[8497] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Multimedia has been patented
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (hes@unity.ncsu.edu)
Sat Nov 20 23:50:17 1993
From: hes@unity.ncsu.edu
To: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1993 23:49:34 -0500 (EST)
Cc: tenney@netcom.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199311210217.AA13003@world.std.com> from "Barry Shein" at Nov 20, 93 09:17:39 pm
Barry Shein wrote:
>>From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
>>The PTO has a whole group dedicated to "software patents". The head of
>>that group and an examiner from that group have been to more than one of
>>the IEEE Intellectual Property Committee meetings -- I believe the first
>>time they attended was two or three years ago. I therefore believe that
>>you don't know of what you speak or we have a semantic misunderstanding.
>
>It's nice to hand out titles and depts, how many people in this "whole
>group" and how many of them have any credentials in the software area
>(as is typical for other areas)? Just shuffling signs on peoples'
>doors doesn't help. Do they make use of outside expertise (again, as
>is done in other patent areas)? It's hard to believe there's any
>expertise being used at all when patents like we've seen are being
>handed out.
I heard a presentation a couple of years ago on the educational
requirements to become a patent examiner. At that time, to become a
examiner in the software area one needed a BS degree in engineering or a
physical science, or some other areas - but *not* including CS. So a CS
graduate would only be eligible with another degree in one of the
approved areas. This appeared to be a major drawback in getting
qualified people, and Bernie Galler (U. Mich.) was working with the PTO
to try to improve this situation. I don't know what progress has been
made since then. Does anyone know the current requirements and hiring
practices?
> ...
>>1. They do not have a searchable database of prior art in a form that can
>>easily transmute between a prior "invention" and a patent application's
>>invention. In a simple sense, they can't easily search through journals of
>>the last 5-50 years and find "flow charts" of, for example, multimedia
>>systems that clearly shows prior art.
>
>Ok, so you go to someone(s) in the field and you ask what to look for
>and where (not their opinion, tho that's good also, but where you
>might find prior art up to the standard needed), as with anything.
>
>This db would indeed be handy to have, but it's hardly necessary.
I think another problem was that the PTO has the practice or habit of
searching for prior art in the Patent files (and stopping there.) Since
there was a lot of software progress before software patents started
being issued, this has apparently led to missing a lot of prior art.
This seems to be the big problem, rather than the speed of change in the
field. Again, does anyone know the current situation.
> ...
--henry schaffer
