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Submarine patent threat still valid?Submarine patent threat still valid?Posted Feb 4, 2010 15:17 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048)In reply to: Submarine patent threat still valid? by wingo Parent article: HTML5 video element codec debate reignited Right, patents are not "use it or lose it" like trademarks. However, estoppel is a general principle of law and some have proposed more aggressive use of estoppel as a general tool to deal with the risk of non-disclosed patents gumming up the creation and adoption of standards. (I highly recommend that paper: it provides a good view 'down the rabbit hole' of the current mess that exists between patents and standards)
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Submarine patent threat still valid? Posted Feb 5, 2010 21:38 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] But we're not talking about nondisclosed patents here. A submarine patent is a patent that doesn't exist yet.So you'd have to go further with estoppel and find a duty of an inventor to meet some standard of effort in getting the patent office to grant the patent quickly. It would be rather difficult to prove that the patent didn't issue sooner because the inventor wanted people to use the invention royalty-free during that time.
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