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cc-licenses - Re: CC & other forms of IP -- puzzled

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: CC & other forms of IP -- puzzled
  • Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 10:11:14 +0100

On 4 Jan 2005, at 17:38, Greg London wrote:
> Branko Collin said:

> > patents need to be published to constitute prior art.
>
> A patent application is kept as a private exchange
> between the inventor and the patent office.

I am sorry, that was sloppily worded. I meant to say "inventions need
to be published to constitute prior art".

> The idea, as far as I can see it, for patent exclusion
> using this approach would be to document and publish
> ideas to prevent some patent-factory from patenting
> stuff like the "one-click" patent, etc.

I am not sure that would work as a defensive strategy though. The one-
click shopping trick is an example of an "invention" that was trivial
to come up with by anyone in the field. If a patent office won't stop
granting patents on trivialities, I doubt they will refrain from
patenting an invention because something that sounded like it was
published in some obscure magazine.

A couple of months ago I asked Arnout Engelfriet, Dutch patent
attorney for Philips, in a discussion about software patents, if it
is known where patent offices look for published inventions. This was
his reply (http://groups-
beta.google.com/group/nl.juridisch/msg/658fcad1de8ab303):

> Theoretically this is known. So you can adapt your
> publication strategy to this. Or, you do what IBM has
> done in the past: you start your own magazine and mail
> it to the USPTO every week.
>
> In practice though, the Americans will really only search
> existing patents, because they know their way around in
> them, and these things are also reasonably well classified.
> Try and find something in an IT magazine if all you know
> is the year of publication.
>
> I know from personal experience that the European patent
> council also looks on the internet. But even then they
> will mostly find scientific publications. So I think they
> may just be using some kind of directory, such as citeseer.

--
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl




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