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Steve Jobs Video Kills Apple Patent In Germany
An anonymous reader writes "Today the Federal Patent Court of Germany shot down an Apple photo gallery bounce-back patent over which Cupertino was/is suing Samsung and Motorola. A panel of five judges found the patent invalid because the relevant patent application was filed only in June 2007 but Steve Jobs already demoed the feature in January 2007 (video). While this wouldn't matter in the U.S., it's a reason for a patent to be invalidated in Europe. For different reasons someone thought the iPhone presentation was a mistake. It now turns out that when Steve Jobs said "Boy have we patented it!" his company forgot that public disclosure, even by an inventor, must not take place before a European patent application is filed. But Apple can still sue companies over the Android photo gallery: in addition to this patent it owns a utility model, a special German intellectual property right that has a shorter term (10 years) and a six-month grace period, which is just enough to make sure that history-making Steve Jobs video won't count as prior art."
Perhaps it's how the US claims it's still innovating, when the opposite is actually happening because of it.
In fact, overall the US patent office doesn't do "due diligence" on almost anything anymore.
What do you mean "anymore"? They didn't before either, which is why unscrupulous people like Edison could trawl for European and Russian inventions, and then patent them in the US.
(And then have the public believe these patent trolls were inventors, but that's a different side of the story.)