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  • From: Michael Winslow Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] AOL granted instant messaging patent
  • Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 16:17:27 -0500

On Saturday, December 21, 2002, at 02:20 PM, Diana Duncan wrote:

Ummmm...does it matter if they existed before? Isn't it the first person to
apply for the patent the one who gets it? I certainly may be wrong, I know
little of patent law, but I thought you could patent dang near anything, as
long as you were the first to apply for the patent.


I worked in long range R&D for Yamaha Musical Instruments in the late 80s/early 90's, and our job was to churn out patents. Well, at least we churned out internal Yamaha patent documents which started through the Yamaha bureaucracy before being filed in the US and Japan. While not experts on patents, we did have to learn enough to have our work easily made into patent applications.

One of the requirements is uniqueness of the application of the technology. For example, although frequency modulation as a technique is old as used in radio, Stanford was able to get a patent on a device for musical instruments that used FM to generate music. One reason such a patent application could be denied would be if someone else had invented it first, which could be proved either with a published article, or a product, or even internal notebooks. Each of us had to keep internal lab notebooks containing all notes and working documents so there would be a documented history of working on the invention.

People have the impression that large corporations go around stealing ideas from the small inventor, and after working for at least one large corporation I saw that was really untrue. The strange thing is that coming up with useful ideas for new musical instruments which are also patentable was a lot harder than you would think.

___________________________________________________________________
Ending a sentence with a preposition is nothing to be ashamed of.
-- michael at czeiszperger dot org, Chapel Hill, NC






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