[8508] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Multimedia has been patented
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Sun Nov 21 14:01:30 1993
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 11:01:13 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
At 7:30 AM 11/21/93 -0500, Tansin A. Darcos & Company wrote:
>Perhaps we need to argue that secrecy be removed on patent applications;
>or that compulsory licensing be introduced on some classes of concepts.
There is a push on for "patent harmonization" -- to make the US system more
similar to the rest of the world. The most visible aspect of that is the
change to "first to file" rather than "first to invent". The US and one
other country (I can't recall which mid-east country, but Iraq comes to
mind) are the only countries that still use "first to invent".
However, one of the less visible parts of the harmonization effort is to
also require publication of all patent applications after some time (I've
heard 18-24 months) even before the patent is issued.
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
Voice: (415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
