Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Ernst W. Mayer wrote:
>
>> The following article, titled "Irish teen's e-mail code could
>> transform Internet commerce" should be of interest:
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9901/14/email.genius/
>>
>> Pretty impressive work for a person of any age, much less a 16-year-old.
>> We should see if we can recruit her for the GIMPS effort.
>>
>> -Ernst
>I checked that article, it has no mention of her algorithm, no mention of
>the strength of the algorithm, no mention of whether the judges where
>competent to evaluate the strength of the algorithm and a very scary quote
>foretelling the future of her work.
>
><quote>
> She said that she would prefer to publish her discovery rather than
> patent it, because making money from it would go against the spirit of
> science.
></quote>
>
>With the way the US patent law works, that will put it up for grabs to
>whoever gets the application done first, thus enabling them to prevent any
>unlicenced use by others, including the discoverer.
>She's showing her age with that comment:(
I agree with the part about being unable to determine the likely impact
of the work until details appear, but disagree with the part about the
inventor's desire to put the work into the public domain as being "scary."
In fact, it is the same spirit that infuses projects such GIMPS, Gnu and
Linux, and (assuming the inventor puts the work into the public domain)
cannot be patented or commercialized by anyone else.
I think Hendrik misunderstands some fundamentals about US patent law,
especially the clause about something being patentable only if it is
not "prior art".
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/novelty.htm says:
----
NOVELTY AND OTHER CONDITIONS FOR OBTAINING A PATENT
In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the
patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if:
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or
described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the
invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was
patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country
or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the
application for patent in the United States . . .
If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the
world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country before the
date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained.
If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has
been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the
date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent
cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention
was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor
himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in
a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale,
he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any
right to a patent will be lost.
Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the
prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar
thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would
be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently
different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to
be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology
related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one material for
another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.
----
Note that many of the legal disputes about patents (more often than not
involving biotech companies) don't involve prior art, but rather involve
competing claims of novcelty by two or more companies, all of which are
seeking to commercialize the same or similar technologies, which means
none of which have placed their work into the public domain (they may
well have published it in some form, but will require you to sign some
sort of licensing agreement before giving out crucial details.) On the
other hand, many involve cases where a company applied for and/or was
granted a patent for something, and someone comes along and says, "wait
just a minute - I published a paper describing essentially the same
thing some fifteen years ago." One of the main reasons there is an
ongoing race between public and private genome sequencing projects is
that having a public-domain sequence done makes it prior art, and thus
prevents a company from patenting it and resctricting access to people
able to fork over big money or promises to give the company rights to
any or all future developments based in some way on the technology.
Of course a big company with deep pockets can drag legal proceedings
out for years, a strategy which is much more effective if they gain
a patent (even if wrongly) to begin with.
-Ernst
