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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: Decoding an octet stream
Date: 1999/12/02
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Date: 1999-12-02T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <3845F5DB.4535A4BF@research.canon.com.au>,
  Geoff Bull <geoff@research.canon.com.au> wrote:
> If you can produce evidence of prior art, a patent is
> invalid.

Yes, that's true, but the mistake people often make is to assume
that prior art means something informal, like "known before",
but it is much more complex and delicate, there are many
litigated cases, where one would think that there was clearly
prior art, in that lots of people knew about it and used it
publicly, but still it does not meet the legal qualification
as prior art.

> This particular patent covers an idea present
> in Sun's XDR. As you can see from the following, XDR
> dates back to 1986, so it seems "the patent" (not being
> filed until 1988) is invalid.

Many patents that seem invalid to lay people who do not know
patent case law well turn out to be valid in legal terms, or
at least valid enough to extract settlements.

P.S. Once again, I ask where is Greg, now that we are discussing
something he really knows.

I still find this off topic for Ada, but I hesitate to set
followups to a more appropriate group, since I suspect that most
of the people contributing won't know where to go :-)


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