[ih] Why the six month draft expiration ?

[Vint Cerf]

Karl,
under the current "first to file" USPTO rules, would the primary grounds
for invalidating an issued patent claim be validated public prior art or a
prior patent grant that conflicts with the later one?

vint


On Sat, Feb 3, 2024 at 3:23 PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> You (and Scott) are both correct that the USPTO has improved from the
> days when Bruce Lehman used to call those submitting patent applications
> and paying USPTO fees "our customers" and promised to focus on servicing
> those paying customers.
>
> (Lehman was so deeply in the pocket of patent applicants that he was
> actually booed after a presentation to a meeting of IP lawyers in San
> Jose.  And Carl Malamud's buying - and then publishing - USPTO's
> income-generating, but public domain, DVDs of patent materials - drove
> Lehman to turn apoplectic shades of red at the mere mention of Carl's
> name, a fact that I have personally tested and verified.)
>
> To provide an example, although not IETF related:  One has to wonder at
> the institutional blindness when the USPTO issued to IBM a patent on
> token ring well after Farber's work on DCS at UC Irvine.  (Eventually,
> if memory serves, the IBM patent was cancelled after issuance because of
> DCS.)
>
> Today the community (in part thanks to EFF) has become more vigilant
> about recent era applications and raising awareness of prior thinking
> before issuance.
>
> The key word, as you note, is "before".
>
> Once issued a patent gains a rebuttable presumption of validity; that
> presumption changes the calculus of the weight of evidence that is
> needed to reverse the granted patent.  It's the usual case of "easy" (or
> "easier") and less expensive before but "harder" and more expensive
> afterwords.
>
> Long ago I suggested that the IETF follow the path of entities such as
> the IEEE, by which I mean, the IETF should create a printed (yes, paper
> [perhaps only printed on demand] as well as online) quarterly journal,
> call it "Proceedings of the IETF", which would publish every ID and
> minutes of every working group (including email interactions).
>
> (Ole Jacobson's Internet Protocol Journal is already a great start in
> the right direction.)
>
> While this level of formality may now be unnecessary in the US (and I
> emphasize the word "may") the world of patents is broader than the US
> and not all patent offices around the world may have become as willing
> as the USPTO to go beyond classic professional journals.  For the IETF
> and Interenet, in this particular area, it's best to look and act like
> an old time professional engineering or scientific body.
>
> (I wonder, could one of these new LLC generative AI systems be trained
> on IETF materials, including e-mail of working groups, and be provided
> as a service to the community?  It would be nice if other bodies such as
> 3GPP, W3C, and Chinese Next Gen IP, and other networking materials could
> be included, but that could raise copyright/licensing issues.)
>
>      --karl--
>
> On 2/3/24 11:12 AM, John Levine wrote:
> > It appears that Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <karl at iwl.com> said:
> >> Back in the day (whenever that was) the US Patent office only considered
> >> filed (and perhaps only issued) patents and items published in a small
> >> set of professional technical journals as representing "prior art".  (I
> >> don't know whether that self-inflicted blindness still exists, I
> >> certainly hope it does not.)
> > I think you're confusing what the examiners use to search and what's
> prior art.
> >
> > You're right, the searches for software patents used to be terrible so
> > they allowed patents on stuff that was widely used and not at all
> > novel. I believe they use more sources now, what with Google and all.
> >
> > It's always been possible for a third party to challenge a patent,
> > formerly via reexamination, now by inter partes review or post grant
> > review. Anything published more than a year before the application was
> > filed is prior art, and as Scott noted, I-D's count.
> >
> > They also allow Preissuance Submissions for applications that have
> > been published but not allowed, to alert the examiner to prior art.
> > IPR and PGR are very expensive, tens of thousands of dollars to apply,
> > while PS are cheap, free for up to three documents and $180 for each
> > 10 thereafter.
> >
> > R's,
> > John
> >
> >
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


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