Re: Decoding an octet stream

[swhalen@netcom.com]

Larry Kilgallen <kilgallen@eisner.decus.org> wrote:

: But when you do get called into court you merely have to prove there
: is prior art, not that the prior art you cite is the exact prior art
: you considered when you used the technique.

...

As Robert mentioned in another post, in technical areas you have to
"prove" in a legal sense, "when" the prior art existed, that what you
say is prior art is in fact the the "same" as what is patented (or an
obvious extension), etc. The proof requirements for "prior art" and
"obviousness" is quite hard to do in software, because software is
generally not a well documented field compared to many.

One reason so many stupid patents are being granted is that much of
the prior art is "documented" only in the source code of old software
(often proprietary) that is not accessable to the Patent Office.

Steve

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                Steve Whalen     swhalen@netcom.com
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