[Patents] How to prevent a patent

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

>Publishing on this list would already do, I believe ...
>and on some forum that is archived.

Not necessarily.  At least in the US, courts need absolute proof that
an unaltered, timestamped version of which is posted is being archived.
The courts are still working out how to handle during the legitmacy of
electronic evidence.  There have been a few articles in ACM journals on
this subject.

The safest way to document your idea is to have it printed in some
publication that appears in at least a few libraries.  In one case,
a thesis that was available only on the library shelves at the
German university where the thesis was done, was enough to qualify
as prior art (since some references to the thesis appeared in other
publications).  It was enough of a public publication to invalidate
a biotech patent.


Greg