On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 4:03 PM, David Connors <[email protected]> wrote: > On 20 May 2010 15:49, silky <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Agreed that Patent law is "not ideal". But I would expect it's not so > > trivial to replace or remove, and you don't hear about the good > > things, so your feelings towards it are almost certainly biased. > > I think there is an argument that can be made that there is a very big > difference between a real invention and say, getting a patent for using XOR > to overlay a cursor on a GUI (years and years after the industry has been > using it as standard) then going on to take everyone with a pulse to court. > I'm surprised more of these don't get over-turned trivially by showing prior > art.
I've never been to court for a patent infringement, but I'd imagine the *process* of showing and proving "prior art" is non-trivially expensive. It's my imagination that "the" patent system (obviously it differs from country to country, but lets assume it's similar in Australia and America) relies on courts and "the market" to do the determining of validity, not so much the office itself. But I could be totally wrong; I do know (or at least assume) that some validation is done on patents in this country. I don't know how thorough it is. > -- > David Connors ([email protected]) > Software Engineer > Codify Pty Ltd - www.codify.com > Phone: +61 (7) 3210 6268 | Facsimile: +61 (7) 3210 6269 | Mobile: +61 417 > 189 363 > V-Card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors > Address Info: https://www.codify.com/contact -- silky http://www.programmingbranch.com/
