Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: BYTE.com on patents--new opensource defense
Author: Dennis Peterson Posted: 3/14/2000; 10:42:50 AM Topic: BYTE.com on patents Msg #: 15583 (In response to 15579) Prev/Next: 15582 / 15584
From the article:This class of patent is most commonly used to register inventions made by the U.S. Government and it is known as Statutory Invention Registration, or SIR. Anyone can apply to receive SIR patent status for a novel invention, and there is only a small one-time fee for this type of patent compared to the larger and periodic fees required to receive and maintain a regular patent. However, statutory patents are only used when the patentee wants to guarantee that no third party will ever be able to claim patent protection for an invention. This makes SIR a very interesting, if currently overlooked, option for protecting open source inventions.
People have talked about maintaining an open-source prior art database. It sounds like this might be a better option, since the patent office already looks at this. Anybody know what the fee is?
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