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Prior Art for Hyperlink Order Tracking in Email?
Davesbud asks: "I'm trying to invalidate a patent that claims to have invented 'placing a hyperlink in an email which in turn provides the recipient with order status or tracking information.' I am searching for any web pages, articles, newsgroup/forum discussions, brochures or the like, published before December of 1997, that describes this idea. You've seen this if you've ordered almost anything online or shipped by FedEx or UPS. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks."
but then so would eliminating patents completely.
A limitation of patents to only drugs that make people live longer would have a good effect
Oh great. No new pain killers. Or cures for non-fatal diseases like macroreticular degeneration. Or psychological disorders like bipolar disease.
but then so would eliminating patents completely.
So who is going to spend a billion dollars developing a new drug without patent protection? It's the most idiotic concept I have seen in a LONG time.
One of the big reasons that drugs cost so damn much is that they are developed with trial and error methods. That't right, they develop a chemical. Then they go "Is it good for disease #1. Nope. How about disease #2. nope .... (years pass) ... How about disease #65536. Nope. Oh well, let's try the whole thing again with potential drug #2."
Genetic engineering will change all that. We'll be able to do this: "Hey, this bad protein is doing this bad thing to this other thingy. And I've figured out that if I had a molecule that looked like this (pulls out a model of a molecule) I could make the bad protein stop doing the bad thing." Then the monkeys in the chemical factory would make the molecule.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
The "deal" that the grant of a patent expresses is that in exchange for sharing the invention with the public, the inventor gets exclusive use of the invention for a limited time. If the public already knows about the invention, then there is no point to granting a patent to someone as a reward/compensation for disclosing the invention. That's why prior art invalidates patents.
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In order to qualify as "prior art," public disclosure of an invention potentially doesn't have to be very public, if it was known or someone was using it in the US (I assume you are asking about US patents) before the "inventor" trying to obtain the patent invented it. See 35 USC 120. Prior art can also be public disclosure after invention but more than a year before the patent was filed.
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or
. . .
A useful basic article entitled "When is something prior art against a patent?" can be found at
http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/.
My first online purchase was Lollapalooza tickets in June of 1996. I seem to remember such a link in the confirmation email. I remember that the Lollapalooza.com site was one of the first big shockwave sites I had ever seen and we ordered the tickets from the site but I can't remeber if it was ticketmaster or the promoters themselves. Either way check ticketmaster or the wayback machine for Lollapalooza.com
I remember ordering some stuff from them for the first time in early 1998 and them emailling me UPS tracking info, they may have been doing it prior to 1998 obviously. You may want to ask them?
You made me really curious, so while typing this up, I pulled up one of my old archives. My page was last updated on Aug 28 1995. The first link on it was to the GNA (Globalwide Network Academy) Project at MIT. I remember this project, because at the time I was responsible for going through schools request and accepting/denying them. You might consider contacting them about this issue, as I was receiving emails telling me to go on and check the status of this or that -- I am sure the schools did as well.
Hope that helps.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid