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From the magazine new scientist "To qualify for a patent, an invention is supposed to be new, useful and non-obvious. Patent examiners establish novelty by making sure the invention is not either already patented, or in use commercially without patent protection." but: "In the latest edition of the journal World Patent Information (vol 27, p 27) he warns that even though most online patent archives are incomplete, parts of the paper-based collections that preceded them are being destroyed" ..... "Univentio, the patent-information company he runs in the Netherlands, has discovered that Espacenet, the European online patent database, is missing 322,000 UK Patent Office documents, plus 186,000 and 17,000 patents respectively from the French and German offices." ..... "Greg Aharonian, a patent expert based in San Francisco, also believes the patent system is failing. ?There are problems with the patent databases, and given the ongoing problems with lack of searches for non-patent prior art, this will contribute to a further drop in quality of granted patents,? he says" IMHO the problems with some of the software patents is that they are obvious eg the one-click shopping from Amazon but to sue to break that patent will be VERY expensive. Therefore IF the EU wants to grant software patents then they should take steps to ensure that the patents are non-obvious and difficult to get. To read the article: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7213 ======================== Henry Bremridge Friday 01/04/05 06:10:01 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html