A thought about patents

[Graham Klyne <GK at Dial.pipex.com>]

As many of us are finding, it seems to become more and more difficult to 
develop or implement a standard without tripping over somebody-or-other's 
patent for some piece of technology that many of us would regard as fairly 
obvious or lacking in novelty.

The recent announcement from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office about 
overhauling their scrutiny of applications for online business patents 
seems to imply a tacit acknowledgement that their is a problem with the 
review process with respect to discovery or prior art or determination of 
novelty in a claimed invention.

My thought is this:  I'd like to see a presumption of lack of novelty if an 
idea gets raised in a public forum, even if it happens _after_ a patent has 
been applied for, unless it can be shown that the information came from 
leakage of proprietary information.

Maybe such an approach might ameliorate the "gold rush" mentality to be the 
first to slap a patent on an idea or technique that is coming to be 
accepted art in the normal process of technology evolution.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
(GK at ACM.ORG)