<em>I have a copy of Red Hat's amended US patent application No. 10/450.581</em>
Florian,
Red Hat has several hundred patent applications on file, all of whom they think cover valid, patentable inventions. What made the '581 application stand out?
<em>As for covering the prior art, tell me what fraction of the hundreds of millions of lines of open source each or any patent examiner has ever studied carefully?</em>
0%
What we need instead is someone to invent a way to automatically compare patent claims to source code. As I understand it, open source agreements and copyrights in general are easily enforced since you can automate the search function and look for exact matches.
Tougher for patents. Claims themselves are abstract. Perhaps someone can invent a new type of claim that is sufficiently specific so that comparison with prior art can be automated, but sufficiently abstract so that the underlying concepts of the invention can be covered.
Authored Comments
<em>I have a copy of Red Hat's amended US patent application No. 10/450.581</em>
Florian,
Red Hat has several hundred patent applications on file, all of whom they think cover valid, patentable inventions. What made the '581 application stand out?
<em>As for covering the prior art, tell me what fraction of the hundreds of millions of lines of open source each or any patent examiner has ever studied carefully?</em>
0%
What we need instead is someone to invent a way to automatically compare patent claims to source code. As I understand it, open source agreements and copyrights in general are easily enforced since you can automate the search function and look for exact matches.
Tougher for patents. Claims themselves are abstract. Perhaps someone can invent a new type of claim that is sufficiently specific so that comparison with prior art can be automated, but sufficiently abstract so that the underlying concepts of the invention can be covered.