Good luck!

Posted Oct 22, 2005 18:49 UTC (Sat) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link]

Nevermind the SGML working group.

Posted Oct 22, 2005 21:51 UTC (Sat) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]

As I understand it, finding prior art before the filing date is not always good enough; the best prior art is 1 year before the filing (in the US people have 1 year to file from invention date). You also need to find the oldest patent that a given patent is a continuation of, i.e. their second patent is a continuation of the first so shares the priority date of the first.

The net is, to get the date prior art must come before, you find the "root" patent (go back through the "continuation of" chain) and then subtract 1 year from the filing date. (Subtracting 1 year gives the earliest possible priority date, the "real" priority date depends on how quickly they filed.)

I am not a lawyer though, obviously ;-)