Wiki's & forums are no good for Prior-Art

[PaulLowrance]

Right. For prior art as references, the patents themselves could be inspected at the likes of:

http://www. pat2pdf.org  and,
http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search

The first one has more complete information, but loads and runs slowly.
The second one is faster, but not all the drawings are fully shown with lines.  Sometimes only reference numbers appear in all or part of a drawing.

--Lee

Yes, patents are hold more weight, but often inventors would publish their work, prior-art, at wikipedia, and then later on use that as prior-art to file a patent. That no longer holds weight in court. I know of various online magazines that specialize in prior-art that hold weight in court, but they charge money to publish prior-art.

If you know of a free online source that holds weight in the court, then please post the source.

Thanks

[Azorus]

I don't know Paul sounds all official and all in your first post when it says the us patent office no longer considers wiki a valid referense.

And also when you say that wiki doesn't hold up in court?  Why that sounds real official that at least government sources don't consider it valid.

[Pirate88179]

WIKI has never been considered a valid source by any entity so why should the courts be any different?

This is nothing new at all.

However, art published by any means, as in this or other forums, is evidence of disclosure to the public which would make any patent application, or or patent, null and void in a contest in court.  Paul is correct in that it probably won't stop someone from getting a patent but, it would fail any challenge in court if they tried to enforce it.

Anyway, this is what my attorneys have told me.

I actually won one of these years and years ago when someone actually got a patent on a product that we were turned down for a patent for from the USPO.  The real joke is, they used to be a customer of ours and could not make this device and had to purchase 6 of them from us in order to get their patent.

Then, with patent in hand, we were served a cease and desist order to stop making something we invented and had been selling for about 12 years.  We even featured the item in our national advertising campaigns for many years as well. 

This was considered publication and since we proved that they were not the original inventor of this item, and it had been exposed to the public many years prior to their application, their patent was declared null and void.  Opps.

Bill

[PaulLowrance]

Now that we know that it takes more than just posting prior-art at a wiki or forum, what we now need is a free or low-cost publication that specializes in prior-art that is known to be acceptable for a future patent.

Years ago I found a publication that specializes in prior-art that is acceptable in the court of law, but they charged $200. There must be a cheaper place.

[sushimoto]

Now that we know that it takes more than just posting prior-art at a wiki or forum, what we now need is a free or low-cost publication that specializes in prior-art that is known to be acceptable for a future patent.

Years ago I found a publication that specializes in prior-art that is acceptable in the court of law, but they charged $200. There must be a cheaper place.

Hi Paul,
what do you think about this concept?
http://sciencecommons.org/projects/patent-licenses

Does it work in terms of "technical creativity" as well as with creative art?

best,
sushimoto