---almat_private wrote: > > For example, > Someone wanting to control the future of a given > technology could set up their company (even a dummy) > and then publish items for what would be the > next logical steps in the area. Your concerns are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of intellectual property law as it exists today. The "items" you refer to above would have to be inventions, not ideas. They wouldn't be patentable since someone else ("someone" in your sentence above) had already invented them. If they were only ideas, they're not "prior art". > They could then > either slow that development drasticly or hold the > ideas for a type of ransom. The > "invention" does not have to actually exist. It has to be an invention though, not an idea. It's difficult to understand what you mean when you say that the invention "does not have to actually exist" since, by definition, it does indeed have to exist in order to be an invention. Are you talking about a working model? That doesn't have to exist, but the invention - which is intellectual property, not physical - certainly does...or it's not an invention. > The applications of this technique go far beyond computer chips and > photocopies. A hostile country (working behind a front company) could > publish what are simply ideas for weaponry -- from laser cannons to > biochips. Certainly - and that publication would have no effect whatsoever on patentability of inventions based on those ideas. Had the "hostile country" actually *invented* the weaponry, of course, nobody else would be able to (legally) patent, since then it would indeed be prior art, published or not. Whether or not an idea has been published or not is irrelevant - it is an *invention* that must be published to constitute "prior art", not an idea. The Patent and Trademark Office says "A complete description of the actual machine or other subject matter for which a patent is sought is required" to obtain a patent - this is also what's required in "prior art". The standards are the same for both - the idea that one can block an area from patentability by merely suggesting what could be done there is incorrect - indeed, the world of intellectual property law would be very different if it was. Again, the PTO says "The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention." In other words, just because you say "we could make a laser cannon and shoot down satellites with it" doesn't prevent someone from making and patenting such a device, since how to make one is "nonobvious" from your speculation. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 12:57:48 PDT