Prior Art relating to Patent or Patent Applications pertinent to this community

Ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2010_09_16#nid2HIH

This is the index to pages that have been set up to help collect prior art relating to various Patent(s) and Patent Application(s), which may have been missed by the inventors to help inform the patent examination or patent claims validation process.

Issued Patents

• PriorArt_Patent_7493253 - US Patent No. 7,493,253 - Conceptual world representation natural language understanding system and method - issued to Ceusters, Werner et al. on 17-Feb-2009

Pending Patent Applications

• PriorArt_PatentApplication_20090259459 - US Patent Application Number 20090259459 - Conceptual world representation natural language understanding system and method - by Ceusters, Werner et al. filed on 13-Feb-2009

• PriorArt_PatentApplication_20090055437 - US Patent Application Number 20090055437 - Referent tracking of portions of reality - by Ceusters, Werner et al. filed on 6-Aug-2008

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How-to contribute Prior Art information

• Q: Prior to what date should we be gathering "prior art?"
  • Answer-1: referencing the EFF: Patent Busting Project site example, they establish a "Critical Date" - which seems to be set at the date when a patent was first filed - and stipulated that "Prior Art for the patent in question must have been made public before the "Critical Date" in order to qualify."
  • Answer-2: Since inventors are allowed to file for patent within one year of their invention (in the US), it would be prudent to collect prior art that dates one year or older from the date of the patent application. (This was suggested by Bruce Perens during the OOR-IPR-02 session in response to the above question posed by AlanRector.)

• Q: How should we tackle the questionable patent(s)
  • Answer: (referencing example(s) on the EFF: Patent Busting Project site) - "Prior Art" should target individual claims made on the patent in question - (citing EFF/patent) Each claim in a patent is a separate "invention" that can be used to threaten or sue someone.
    • As their names imply, independent claims stand alone; their descriptions list all their necessary elements. Dependent claims, on the other hand, refer back to another claim's elements and then add additional ones to the mix. In a typical patent busting exercise, one is interested in busting all the claims.

• Q: What do we need to supply to contribute to the "Prior Art" information?
  • Answer: again, referencing the EFF: Patent Busting Project site, this is what they ask for ...
    • Your Contact Information (optional) - name, phone number, email address
    • If prior art is a previously-issued patent - Patent name, Patent number, Country that issued patent, General description, Location on web (if available), Why it is/describes prior art
    • OR, If prior art is a paper or other physical media publication - Patent name, Patent number, Country that issued patent, General description, Location on web (if available), Why it is/describes prior art
    • OR, If prior art is software - Name, Author(s) or Creator(s), Publisher, Date, Where can we find it, General description, Why it is/describes prior art
    • OR, If prior art is on the web - URL, Author(s) or Creator(s), Date, Why it is/describes prior art

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Reference and Resources

• Public Patent Foundation - http://www.pubpat.org/index.htm

• Electronic Frontier Foundation's Patent Busting Project - http://w2.eff.org/patent/
  • see also: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wp.php