Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

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

Agreed.

The patent office is in theory set up like "Trustworthy Trent"
in cryptography analogies. They are supposed to be trusted to
do the right thing and make sure an application is not a trivial
invention undeserving of patent protection.

If the Patent Office abuses this trust (or just gets lazy and
rubber stamps every application), then there isn't much you can
do within the rules of the system that will prevent bad patents
from being granted.

However.

In theory, if a patent was granted due to a sloppy/lazy patent
clerk, then at least the worst ones should be contestable if
sufficient documentation exists that the invention is prior
public knowledge.

It isn't a perfect system. But it is an improvement.

As an aside:

It would be interesting if the patent application process,
once given due process by the patent clerks,
was then opened up for public review before granting the patent.

"Speak now or forever hold your peace" kind of thing.

Then if the patent clerks missed something, the public
could submit prior art that shows the patent should not be granted.

dunno if it would work. just a random idea.