🚀 go-pugleaf

In the referenced article, jeffrey@algor2.algorists.com (Jeffrey Kegler) writes:
> [...]
> The courts are bound to realize, eventually, how this new industry of
> filing patents on obvious and generally known techniques and then
> launching well-financed suits that paralyze innovation is legal
> nonsense.  It could take them a decade, however.  In the meantime, the
> US software industry could be in turmoil.  And the chances that our
> foreign competition will be this stupid, vile and self-destructive are
> terribly close to zero.

The question is not whether the technique is obvious and generally
known, here in 1991, but whether it was original and nonobvious at the
time the patent was filed for, and the extent to which there was, *at
that time*, prior art.  I do not express any opinion as to the
validity of the patent or the wisdom of AT&T's position, but I don't
think this is a case of someone attempting to "patent the wheel" as
another poster alluded to in a _reductio ad absurdum_.  If the patent
was valid when issued, based on conditions that existed at the time of
filing, it is perfectly valid for AT&T to assert proprietary rights
at a later date when the patent would be valuable since its claims are
incorporated into commercial products.

As a policy matter, however, I would criticize AT&T for failing to
give notice of its patent claim at some reasonable time between 1985
and today, since it may have afforded the opportunity for the
developers of X to (1) evaluate the probable validity of the claim;
(2) evaluate its effect on current work; and (3) determine whether a
non-infringing implementation should be substituted.

--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!bionet!mcb