If you want that, then do this:

a) Petition Congress to end fee diversion. Currently, the USPTO is not allowed to keep all the fees it generates.

b) Whose profit? See (a).

c) Read the US Supreme Court's opinion in KSR v. Teleflex. Then read the comments on that case by patent professionals.

I, for one, welcome our new human-brained robotic overlords.

... until McCoy says, "He's dead, Jim. He's dead."

The BC web page has already been modified to remove the entry about wireless routers. Another form of Slashdot effect?

Here lies the presumption of innocence. 1793 - 2011. R.I.P.

Now where did I put my Flux Capacitor? I could swear I left it right next to the DeLorean ....

I did and it was the best career move I ever made. My undergraduate degree was in a non-tech area. I spent the first 2 years of my practice at an international law firm doing banking and finance law. When I couldn't take it anymore I went back to school to get a formal education in Computer Science. At the end of the program, I had multiple offers to be an IP lawyer.

OSS is so pervasive now that every single company must take it into account when doing any type of software project. Companies that can effectively use OSS (and have good legal counsel to help them be effective) have competitive advantages.

I am not saying your friend has to go back to school. Knowing the basics of software engineering is critical however to be an effective attorney in the open source area. You must also have good knowledge of copyright, patent, and trade secret laws. I do a lot of work in the compliance area (making sure my clients are not violating open source or other licenses from upstream providers) and I cannot even begin to recount how many times my legal opinion to a client has depended on the specifics of the architecture of a piece of software.

A career in law is too difficult to spend it practicing in an area you do not love.

By other 8 year olds?

Outside the US, probably. In the US, the filing date is not the end-all-be-all. If Tandberg can prove it was the first to invent then a publication within one year prior to the filing date will not bar issuance of a patent. Publications more than one year before the filing date are an absolute bar regardless of whether an inventor can claim he/she was the first to invent.

I have no idea how you got this information, but if true this is *exactly* the kind of scenario that I was talking about.

I read the f'in article on the blog and I was not convinced that the developer had enough facts to make the accusations that were made.

The "new functionality" point was pure speculation.

Try checking the weblogs to see if you can prove that someone associated with the patent accessed the site before filing. Even then this could be a case where the claims of the patent are simply too broad and that an innovation is not accurately captured by the claims. In that case the claims can be amended. There is no proof that anyone copied anything yet, although I note that at least one other poster claims that the application and the code are *highly* similar.

If the invention is similar to what was done before, it is appropriate to cite the project's work as prior art. It is up to the patent applicant to convince an Examiner that the applicant's invention is different enough from the prior art to warrant issuance of a patent.

There are simply too many legitimate reasons that need to be excluded as possibilities before you can responsibly make accusations like the ones that have been made.

What I said was that there needs to be PROOF of a violation. And there are consequences - serious consequences - if it can be proven. But a LOT more facts are needed before allegations like this can be proven.

I speak assembly and also speak patent claims. All I said was that you ("you" in the generic sense - not necessarily targeted at the individual who posted the parent comments) cannot imply wrongdoing from the evidence presented so far. It is completely insufficient.

What is better is to proceed down the path you have identified. First, compare the claims and the specification to the previously published code. Next, I would want to see proof that the named inventors (or those working with the inventors) had access to the code. THEN you are beginning to put together a case.

It is possible for two people to invent the same thing around the same time - especially in this field where people are working with or building on published standards. The USPTO has a special proceeding - called an interference - that is all about determining which of two or more inventors was the first one to invent something and is thus entitled to a patent.

All I am saying here is that you should have a complete set of facts before making accusations like this.

What you linked to seems to me to be an example of someone inventing something that was already invented. That is *much* different from copying another's invention and claiming it as your own.