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Google Extends Patent Search To Prior Art
mikejuk writes "As well as buying up patents to defend itself against the coming Apple attack on Android, Google is also readying its own technology. It has extended its Patent Search facility to include European patents and has added a Prior Art facility. The new Prior Art facility seems to be valuable both to inventors and to the legal profession. In order to be granted a patent the inventor has to establish that it is a novel idea — and in the current litigious environment companies and their lawyers might want to show that patents should not have been granted."
In order to be granted a patent the inventor has to establish that it is a novel idea — and in the current litigious environment companies and their lawyers might want to show that patents should not have been granted.
Can someone explain how this matters when google is 1) Not the patent office, and 2) the courts blatantly ignore prior art anyway?
It seems to me that you can patent just about anything now with the right wording and money.
I am filing a patent on "Upright Locomotion for Bipedal Hominids using Two Appendages."
Silence is a state of mime.
...something like this.
Why bother inventing anything? There are billions (probably an exaggeration) of patents and if you so happen to use a method developed by someone else (or even if you don't, if you take patent trolls into account), you're very likely to get sued. It's just too risky.
Time to do away with patents.
Presumably prior art results for patents held by Google will be excluded?
I doubt they'd really do this, at least not until something embarassing happened, but the point is, how would you know, since it's their engine? (Obviously, only an incompetent would interpret the absence of prior art in Google's database as an absence of prior art.)
Cool. As "Do no evil" Google provides customized search results (like Fox telling people only what they want to hear), they surely could provide Apple or the Patent office with search results that don't include prior art to Google's patents. Quite convenient. Hypothetically.
More seriously, as a patent attorney I already find Google's search facility very worthwhile, as it allows me to do an advance search before a particular date (the priority date or the filing date, to be more specific). This did result in finding prior art that is currently used in opposition proceedings to have a patent revoked. The system works (it is not copyright).
Bert
Patent law: Making inventions open source long before the term was coined.
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP
All of these smartphone and tablet guys are using prior art invented by sci-fi authors and audio/visual media such as Star Trek.
What the heck are they doing?! They need to grow up!
Google has never been a fan of the patent wars. If Google sets up a search engine for prior art, they will be providing a resource with which many patents can be invalidated. Competitors will fear bias in that the prior art database may give results that are in Google's favor, and perhaps start providing resources that index prior art themselves. Hopefully the whole thing will snowball and show the failure of the current system. However if doubt would be cast on the quality and validity of the results then perhaps nobody will pay attention to this initiative.
Twinstiq, game news
The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there.
1) Copy whatever Returned by Google Patent Search returns 2) Add several "on a mobile device" 3) File a patent 4) ??? 5) Profit!!
Prior Art an extension into archaic, analog and archival, the worth of which now has been monetized in the $Billions.
GOOG is in the search business!
Work towards the abolishment of patents. I mean, hey, if all their patents are 'defensive', they would save gobs of money by tearing down the wall instead. But I get the feeling they'll soon be on the attack, just like Apple, if their advertising and government spying businesses turns sour.
Let's do this for every feature of an iPhone. Let's see who really owns the patents.
How do you search for european patents? I'm irritated by espacenet.
Google being a search engine company -- Could you imagine the Google patent lawyers going around asking engineers if they had implemented anything that they could try to patent (as most places do -- not that patents are actually needed to innovate), but unlike other companies the lawyers can't ignore the results from searching the damn "invention" up using their own Google product. Every time I hear about some "innovation" I search up patent claims and find out they omitted prior art -- Sometimes it's my own software -- That prior art may have swayed a patent examiner to label the "invention" as merely iteration, but they only really search what's already patented...
I'm not arrogant enough to believe in inventions, only discoveries. There is so much that is created and not patented that I'm positive there's prior art for every patent claim, and most are simply obvious (for which there's no test for). See above: Lawyers asking what ordinary individuals skilled in the arts may have created that they can try to patent... not genius inventors saying: "Look at what truly innovative thing I invented! Now if only I can find someone to license it from me!" -- don't have $$$ for regularly scheduled patent lawyer visits? Don't get software patents, don't win in court -- Patents are a tax on innovation. The bar for "genius" has been lowered to any common engineering idea; The bar for "non obvious" has been lowered to "anything not already on file".
Wouldn't it be fun if Google's "prior art" search just bounced you through LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com? :-P See also: The Drake equation... One answer to the Fermi Paradox is: We still have the primitive idea of a Patent system. If alien life contacted us, the government & corporations would withhold the information from the public and tell ET to fuck right off -- Statistically, Aliens already have "prior art" for every thing! They would destroy our patent system just by existing!
Like Google, the patent office itself has apparently realized that there is too much information - and even some knowledge - out there in traditional (patents in other territories) and non-traditional forms. That is, not in other patents, peer-reviewed journals or non-reviewed trade publications. The "Peer to Patent" or Peer Review Pilot FY2011 program is a joint project of the USPTO and NY Law School and something like USPTO's own "crowd sourcing" initiative. The 1-year expanded pilot program ended Dec. 2011. Another initiative is "Article One Partners" where a bounty is posted by the client for the best researched prior art. Most of the rewards being posted seem to be for electronics cases. These all seem like good efforts to get new forms of "art" known to those experts most knowledgable about the subject matter involved in patenting process.
As far as the courts, judges are not subject matter experts nor do they always understand the differences between the patent statutes (e.g. a law of nature vs.information about the interaction of man-made substances with genetically diverse organism suffering from complex pathologies and living on the 3rd rock and where prior art obviousness prevails), so seem to often be swayed by popular sentiments.
Yes, you can patent anything provided you are the true inventor and that it has novelty, utility and is non-obvious and is not a law of nature. See 35 U.S. Code, especially sections 101-103 plus 112. Go ahead jump into the fray!
Google will archive all queries and say they show someone had the same ideas before, and therefore they're not patentable.
I have already patented: Locomatory mechanism utilizing alternating suspensory structures for planar translation. Note: My patent also describes its use in momentary spacial translation without suspension based on trajectory-like movements (e.g. running) so all of you are in trouble with the law mister.
Let Google engineers go do Prior Art Search, or lookup prior patents and start developing in those area.
Even better is that Google keep a history of such search results performed by their engineers.
When they are sued for patent infringement, and asked to handover the search results, it would be fun to watch.
As an engineer, the advice I have always received, "Do not do any patent or prior art search". Leave that to the lawyer. Avoid getting tainted. Avoid doing what Samsung been caught doing.
Cunt.
Deferring to the patent office when the decisions of the patent office are being challenged on the grounds of evidence of prior art is ignoring prior art, so the distinction you make is one without a difference.
If the courts aren't going to enforce the law, including acting to assure that acts of executive branch agencies like the Department of Commerce's Patent and Trademark Office conform to the law, what is the point of having courts?
Lets pretend that Google doesn't copy anything.
Imagine a case where Google is being sued for infringement on some obscure patent ..... with Google being the creators of a search engine for patents, can they claim that they didn't know about it and therefor did not purposely infringe on it?
... which is the more likely scenario.
By building a search engine, they can no longer claim ignorance about any patent and that will give a green light to the real patent trolls to sued the company to the wazoo.
Lets face facts, Google is a copycat company. None of their products are original. Google will be spending more money and time defending themselves than actually doing any work.
The most likely outcome is that the two companies settle out of court, even now. All this litigation is merely foreplay, in terms of moving the final settlement slightly one way or the other.
Nothing to see here, move along...
"As well as buying up patents to defend itself against the coming Apple attack on Android"
Fucking hell. Google obviously bought Motorola Mobility to go on the patent offensive.
For fuck's sake Slashdot.
While there is much dissent about the broken status of the patents systems - everywhere - this initiative just MIGHT start to shed some light on the ridiculousness of many patents. Who knows, even the idiot judges, who are supposed to represent the mythical "reasonable man", may finally come to the realization that - despite who has the most money, or the lawyers with the biggest fangs - many patents which have been granted are ridiculously obvious and the ideas had existed, and been in common use, for centuries.