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The Problem of Software Patents in Standards (Technocrat.net)
The Problem of Software Patents in Standards (Technocrat.net)
Posted Nov 9, 2004 19:34 UTC (Tue) by cpm (subscriber, #3554)Parent article: The Problem of Software Patents in Standards (Technocrat.net)
Hey Bruce;
"growth in software patents, many of which are not valid,"
I thought that a patent couldn't be "not valid" until it
was reviewed and found to be not valid.
It may be your opinion (and mine) that these patents
are mostly all bogus garbage, that doesn't really mean
anything in the wonderful world of patent law, does it?
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The Problem of Software Patents in Standards (Technocrat.net)
Posted Nov 10, 2004 20:00 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]
Perhaps you're confusing valid with granted. Microsoft's FAT patent was a granted patent, One person petitioned for re-examination, and presented sufficient prior art that every claim in the patent was rejected by the same patent office that originally granted it. Which means it wasn't examined sufficiently. Certainly it was never valid, no matter what the date was upon which the patent office finally understood that fact. Given that all US patents are in essentially the same state, there can be no assumption that a granted patent is valid.Bruce