Google Extends Patent Search To Prior Art 81
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."
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone explain how this matters when google is 1) Not the patent office, and 2) the courts blatantly ignore prior art anyway?
By making this news, maybe Google wants to let Apple know that they're going to have one hell of fight if they go after Android? And maybe prime the legal system (i.e. maybe judges will see this)?
Just guessing.
Tin foil ethernet shielding for sale (Score:4, Interesting)
Presumably prior art results for patents held by Google will be excluded?
I doubt they'd really do this, at least not until something embarassing happened, but the point is, how would you know, since it's their engine? (Obviously, only an incompetent would interpret the absence of prior art in Google's database as an absence of prior art.)
Custom search results (Score:3, Interesting)
Cool. As "Do no evil" Google provides customized search results (like Fox telling people only what they want to hear), they surely could provide Apple or the Patent office with search results that don't include prior art to Google's patents. Quite convenient. Hypothetically.
More seriously, as a patent attorney I already find Google's search facility very worthwhile, as it allows me to do an advance search before a particular date (the priority date or the filing date, to be more specific). This did result in finding prior art that is currently used in opposition proceedings to have a patent revoked. The system works (it is not copyright).
Bert
Patent law: Making inventions open source long before the term was coined.
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP [espacenet.com]
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's not just playing the game. Google's out to master it and make it their bitch.
Things are about to get very very public. Very very high profile. Judges out there will have to do it right or recuse themselves. No more mistrials and crap. The way Google trounced Oracle, I think there is no doubt in my mind that they will do the same to Apple. Apple got away with their Samsung assault because someone let a bad juror through. Google will not make the same mistake.
Google beat Oracle because they tore down their patents and left them with only some extremely weak arguments that didn't fly in the end. Apple's patents are also crap and Google will, no doubt, preemptively seek to have them invalidated even before they are used against Google or another Android device maker.
So, that's why they have few patents? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google being a search engine company -- Could you imagine the Google patent lawyers going around asking engineers if they had implemented anything that they could try to patent (as most places do -- not that patents are actually needed to innovate), but unlike other companies the lawyers can't ignore the results from searching the damn "invention" up using their own Google product. Every time I hear about some "innovation" I search up patent claims and find out they omitted prior art -- Sometimes it's my own software -- That prior art may have swayed a patent examiner to label the "invention" as merely iteration, but they only really search what's already patented...
I'm not arrogant enough to believe in inventions, only discoveries. There is so much that is created and not patented that I'm positive there's prior art for every patent claim, and most are simply obvious (for which there's no test for). See above: Lawyers asking what ordinary individuals skilled in the arts may have created that they can try to patent... not genius inventors saying: "Look at what truly innovative thing I invented! Now if only I can find someone to license it from me!" -- don't have $$$ for regularly scheduled patent lawyer visits? Don't get software patents, don't win in court -- Patents are a tax on innovation. The bar for "genius" has been lowered to any common engineering idea; The bar for "non obvious" has been lowered to "anything not already on file".
Wouldn't it be fun if Google's "prior art" search just bounced you through LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com? :-P See also: The Drake equation... One answer to the Fermi Paradox is: We still have the primitive idea of a Patent system. If alien life contacted us, the government & corporations would withhold the information from the public and tell ET to fuck right off -- Statistically, Aliens already have "prior art" for every thing! They would destroy our patent system just by existing!