US PTO Gives Microsoft Credit For Lotus's Homework

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for 'Email Emotiflags' despite ample evidence of a circa-1996 Lotus Notes precedent called Mood Stamps — sender-chosen emoticons that appear next to inbox messages. Among those seemingly aware of the existence of Mood Stamps is Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who appears to have fielded questions about the feature while at Lotus. While simply Googling for 'Email Emotiflags' would have turned up evidence of this prior art (including a Slashdot discussion), the USPTO came up empty after instead going with the more-upscale Google Scholar and patent databases for its search effort. Think we can count on Ozzie to do the right thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?"

Comments

Re:Clearly Slashdot is better than Google

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Legally speaking, there is a duty to disclose any known prior art when filing a patent. In theory, we shouldn't have to depend on him doing the right thing, merely the legal one(typically a lower standard).

Re:Clearly Slashdot is better than Google

[MightyMartian]

Yes, it's a self-serving, unethical system. And that's the problem.

In my world, if you knowingly filed a patent with prior art, you would be fined 10% of your gross worth, you would be forbidden for filing any patent for a period of not less than 10 years, and any officer on your company would be forbidden to file any patents for 10 years, and any other company that they sat on would be forbidden for filing patents for 10 years, and any attempt to use another company (shell or partner) would be a criminal offense that would see your company stripped of all assets, you to spend no less than 10 years in federal prison and forbidden to ever have any direct or indirect dealings with the patent system ever again.