Until fairly recently (last two years?) although the law was clear as a bell that *anything* relevant constituted prior art, in fact the PTO examiners never considered anything except previously-issued US patents. So as Shmuel says, publication in the Disclosure Journal (or a blog or Scientific American or the New York Times) did not impede them from issuing a patent. Supposed to be somewhat better now.
Yes, the USPTO is not doing a very good job. One major reason is that Congress is not funding them. You get what you pay for. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 6:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: IBM #1 in number of patents for 2012. It's 20th year in a row to do so. In <CAE1XxDH39XOyhfMcrHwiJZ3X=tgc4sjalq4dbzmy0mb7okb...@mail.gmail.com>, on 01/11/2013 at 11:48 AM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> said: >IBM also publishes a Disclosure Journal, available in libraries but not >I think by subscription, in which it discloses the details of >'inventions' that it does not itself wish to patent in order to make it >impossible for others to patent them later. Unfortunately]1], that *doesn't* make it impossible. The patent examiners routinely fail to notice prior art, and all that publication does is to make it easier to prevail after expensive litigation. A defensive patent, while more expensive, is better protection. [1] Because it means that USPTO is not doing its job. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
