On Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 10:29:16AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
| On Saturday, September 21, 2002, at 09:29 AM, Tim May wrote:
|
| >Not a new idea. Ted Nelson (IIRC) wrote about using coin flips to
| >randomize AIDS poll questions. ("Have you engaged in unprotected sex?"
| >Flip a coin and XOR it with your actual answer.) I remember talking to
| >Eric Hughes, Phil Salin, and others around 1990-91 about this.
| >
| >(However, IBM is probably busily copyrighting their new invention,
| >just as Intel copyright their recent "invention" of the anonymous
| >remailer.)
|
| I meant "patented" in both cases.
|
| Part of the continuing idiocy of our patent system, when obvious prior
| art going back more than a decade counts for nothing in the blizzard of
| patents.
Worse, patent attorneys tell me that pointing out prior art while a
patent is being 'prosecuted' tends to weaken your case against it
later if the patent examiner doesn't reject the thing whole cloth,
because now the prior art has "been considered."
The one obvious part of the answer is to raise the cost of getting
patents such that its worth the time of regular filers to consider if
they want the patent, and such that patent examiners are paid well
enough that they don't all leave in 3 years. (I say regular filers
because there may be a good argument that small inventors should not
be shut out of the system. Of course, they already are, because its
close to impossible, even for an experienced practitioner to avoid any
mistakes these days, which is why you often see half a dozen closely
related patents on the same invention.)
For example, IBM is granted something on the order of 1000 patents per
year. The cost to them? A few million dollars. If the cost on the
50th patent was a million bucks, then perhaps they'd abuse the system
less. I don't think Edison ever got 50 patents in a year, and lord
knows he was more inventive than all of IBM. :)
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
