One Reason Why The USPTO Granted Ridiculously Stupid Internet Patents: Patent Examiners Were Banned From Using The Internet
from the wtf dept
We already reported on the surprising but good news ruling out of East Texas, that Eolas' crazy patents were judged invalid by the jury. However, Alex Howard's writeup about the ruling includes a crazy tidbit that came out during the short trial that deserves separate attention:One interesting detail that emerged in the case was that the U.S. Patent Office didn't have access to the Internet in 1994 and was apparently forbidden from going on the Internet in 1997, which would make research into prior art in cyberspace somewhat of a challenge.I'm not sure I'd use "interesting" as the adjective there. More like insane. I mean, it's pretty well-known that many patent examiners focused solely on other patents or journal articles as the key sources of prior art, rather than what was actually happening in the field, but being forbidden from going online is just crazy. Luckily for the internet, this was still a time period when most tech companies believed that software wasn't patentable -- something that changed the following year when the ridiculous State Street ruling opened the floodgates. While certainly some really bad patents (like Eolas') made it through, just think how much worse things would have been if there were as many internet/software patent filings from 1990 to 1998 as there were after 98.
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Filed Under: internet, patents, uspto
Companies: eolas, google, yahoo
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I'm honestly stunned
Who was responsible for this bit of genius?
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The super simplified (perhaps unfairly) version is that the court basically said "hey, we there's no problem with patenting 'business methods' even though everyone thought there was." And that open the floodgates to both business method and software patents.
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As Judge Rich, writing for the entire panel, aptly noted, prior cases had never directly confronted the issue presented in this case because those case holdings were based upon other sections of the patent law, namely, Sections 102, 103 and 112.
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It's always a greater pleasure to read the idiot-proof version of a Court decision - specially if it's written by someone as talented as Mike Masnick.
*Rob washes brown stain from nose
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How old are you again Mike? I would expect a slam like this from maybe a teenager who wasn't around for history, but you seem to be old enough to actually remember this stuff first hand.
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We'd play multi-player games on the school's network.
Oh, and so you know, the school that I went to didn't have more than 200 people in it from K through 12th grade.
In a town of less than 500 people...
In the Northern Great Plains...
10 minutes (straight south) of the Canadian border.
The cable TV in town was only 22 channels.
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Also it was on every desktop in 97. Not everyone paid for internet access but it was still there. Just because you were oblivious to the facts doesn't mean the rest of us were.
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In 1995 I had internet access at the company I worked for.
But either way, we're not talking about "a company." We're talking about patent examiners in charge of understanding the state of the art. And, even before the internet was allowed for commercial use, it was used as a research tool. That the PTO examiners were not allowed to use it until 1997 is criminal.
How old are you again Mike? I would expect a slam like this from maybe a teenager who wasn't around for history, but you seem to be old enough to actually remember this stuff first hand.
In 1997 I knew how big the internet was. That the USPTO did not is downright scary.
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Also like the man said, most gov. agencies didn't use the interwebs back then. Just because you had it at your little company and I and others had it at some of our schools doesn't mean that the whole of the federal government was well equipped with such things. These things do cost money to implement on a huge scale.
"That the USPTO did not is downright scary."
I'm sure they "knew how "big" it was". What they also knew was that a huge ship like the PTO cannot turn on a dime like a tiny company. And government agencies cannot turn on a dollar like a giant company would. To make matters evern worse, at that time iirc congress was taking money from the PTO's fees it was collecting to be able to examine in order to pay for tanks, bridges to nowhere and other general fund expenditures.
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It's just more, idiotic, faith-based, mindless, baseless IP bashing from the King of Idiocy himself.
Smooth move, Mikey. What a fucking joke.
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mike satan masnick, because my internet pompousness has determined that you're wrong in each and every way i have to say that i'm disappointed with you. why didn't you supply citations i like such as the voices in my head?
look at all these non-citations i have which are clearly superior to your stupid internet links, i myself work in a patent office and cannot use the internet so how am i supposed to view those links? i'm having to make this post on punchtape now.
i hope satan pees in ur butthole, hitler masnick
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truly, mike hitler has failed us at techsatan.com
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But nothing "on the net" has EVER been 'leading edge' technology, or new inventions..
prior to that, you were into the days of BBS's that you could log into with your trusty 300 baud modem and again down load SIMPLE games, and simple applications.
The beginning of the internet was not from leading edge technology, is was created from 'hand me downs' from the corporate world. Everyone got their modems second hand from companies who were upgrading, it was business, banking and corporate in general that build the internet as we know it by making their surplus modems and second hand computers available to the general public.
The internet was an interesting and fun place before the "WEB" and "browsers" came about..
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The rest of the world had to deal with BBS's.
In the Computer Science department of the University of NSW we had quite a good computer and network system. All the stuff that occurs on the internet today, were doing done in computer science departments world wide long before they were seen on the internet, they were on computer science departments networks years before that..
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Also in 1994 the rest of the world was on AOL, not BBSes. (BBS's would be a the possessive version of BBS)
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Not saying that they should have been looking for prior art necessarily. Saying they should have some familiarity with the technology if they're about to issue patents on it.
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Long ago I learned that advancements in technology are examined by the USPTO many years before the technology becomes generally know to the public. For example, the USPTO was dealing with the first working embodiments of transistors and how to make them in the early to mid-40's, and yet they did not come to the fore until many years later as equipment and processes were developed that made their implementation in products feasible.
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That's not the argument being made, the argument is that examiners would have been better equipped to properly examine patents with the Internet than without.
"Long ago I learned that advancements in technology are examined by the USPTO many years before the technology becomes generally know to the public."
Well, yes, non-contributing patent trolls that develop and contribute nothing are probably already trying to obtain patents on quantum computers and all sorts of potentially emerging technologies as an attempt to profit off of anyone else that does develop them. It's a catch all attempt, they don't know what future technologies will emerge so they attempt to patent all sorts of potentially new technologies based on the latest research to catch whatever does emerge and profit off of it. That's another problem with our patent system.
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Of course, Mike is moving the goalposts rather than just admit that he's making stuff up. The headline reads: "One Reason Why The USPTO Granted Ridiculously Stupid Internet Patents: Patent Examiners Were Banned From Using The Internet"
So Mike is clearly saying that THE REASON certain patents were issued is BECAUSE examiners weren't using the internet. And when called out, he can't point to a single patent that wouldn't have issued but for the fact that the examiners weren't using the internet.
Now he's trying to pretend like he was merely suggesting they should have been familiar with the internet. But how does that support his claim that patents were being issued that shouldn't have been? It doesn't.
Typical scumbag, slimeball, idiotic, double-talking fuckwad move. Mike is so desperate to say something--anything--negative about IP law. You are a complete fucking joke.
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"So Mike is clearly saying that THE REASON"
I love the smell of self-pwnage in the morning...
No, moron, he says ONE reason, not "the". Meaning that he accepts and understand the existence of other reasons, perhaps even reasons that are more important.
If you're going to criticise others for reading comprehension, at least make sure you have some yourself.
"Typical scumbag, slimeball, idiotic, double-talking fuckwad move."
I also love projection.
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You missed the point. Mike says that it's "one reason" but then does not (and cannot) show that it was actually a reason in any particular patenting decision. He can't even explain how that fact would have had any bearing on this Eolas patent.
Mike has absolutely nothing to back up his claim that it is "one reason." In other words, he just completely fucking made it up. Of course, he won't come into the comments and explain himself or back up his ridiculous, baseless assertion.
Mike is, again, just mindlessly bashing on IP law like a foaming-at-the-mouth idiot. He is proving, once again for the upteenth time, what a delusion, sad, chubby, fucking idiot he is.
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IOW, others were perfectly capable of inventing the same thing without the patent well within the patents 20 year length after filing. So the patent was never necessary to begin with and should be rejected since it's not doing much to promote the progress.
"Second, it isn't feasible to have examiners all crawling all over industries to find all their secrits to know about the "state of the art" so we rely on the publications that are made, usually patent publications. "
Searching the Internet != crawling all over industries to find all their secrets. Also, aren't patents supposed to be about state of the art technologies and technological transparency and discovery? Prior patents aren't the only means to uncover prior art.
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and you don't see it as a problem that the USPTO, an agency that's in charge of being familiar with and advancing the latest in technological innovation, wouldn't have this?
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Not the whole federal government, but at least the aspects allegedly in charge of technological advancement (ie: the USPTO).
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So if the USPTO can not keep up with the latest in technological innovation then perhaps it has no business being in charge of facilitating such advancement. Maybe we should just abolish patents and abolish the USPTO.
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You shouldn't make assumptions.
I was working at General Instrument, a rather large company at the time (later swallowed up by Motorola). In '97 I was working at Intel... and I also had internet access there.
Also... not a "little company."
These things do cost money to implement on a huge scale.
Yeah, but tons of companies had done so.
What they also knew was that a huge ship like the PTO cannot turn on a dime like a tiny company.
Not asking them to "turn on a dime." Saying that if you're in charge of certifying what's "new" it's crying shame if you don't even allow your own employees to know what's new.
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True. I remember, I was there. Back then, only governmental & educational institutions and their contractors had internet access. If only the USPTO was a governmental institution then they could have enjoyed the benefits of internet access too.
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You must be really old if your memory is this spotty.
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1997 was two years after the internet was shoved down everyone's collective throat by the integration of Internet Explorer 6.0 into Microsoft's Windows 95 desktop.
You must be really old if your memory is this spotty.
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MSIE 6.0 was a decade or so later.
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[citation needed]
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LOL! WHAT... A... DUMB.ASS.
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Complete lunacy. Particularly as other branches of the US Government had helped develop the Internet.
I hate to tell you this but where I worked there was access on every desk in my department in 1997 and on about half of them in 1994. So to say that pretty much every company didn't permit it is false. I personally know of many brokerage firms who were early adopters as the Web grew and became more valuable to them.
There may not have been ADSL to homes in those days but there was certainly HDSL to businesses and other technologies available such as ISDN. And, I can also tell you that governments got the best of connections for the Internet from suppliers as that would come in very handy later as ADSL and cable were extended to homes.
It's still utterly stupid and appalling that those making decisions about software patents weren't allowed to access the technology they were making judgements on.
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Re: You have to think back and remember that the internet was still not "commercial" in 1994 ...
All those restrictions were lifted by the late 1980s, which is when the Internet really took off. The fact that it took another decade to penetrate your particular consciousness is neither here nor there; I was there at the time, and saw it happen.
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Re: Re: You have to think back and remember that the internet was still not "commercial" in 1994 ...
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That is a lie. The internet was well and truly commercial by 1994. It was the days of Windows 3.11, 486 CPUs, Netscape and the early modems. The web was up and going, with text, pictures and hyperlinks. There was tremendous public interest in the web and those early modems were flying off the shelves. Having internet access was routine in business. Home users were signing up in droves.
Many government entities were setting up their websites. All this in 1994, remember. The USPTO has no excuse for not giving examiners web access by as late as 1997. Disgraceful. The sooner the patent system gets closed down, the better.
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It might have been forgiveable in 1994. By 1997 they should have been on-line with the rest of the world.
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First time commenter, long time reader
I wondered how many people would take note of that detail, which came from an interview about the case with a trustworthy source who'd been following it quite closely for years.
In 1995, I was a sophomore in college and learning how to use HTML and an FTP app to put a web page online. I logged onto a BBS in 1993. In 1994, I fired up a Web browser for the first time.
While that does make me an early adopter, in some respects, I was surprised to hear that the USPTO didn't do more due diligence online.
When I used the word "interesting" in my post, readers no doubt could not see me ruefully shaking my head.
While the Internet access issue from a government building is not novel in that time period, enough citizens and certainly government employees were logging on at that point that an examiner could have walked over to a library, study or school to do a search and find Viola.
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Anything and Everything but the Obvious.
I love my grandfather, but would I trust him making decisions about Internet policy? patent applications?
HELL NO!
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Excusses
If they don't know what they're doing, they shouldn't be doing it.
I may be a programmer, but I don't tell marketing how to do their job.
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This rubbish is probably the result of either an ignorant director who knows nothing about the actual job involved, or a lobbyist/contractor shmoozer wined and dined the person in charge to persuade them to keep buying the traditional (and expensive) documentation used for patent research. Law journals and dead-tree reference material wasn't cheap then, either.
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Almost thought that said Sesame Street. I was going like "Cookie Monster? Is that you?"
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Does this mean all patents since '97 are invalid?
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Dogfooding
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"One Reason Why The USPTO Granted Ridiculously Stupid Internet Patents: Patent Examiners Were Banned From Using The Internet"
Please point to one patent that would not have been granted had the examiner had internet access, and please explain the connection.
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reading is FUNdaMENTAL
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1999 1-Click Checkout Patent Granted To Amazon
ONE CLICK CHECKOUT IS AN OBVIOUS PROCESS. ONLY A HALF RETARDED PATENT OFFICE EMPLOYEE WHO HAS NEVER USED THE INTERNETS WOULD EVEN CONSIDER GRANTING SUCH A BALLSY CLAIM TO AN OBVIOUS ADVANCE.
from wikipedia:
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued US 5960411 for this technique to Amazon.com in September 1999.
On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination[1] of the "One-Click" patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley.[2] Calveley cited as prior art an earlier e-commerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.
On October 9, 2007, the USPTO issued an office action in the reexamination which confirmed the patentability of claims 6 to 10 of the patent.[3] The patent examiner, however, rejected claims 1 to 5 and 11 to 26. In November 2007, Amazon responded by amending the broadest claims (1 and 11) to restrict them to a shopping cart model of commerce. They have also submitted several hundred references for the examiner to consider.[4] In March 2010, the revised patent was confirmed.[5][6][7]
In Europe, a patent application on the 1-Click ordering was filed with the European Patent Office, but was never granted.[8]
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MS .not patent.
Amazons "one click" patent. for another.
And Eolas patent (now canceled) for another.
All were obvious.
The big problem is that these are all mathematical in nature, and mathematics is not supposed to be patentable.
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patented prior art - is required - applicant responsible for search
The patent office is not required to discover prior art, that responsibility falls with the applicant !!!.
Then it falls with the person who holds the patent on that prior art (if undescovered) to file a claim to have that patent rejected.
I am guessing that Masnick has never taken out a patent, as it is clear he has no concept of the process, or what prior art is or means !!
Obviously that is not a problem for a person who has a complete disregard for the truth or reality for that matter.
Or for someone who believes 'culture' is a 'business model' !!..
Another -10 points off masnick's credability counter...
If there is so much prior art as you claim masnick why are there not an equal amount (LOTS) of claims for prior art, and many more patents being rejected ?
You also do not have to look for prior art, you have to look for patented prior art.
If some moron invents something, and uses it in public without gaining patent protection (or even patent pending), they it is their stupid fault for not gaining a patent on that invention.
It is not 'just' prior art, is it recognised prior, that recognisition comes from that prior art having allready been provided with patent protection.
Learn something please masnick, because now you are either 1) talking from ignorance
OR
2)lying.
probably both...
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Re: The patent office is not required to discover prior art, that responsibility falls with the applicant !!!.
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Re: Re: The patent office is not required to discover prior art, that responsibility falls with the applicant !!!.
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Anomyous FTP thousands of sites trying to find prior art ??? LOL Pointless
the internet then, is nothing like the internet today, there were not huge search engines, or promoted technologies, were they expected to FTP as many sites as they can and "ls" their way through their files to find something.
DO you know how fruitless and timeconsuming that would have been, there were no central databases to access, you certainly could not "just Google it" or BING it as I prefer.
So for them to do an 'internet search' for something would have been impossible.
Masnick, the internet has changed quite a bit and is today nothing like it was at those times. Yet is it still improper for the patent office to be made responsible for finding prior art, it is the responsibility of the patent applicant to conduct an appropriate search for prior art.
Prior art, I might add that is patented in that country !!
Not just 'any old' prior art, does not count (as you well know masnick)..
Say someone lodges a patent for a "Cure for cancer", Masnick does a google search for "cure for cancer" gets lots of hits and cries "PRIOR ART" !!!!
Sorry Masnick, just because something is on the internet does not mean it is right, true, patented or that specific method of doing something.
Sure there may be many 'cures for cancer', there are !!
Each one is a specific METHOD of curing cancer, the method is what is patented, not the cure... THE METHOD..
You do not patent the transistor, you patent the method of achieving the transistor action.
There is no patent on a car tyre, but there are many patents on the method of constuction of tyres, there is no patent on the 'wheel' but many patents on methods of making wheels.
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Re: Anomyous FTP thousands of sites trying to find prior art ??? LOL Pointless
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in 1994, consumer users base vs. educational/governmental user bases were ~2:1. around 1994 the financial institutions were just then getting an online presence. w3c was founded in 1994... hell, time even had a front cover called "the strange new world of the internet".
the point in all that is that it was a very new concept. and while yes, it would have been great to say that every facet of the government would have already had access to the interet, this *IS* the federal US government we are talking about here. the government moves at a pace that makes snails look pretty damn zippy. besides, it was NEW. very very NEW. the internet has been around long enough by now and how many times do we see politicians sticking their foot in their collective mouths and their general complete lack of understanding of something thats been a fundamental of the majority of people for the last 10 years?
i dont like a single bit of it... but in this case i understand it and when set in its proper context, its not as bad as it sounds.
and dear trolls (you know who you are) please diaf... kthxbye
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My husband works for the State of Michigan in eLearning for DHS. Every month he has to train "experienced" social service workers -- people who allegedly have a bachelor's or masters degree -- kicking and screaming through basic computer courses. Oh, and his department just upgraded to Windows XP a few years ago.
People forget that funding for technology updates is dependent on approval from congress, local boards, etc. It usually comes in over-budget and has to be adapted to work with arcane software built on old platforms. That is a HUGE, huge problem with legacy systems right now. It makes me wonder if the computers in 1994 would have been able to get online without a bottleneck in the PC's themselves.
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However, the patent office reviews patent applications against prior patents, so there isn't any need for Internet access for their examinations. The patent office is looking at the claims in the patent applications and a patent examiner can much more easily compare claims between two patents than try to compare claims against non-patented prior art, which would already be at least 3-5 years old by the time the patent application reached the examiner. It's up to the inventor to search for non-patented prior art, but there isn't much incentive if the inventor is just trying to make money off the patent, since a bad patent can be used to extort money, since it costs an extremely high amount of money to fight a bad patent. If there was an easier and less expensive way to invalidate patents for prior art, patents would much less likely be filed if there is non-patented prior art.
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Patent trolls
Patent trolls are nothing but parasites and shouldn't be allowed to exist.
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Of course there's a lot more to it. Mike doesn't care about getting it right, he only cares about bashing IP. Mike is a transparent and worthless scaremonger.
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At least you know who Masnick actually is...
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At least you know who Masnick actually is...
Such a good lapdog, or sockpuppet--it matters not which one you actually are.
Funny how you can't comment critically on the point, which is that Mike has not given any evidence whatsoever where internet access would have made any lick of difference in patenting decision. Considering the article is about that very subject, it seems a strange omission, no?
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He gave his reasons and his opinion. You've given nothing except attack both him and myself with no evidence to the contrary, and based your criticism on something he didn't actually say (he never claimed the internet issue was the only factor, nor even the biggest factor).
You're tilting at windmills again, Senor Quixote. Yet, you expect everybody to take your clearly deluded words over and above somebody who can be identified and his credentials verified. Very poor.
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Come back when you're actually prepared to discussed what the article says without resorting to childish name-calling. Even if you had a point, you'd still look stupid due to your own conduct.
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Yet another example is that searches over the internet could quite easily run afoul of US export control laws, namely, the Export Administration Act and the Arms Export Control Act.
The point I am making is that other laws had to be taken into consideration before giving a green light to using the internet for searching. Unfortunately, such considerations are not generally known to the public at large, so it is quite easy to believe that the USPTO was acting quite the fool.
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Marine Corps
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Playboy was not a commercial website?
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