On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 12:00 AM, Steve Richfield <[email protected]> wrote: >> It just has to be disclosed, as in a >> research paper, technical document, or open source code. > > I would have to go back and read carefully, but I suspect that open source > code would NOT be considered prior art, unless: > 1. You could PROVE that it was around before the patent application, and > 2. Its operation was explained OUTSIDE of the code in some publicly > accessible way, e.g. on the Internet.
Actually, that's not so. In 2009, a company that had a reputation for stealing data compression code tried to patent my PAQ algorithm. Here is their application: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20070233477.PGNR.&OS=DN/20070233477&RS=DN/20070233477 When someone pointed this out to me, I wrote to the USPTO and included a copy of a technical report I had written earlier. If you read both, it is clear that they had also plagiarized substantial sections of it. http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/cs200516.pdf Ultimately the USPTO rejected all of their claims. In the rejection letter, they found prior art not only in my TR, but in several other later versions of PAQ on my website. All of the programs are described in the source code comments, and that was enough. http://mattmahoney.net/dc/paq.html And none of this was patented either. I publish open source so that nobody else can patent it. I had been critical of the USPTO in the past for making a legal morass. It is nearly impossible to write any software at all without stepping on somebody's claims. But in this case, they ultimately did the right thing. >> You think Forgent could have made more than $105 million before the >> USPTO invalidated the key claims of the patent, 6 months before it was >> to expire anyway? > > The last 6 months probably didn't make all THAT much difference, but why not > wait until it has expired to sue? At least that way, you can collect from > everyone who does NOT insist on being taken to court to be made to pay. No, that's not how they did it. Nothing went to trial. The hammer that Forgent held was the threat of an injunction on the sales of infringing products (anything that reads or writes JPEG, such as cameras, phones, printers, etc). A company can appeal the validity of the patent, but meanwhile they can't sell their products. Even if the companies thought they could have won (and they would have been right), they still lose millions in sales until the appeals ruling. Sony alone paid $30 million. But good luck trying to collect for past infringement after your patent expires. -- -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
