Google Extends Patent Search To Prior Art

Posted by samzenpus on Monday September 3, 2012 @03:31AM from the what-came-before dept.

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."

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Re:Why bother? by SourceFrog · 2012-09-03 04:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

What patent law has effectively become, in practice, is a law against inventing (for anyone except the the big entrenched players.)

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Re:Pssh nice prior art dude by cratermoon · 2012-09-03 05:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

A method "obvious to a person that is well-versed in an art" is not supposed to be patentable either. Except Apple added "on a mobile phone", and THEN, well, it changed everything!