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On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 11:10:11AM +0100, Robin Cornelius wrote: > OT but its always a good topic here :-) > > What do/can you do if some one patents something that you have been > making for a long time before the patent was granted? In this case the > patent was granted a few years a go now but the claims describe > something that we have done, and ourselves and others have published > scientific papers (IEEE and others) so there is no shortage of prior > art. > > In this case its a patent of a hardware system and truth be told, the > individual components of the system are trivial and obvious to anyone > in the field. > > It appears in the patent search report, that only EPO and World > patents were searched before granting? how the hell can this be right > what about scientific papers etc. This implys if its not in the patent > database its patatantable? (or at least the examiners will grant it). > > So what does this boil down to? if they are bigger than us and can > afford better lawyers than us we get stomped all over? If you can provide evidence of prior art (and I suspect scientific papers are very good evidence, even if you can't prove you were making it before the patent was granted) then I'd hope it doesn't matter how good their lawyers are, any sane judge would realise you're in the right. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be expensive... -- Benjamin A'Lee <bma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/ "There never has been, there never will be, and there is not now any man exclusively criticised or exclusively praised." - from the Dhammapada
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