Patent Question

In the US it started as a way to allow the public chime in with prior art on stuff that was about to be patented. I don't know what motivated publication in Europe, but I do know we have, by treaty, aligned our some of publication practice with theirs, for consistency.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

In practice probably nothing at all. And unless you have *very* deep pockets to defend your patent a large corporate can infringe it with virtual impunity knowing that they can rack up the legal bill and waste your management time until either you give up or go bust.

A USPTO patent isn't worth the paper it is printed on. They will patent anything these days without bothering to check prior art. The software ones are a complete joke. There are even patents granted on some mathematical identities like X + (-X) = 0 as applied to JPEG.

Depends how easy the thing is to reverse engineer and clone. First mover advantage and initial market share can be enough to keep new entrants from making much of a dent. Or alternatively expect a couple of serious competitors to tool up and enter the market and base your business strategy on that scenario. A third of the pie is still worth having. You may have to drop prices when clones enter the market.

Regards, Martin Brown

Obviously, the Russians patented everything first; his name is RegUS von PatOff.