[Patents] Race To The Registry

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> If a friend or foe obtains my unpatented work by any means and
> registers before I do then he/she owns the patent.  Right?

Not necessarily.

If my work is already published in a CVS archive on the Net, then it is
prior art and nobody can get a patent on it.

If it is not published but kept as a business secret, then you should be
disciplined enough to really keep it secret.  This discipline is imposed
by the patent system.  Loosening the discipline makes things only worse.

In a first-to-invent system you will likely have the opposite case
frequently occurring: Someone patents something and a lot of people claim
that they were the first to invent.  You may even have people seeing an
opensource CVS archive and then running to the patent office providing
"proofs" that they had done the same thing earlier.

The patent system is designed to encourage a race to the registry:  you
should make your knowledge known as early as possible so as to disseminate
it.  In return for that you get a patent.

The patent system is not designed for people who want to have their cake
and eat it:  keep things secret and then, by using the first-to-invent
principle, still get a patent on them.

On the other hand, the American system is based on noble motives and
doesn't really do much harm either.  These details aren't really a reason
of concern for us at the moment.  Our concern is how to campaign for
limiting the scope of patentability / enforcability.  Doing anything
beyond that requires a lot of organisational ressources which we don't
have.

-phm