[Discuss] The America Invents Act

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (Dan Ritter)]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 06:59:50AM -0700, Hsuan-Yeh Chang wrote:
> The best "priorart.org" for all industry is "patft.uspto.gov".? My view is that the open source community should file more patent applications.? International treatise requires that all patent applications be published after being filed for 18 months.? Such pre-grant publications will be searched by the Patent Examiners and will become the most powerful "prior art" against all late comers.? Also, pre-grant publications can be used as a very good source of open source documentation.? (Patent documents published by the Patent Office do not have copyrights.)

This is, unfortunately, terrible advice.

In theory, you would be correct. In practice, the fines for
treading on a patent increase substantially if you knew about
the patent you were infringing on.

As a result, it is not a good idea for a programmer to look at
any software patents at all.


-dsr-

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