Re: FAT patents. Do we need to revive non-US?
On 1/11/06, Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> wrote:
> But you definitely have to come up with some soft of working
> implementation, be it hard- or software, I agree.
Actually, that requirement was dropped awhile ago. You only have to
roughly describe an implementation. There are actually a lot of
patents that have been issued for "inventions" that won't work. The
USPTO specifically disallows patents on alleged perpetual motion
machines, but has been known in recent years to grant patents on
perpetual motion machines masquerading under different names.
"Zero-point energy" is a particularly popular one.
Rest assured, software isn't the only area in which the US patent
system is somewhat askew.
--
Michael A. Marsh
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~mmarsh
http://mamarsh.blogspot.com
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