[geeks] LaBrea

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 02:03:38PM -0400, Michael Schiller wrote:

> > Well, patents were made for the little people.  And as such, the
> > process is supposed to be fairly easy. 
> 
> Well, in theory it's easy. In practice it's hard, and a patent attorney
> is needed for ALL patents. The US Patent office takes an adversarial
> position, and this makes it harder than it should be to patent things. I
> know this because I've gone thru the process a few times :)

As of a few years ago, there were still people doing it by
themselves.  Maybe things have changed.  Somewhat of an adversarial
view is probably good if it weeds out bogus claims.  What would suck
though would be if James was denied, then $bigco got it.  That is the
main purpose I see for filing patents is to keep them out of the hands
of $bigcos.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd