Inventor sues Google, Verizon, others on voicemail

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Sadly, they pass.

I used to be a patent examiner. You don't need to establish a process or provide code. You can put any stupid idea down and, if it's phrased in the right legalese and you pay your money, odds are pretty good you'll get a patent.

Patents are a good idea. 2 things are badly broken in the US patent system:

1. The legal criteria for originality are unbelievably low. That improved some this year.

2. The patent office has a culture of robothood. The ideal promoted is that there is a process for evaluating a patent application, and if you follow that process, you will get the same result, no matter who you are. The result is that patent examiners have little understanding of or curiousity about patent law, and just blindly do whatever the other people in their art unit do, whether or not it makes sense or is in fact legal.

Posted by: shagbark   Posted on: 08/28/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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