With the ability to search on the internet there seem to be
a magnification of and concerted efforts to rename almost
anything. Partly from the publish or perish citation world but
with subtle and perhaps sinister financing.
All, that is needed is to cut the research thread is to silently
rename some prior art. And publish in modern documents
and journals.
A RAID might become SyntheticReliableStorageSystem (SRSS).
All papers discussing SRSS would never reference RAID research.
They would bypass RAID and jump to the side for statistical analysis
cited in RAID research iff necessary. All the layers renumbered,
renamed and restructured and Bob is your uncle...
It takes almost a generation but a very strong line is drawn and for
the most part only the grey haired know what went before.
This makes it almost impossible for patent research to reach
back into its own documents and difficult to impossible to
research on the internet or many libraries.
Some companies hire old guys and park them in
a museum like atmosphere and trot them out as needed.
A well fed and well populated museum could be the best defense
from some patent trolls.
Outside of the museum is some serious age discrimination.