Re: [Patents] How to provide prior art info?

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

On Sat, 2003-07-05 at 15:22, Alec Clelland wrote:
> Many, many years ago, when I was a young examiner, a well-known mobile phone
> company filed a patent application for a cellphone which could be folded in
> half - the kind of design which is standard today. I cited a Star Trek
> communicator. But the principal examiner didn't like the references to "beam
> me up Scottie" and to an apparatus being "invented in about 400 years time".

Roland:
I became severly worried about the patent examination process when I
realized that you were actually referring to the Star Trek communicator
but not the transporter, which I associated with in my earlier reply
to you.

This principal examiner you refers to seems to believe that the Star
Trek series actually reflects the future. No, these are fantasies made
by visionary authors. They contain a lot of creative ideas, a lot of
simple extrapolation of the current technology and a lot of wishful
thinking. We don't yet know if we will be able to actually implement
for instance the warp technology or teleportation or if we will be
able to abolish money as in the Star Trek series, even if there exist
theoretical models for all these.

There are, however, a lot of technology in the Star Trek and similar
series which is not very advanced, and this concerns for instance the
communicator.

The communicator is quite easy to implement with current technology.
All you need is a reasonable intelligent (already existing technique)
device which can store and decode the message, decide the destination,
which in the case with "Beam me up Scottie" is "Scottie" and then send
the message there. This is something any telecommunication developer
would be able to implement today, and it's likely that this has
already been done.

So, I would consider a principal examiner reasoning like yours to
commit a severe breach of duty. If an innovation is thought up and
documented, and also well known as is the case with e.g. Star Trek,
then it is prior art.

        Roland Orre