Re: Patents and trade secrets was: Encryption algorithms used in PrivaSoft
Perry E. Metzger at Sep 22, 95 01:19:37 am wrote:
David Van Wie writes:
It just moves the prior art date from the date of invention to the date of filing the patent application.
What happens if the chronology goes like this ?
(0) Alice invents a snaffleblort. (1) Bob invents a snaffleblort. (2) Bob files for a patent on a snaffleblort.
From what you said, it would appear that Alice's prior art won't count when it comes to considering the validity of Bob's patent claim. Is that correct ?
Unless Alice made public statements about her invention, you are right. Something becomes prior art when it is made public. If she (like most patent lawyers will advise) kept her mouth shut about what she had invented until her patent application was filed, she would lose under first to file rules (assuming step three is that Alice files a patent application). A quick trip to the soapbox: First to files rules are good for big companies, and bad for small inventors. Big companies have many lawyers, and know exactly how each step of the process works. Small inventors usually don't know the process as well, usually have to scrape together the thousands of dollars necessary to pursue a patent, and then find a good lawyer that they can trust -- all while ensuring that they don't break one of the rules about how you must treat your invention before filing. Moral: First to invent rules, like "natural copyright," are good for the little guy because they base patent decisions on when the important things (i.e. invention and reduction to practice) happened, not administrative things (i.e. complex documents filed with dotted i's and crossed t's).
David van Wie misattributed thus:
Perry E. Metzger at Sep 22, 95 01:19:37 am wrote:
David Van Wie writes:
It just moves the prior art date from the date of invention to the date of filing the patent application.
What happens if the chronology goes like this ?
(0) Alice invents a snaffleblort. (1) Bob invents a snaffleblort. (2) Bob files for a patent on a snaffleblort.
From what you said, it would appear that Alice's prior art won't count when it comes to considering the validity of Bob's patent claim. Is that correct ?
I actually asked those questions, not Perry. Check your attributions, please. -Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>
Some unknown person writes:
It just moves the prior art date from the date of invention to the date of filing the patent application.
What happens if the chronology goes like this ?
(0) Alice invents a snaffleblort. (1) Bob invents a snaffleblort. (2) Bob files for a patent on a snaffleblort.
From what you said, it would appear that Alice's prior art won't count when
it comes to considering the validity of Bob's patent claim. Is that correct?
The bizarre history of the invention of radio comes to my mind. Perhaps we can learn something from it. The Russian Alexander Popov taught for 18 years at a naval school in Kronstadt (near St Petersburg, Russia). He was fascinated by Hertz's 1888 paper on electromagnetic waves and worked with his students on improving his results. In 1889 Russian Navy granted him funds to investigate the use of electromagnetic waves for telecommunications. It's undisputed that Popov invented the antenna in 1894, and built a (subsequently widely used) apparatus for advance warning of thunderstroms in 1995. Now the disputed part: Popov published his paper _Pribor dlja obnaruzhenija i registrirovanija elektrichiskikh kolebanij_ in the January 1896 issue of _Zhurnal Russkogo Fiziko-Khimicheskogo Obshchestva_. In it he described the first radio receiver. On May 7, 1895 and March 12, 1896 Popv made public presentations to the Russian Physico-Chemical Society demonstrating his invention and (in March 1896) transmitted the words "Heinrich Hertz" (in a Morse-like code) at a distance of 250 meters. In June 1896 Gulielmo Marconi filed for a patent in England. He offered to the British government his inventions for wireless transmission of signals, whose details he kept secret. The news of his application and the description of his invention weren't made public until June 1897, when the patent was granted, at which point Popov raised hell and wrote letters to numerous newspapers, claiming that Marconi's patent application was substantially identical to Popov's publications. Meanwhile, Popov continued working on his transmitters/ detectors; by the spring of 1897 he was transmitting at 640m. He got more funds and built 5km equipment by the summer of 1897. In 1900 he installed a production radio-telegraph system between several islands in the Gulf of Finland 50 km apart. After the Marconi incident, Russians viewed radio transmissions technology as a military secret and didn't publish these results until many years later, although comparable technology was available commercially in the West. Popov was always low on funds. Marconi, a brilliant entrepreneur, sold stock in his corporation, raised capital, hired other prominent scientists to work with him, and was developing new technologies much faster. In 1901 Marconi was transmitting radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean, and Popov retired from the naval school and went to teach at the SPB electro- technical institute; he was soon elected its president. In 1904, before the beginning of Russo-Japanese war, the Russians had to buy in great hurry a large quantity of radio receivers/transmitters - made commercially in Germany under Marconi's patent. Popov, no longer with the Navy, got to supervise their installation in Russian naval ships. (Russia lost that war pretty miserably, by the way.) What, you might ask, is the cryptographic relevance of all this? Well, in 1914 Russia was waging war against Germany. Russian military officers in East Prussia relied on radio to transmit information. Russians knew about crypto, but the key distribution was so screwed up that most on their transmissions were in cleartext. (Besides, radio was supposed to be a Russian invention not available to the uncultered foreigners.) Germans reportedly found the intercepted radio transmissions most helpful. Germans also broke the weak code used by the Russians in east prussia within weeks. Their complete knowledge of Russian weaknesses and troop movements led to Russian defeat in East Prussia, after initial advances. (The last claim is from the book _Tajnopis' v istorii Rossii_ (Cryptography in Russian history) by T.A.Soboleva; someone ought to publish its translation.) Soboleva also mentions that East Prussia had an advanced phone system which the Russians didn't disable. On several occasions German civilian from remote farms called Germany from across the front lines and reported on what the Russians were up to. --- Dr. Dimitri Vulis Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
participants (3)
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David Van Wie -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
futplex＠pseudonym.com