[clue-talk] Microsoft Claims 235 Patents Violated

[dperkins at frii.com]

> dperkins at frii.com wrote:
>> According to the constitution, a patent must be useful and non-obvious.
>> IF you have seen some of the patents over the last 200 years, I doubt
>> that
>> useful has ever been used to determine a patent.  Non-obvious is a bit
>> harder, or should be.  What is non-obvious to a layman might be very
>> obvious to an expert.
>>
> Prior instances of the "invention" should help, right?

That would be prior art.  Any publication that describes how something
works would be prior art.  I think that it would need to be disseminated
and not kept secret.  I assume that any physical example would also be
called prior art.

There are two ways to determine who gets a patent.  The first is that the
first to patent wins.  Alexander Graham Bell beat Elisha Gray by a few
hours when he patented the telephone.  The second method lets someone
prove that he invented something before the person who has the patent. 
There has been some talk about a patent change that sounds like the US
went to the second method and is going back to the first.

>> Companies have sued users before for patent violations.  Ford wanted to
>> sell cars to the masses.  Cadillac et al. wanted to sell to the rich,
>> and
>> they owned patents Ford needed.  They refused to cooperate with Ford, so
>> he just used the patents.  They sued Ford and the case went on for
>> years.
>> Then they decided to sue the users.  That infuriated the public, and
>> incidentally, the judge.  The court ruled in favor of Ford.  I don't
>> know
>> the reasoning used by the judge, or if an appeal went to the Supreme
>> Court.
> I think MS plays their cards way too close to their chest to ever sue an
> average person.  If they sue an "end-user" it will only be companies.

Suing companies could produce the same result.  Maybe the Ford case might
be used as a precedent, but it was not used when SCO sued some companies.