[NTLUG:Discuss] Microsoft buys Firefox!

[steve]

Mike Hart wrote:

> One of the most important things you can do for
> freedom of software these days is to dream and write
> it down in a public place.  Patents are rendered
> invalid by 'prior art'. A patent isn't issued for a
> 'working' product, only for the IDEA for a product
> which is new, unique, and not blatantly obvious.  If
> you can show the IDEA (or even something close) was
> publicly discussed before the patent app date, the
> patent is bogus. 

Yep.  I have once managed to fight off a patent claim
against one of my products using prior art I found in
an old computer book - it's a valuable thing if you can
find it.

But on the flip side...

I invented 'laser tag' years before there was such a
thing on the market - I didn't patent the idea and I
didn't tell anyone in writing - and the gizmo my
friends and I messed with (which used TV Infrared
remote controllers and receivers glued into toy guns)
had long been consigned to the trash by the time the
game became mainstream - so that one was a dead loss.

So yeah - there is big value in talking about ideas
that you don't intend to patent yourself on a public
forum.

I don't see why the Wayback machine shouldn't be legal,
but IANAL.