Geometry Shader based Motion Blur Patent Application

[Simon F]

There's one way these kinds of frivolous patents can be stopped IMO, what I'd love to see is an anti-patent.....

Technically, any** document describing the method, published before the patent is filed, will do that. An "anti patent" will offer nothing over that if the examiners fail to find it in their prior art search.

(**except, IIRC, for the US where the inventors have one year's grace to turn that document into a patent )

 

[soylent]

Technically, any** document describing the method, published before the patent is filed, will do that. An "anti patent" will offer nothing over that if the examiners fail to find it in their prior art search.

(**except, IIRC, for the US where the inventors have one year's grace to turn that document into a patent )

Yes, but that still requires publishing a document of some sort in a place accessible to the patent office. A vague and incomplete description of motion blur using geometry shaders on my homepage or the b3d forum would not be found and quite likely not considered prior art. While the same apparently does not seem true if submitted to the patent office.

 

[Simon F]

Yes, but that still requires publishing a document of some sort in a place accessible to the patent office.

Well, it is true that whenever I've submitted patents to the USPTO, at examination time they have only searched existing US patents whereas the EPO have often returned papers in obscure journals.

A vague and incomplete description of motion blur using geometry shaders on my homepage or the b3d forum would not be found and quite likely not considered prior art.

Well, I guess there is the problem of establishing an accurate dateb of publication on the, ever changing, WWW. You could, I suppose, put it in the classified sections of a newspaper or send a letter to a journal with a thumbnail sketch of an idea.

While the same apparently does not seem true if submitted to the patent office.

This is still only an application. It hasn't (AFAICS) as yet been granted. I seem to recall that if you know of relevant art you can send it to the patent office and they can consider it in their examination. <shrug>

 

[3dcgi]

There's one way these kinds of frivolous patents can be stopped IMO, what I'd love to see is an anti-patent.

* Application cost taken from public money(anyone interested in the public good can apply for an anti-patent freely).
* The anti-patent grants free use to anyone and prevents patents that overlap the patent.
* Any significant discovery or invention of a publically funded project must be anti-patented.

This allows a means to fight back against moronic patents. This allows pre-emption of simple patents without producing expensive and time consuming "prior art" that can be used to void a patent that has been granted or prevent a new patent.

I believe such a thing exists, but I'm not sure where. A while back a friend at Intel told me his patent idea was not going to be submitted to the PTO by Intel. Instead it was being published to the public domain via a service of some sort. The idea was to prevent someone else from patenting the idea.