Patents, prior-art, and the community

One of the things I like to do in my spare time is browse patent applications as it gives me an idea of what people are doing or thinking of doing (especially when they won't tell us).

I ran across this Linden lab patent application..
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=Ondrejka.IN.&OS=in/Ondrejka&RS=IN/Ondrejka

It was interesting reading, but what what really prompted me to think was how does the issue of prior art work when the community is so full of ideas and is proposing them in such a clear and public manner.

How can LL really go forward and patent without browsing through all the forums to find out if the idea was already proposed by a user?

Also, does this mean they're going to purge the forums on an ongoing basis to remove any 'prior art'.

Should we be caching these forums? How do SLers feel about LL patenting ideas they propose? Whether or not they conciously were derived from their forum postings?

It's an interesting problem that never really existed before as companies rarely discussed so intensely with their community what they were doing.

First, an idea proposal in SL's forums is not a patent application and certainly the person(s) proposing an idea would have no legal recourse such as with a real life patent (application).

Second, there are very, very, few things in SL that are not reflections of things which already exist in RL. One time someone was lamenting the fact others were making roller rinks when it was *their idea*. It obviously wasn't, it was just their SL interpretation of a rink. This would be the same in my mind to someone claiming that it was unfair that others were making planes, cars, or motorcycles because theirs was first.

However, one man's idea is usually another man's process .. and vice versa.

While a user would have no recourse, a competing company would probably use the forums as a gold mine of prior-art.

[0003] The present invention is directed to a simulation system.

That link was an interesting read they are trying to patent a simulation is all Did ya see the drawings?

simulation x 1 billion or so is what part of what i read LOL

Well, remember, in the United States, you can patent anything, provided you append the words "...on a computer." to the end of it.

This is one of my favorite recent patent applications.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040230959%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040230959&RS=DN/20040230959

-AP

That IS NOT believable!

copyright's my thing, not patents but i'm pretty certain just coming up with an idea or proposal doesn't qualify as "prior art".

With the way the patent office is handing these things out, there is no such thing as prior art.

True .. but prior art is useful when trying to strike down a patent.

The half-million dollars you need for lawyer fees is more important. Getting a patent overturned is damned expensive.

True .. money does help.

Heh, I've got prior art on that myself.

From a distrobuted system I was working on in 1999, called '3L'.

Edit: Actually, that may be a 'maybe have prior art', there's a lot of conditions on that patent which may/may not differ from what I helped develop.

-Adam