Re: Shared Generic Instance Code

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <JSA.97Apr2153627@alexandria>, Jon S Anthony <jsa@alexandria> wrote:
>I'm not Mr. Patent Lawyer, but I've had to look into this kind of
>stuff over the last few months.  My understanding is that unless
>Intermetrics or Gary Bray took out a patent for their approach (prior
>to the DEC filing), the prior "written up" idea is not sufficient to
>"invalidate" the patent.

Really?  I was under the impression that a patent isn't valid if there's
"prior art", whether or not that prior art was patented.  Otherwise, it
seems like you could go around patenting all kinds of old inventions
that people have been using for hundreds of years.  (I'm not Mr. Patent
Lawyer either!)

There's also the issue of whether the patented thing is "obvious", which
is of course harder to prove.

>...  Also, it seems that you can't patent an idea
>per se - you have to specify how to produce a complete realization of
>it.

That agrees with my understanding.

>...But to be honest, this stuff seems really opaque to me...

Me too.

- Bob