will be developed without patent protection, but
that's utter B.S. If there's a market, somebody, somewhere will be willing to
supply it. If you need examples, just look at all of recorded history before
the patent concept--things somehow still managed to get invented....