> Terry Carroll writes:
>
> > I though the other subscribers of this list would find the
> > attached interesting. I'm not at all surprised that FAQs have
> > been cited as prior art.
>
> For the benefit of us non-lawyers, could you define the term "prior
> art"?
Sorry.
Briefly, an invention can be patented if it is novel and not obvious.
"Novel" means thet the invention is not described in the "prior art."
"Not obvious" means that the invention would not be obvious to one
skilled in the art of the invention, in view of everyting that is
available in the "prior art."
"Prior art" is, simply put, all the information already available to the
public at the time of application. (This is a gloss, but I don't want to
bog down this list with off-topic material -- for further info, let's
discuss in misc.int-property.) The most common examples are journal
articles and patents.
What my previous post meant was just that FAQs clearly qualify as "prior
art" as much as journal articles do. For example, if an inventor came up
with a cool new encryption invention, and it turns out to have been
described in a FAQ for sci.crypt.research, he won't be able to get a
patent because it's not novel. Likewise, if his invention would have
been obvious to a person skilled in the art of encryption based on what's
in the FAQ when that is combined with other prior art (like a textbook,
for example), he won't be able to get the patent because it's "obvious."
What Greg's post means is that the PTO can cite to FAQ to show that an
applicant does not deserve a patent. Probably, a defendant in an
infringement litigation can cite a FAQ to show that the
plaintiff-patentee should not have gotten a patent.
-- Terry Carroll | Santa Clara, CA | Quayle/Bono in '96. carrollt@netcom.com |
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