How to provide prior art info?

[Roland Orre <orre@nada.kth.se>]

In these times of patent inflation, regarding the fact that the patent
offices should be a public service. What possibilites do we, as public,
have to provide hints about prior art and possibly also obviousness to
the examiners when we get to know about certain patent applications?

It should also be possible to cancel a granted patent due to prior
art of the same reason, what are the possibilities for this, for us,
as being the public?

I guess this may be different for e.g EPO and USPTO.

As Greg mentioned for instance Star Trek, concerning my mistake about
the MS application on an instant translator, how likely is it that the
examiners will search through SF publications? (I know this happened
for the communication satellite which was rejected because Arthur C
Clarke had already published about it)

(I also have the feeling, that, certain examiners, due to a potential
economical gain in granting a patent, despite how obvious it is, may
not search very thoroughly...)

        Roland Orre

On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 17:13, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
Roland:
> ... Anything can be patented, despite how old obvious ideas are being used.
> 
> Roland is referring to Microsoft's U.S. patent APPLICATION 20030125927.
> This is not an issued patent, and I suspect it will never issue.  All
> the examiner has to do is cite an old episode of Star Trek and its
> Universal Translator.
> 
> Greg Aharonian