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Re: Is the USPTO run by knaves or fools? - was Re: US

• To: Michael Champion <mc@x...>
• Subject: Re: Is the USPTO run by knaves or fools? - was Re: US Patent 6,687,897
• From: Murali Mani <mani@C...>
• Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 05:37:10 -0800 (PST)
• Cc: "'XML DEV'" <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <8C3DD5FB-5E27-11D8-8F58-000A95CCC59E@x...>
• References: <000c01c3f22c$cc2a1a60$6401a8c0@pcukmka><8C3DD5FB-5E27-11D8-8F58-000A95CCC59E@x...>

I heard these recently:

Patenting in US is much more affordable, whereas patenting in countries
like Japan are much more expensive. The current ineffeciencies in
recognizing not-worthy patents ensures that the patenting process is
cheap. There are pros and cons to cheaper patenting process: pros include
even individuals who come up with original ideas can patent; cons are
known to everyone..

Of course, there is question of enforcing the patent (or) patent
law-suits, which will be very expensive, and which will go through
experts. For example, several patents issued by USPTO I am sure when it
goes to enforcing the patent, they will be considered as prior-art; so any
law suit might not hold.

But still it is a scary thought of potential patent infringement.

best, murali.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Michael Champion wrote:

>
> On Feb 13, 2004, at 7:27 AM, Michael Kay wrote:
>
> >
> > What I would like to know is, is it a conspiracy (protectionism for the
> > US software industry, jobs for the lawyers), or is it just
> > incompetence?
> >
>
> I submit that this is the ur-question at the heart of almost
> everything.  I remember first encountering it in THE PETER PRINCIPLE in
> high school years.  "Is the world run by intelligent people who are
> putting us on, or by fools who don't know any better."
>
> The betting seems to be on fools; There are lots of famous quotes to
> the effect "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained
> by incompetence."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
> (Of course it should be "Heinlein's Razor ... I wonder if the
> corruption is due to malice or incompetence, sigh, or maybe somebody's
> self-referential sense of humor).
>
> Back to the USPTO ... the best explanation I've heard for all this is
> that the USPTO culture assumes that any previously patentable idea is
> in their database.  Since software was not patentable for a long time,
> many good software ideas were never submitted to the USPTO, hence were
> never put in their database.  Thus, they are simply blind to the
> innovations of the first 30 years or so of computer science and
> engineering.  I have no idea of the source or the validity of that
> hypothesis.
>
>
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• References:
  • RE: US Patent 6,687,897
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>
  • Is the USPTO run by knaves or fools? - was Re: US Patent 6,687,897
    • From: Michael Champion <mc@x...>

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