After a tough
debate between Tim O'Reilly and Q. Todd Dickinson, the
director of the U.S. patent office, Peter
Murray-Rust suggested that XML-DEV with
its permanent archives published on CD-ROM, "could
potentially be of value in establishing prior art since
1997-02."
The debate confirmed the distance between the ideas of
Open Source developers represented here by
O'Reilly and the Patent Office's approach of applying
classical legal rules to software inventions often born in
the
Internet collaborative and open environment - but also
highlighted the importance of the US patent "Rule
56" allowing patents to be denied or invalidated because of
prior art.
The archives of organized and stable mailing lists may
play an increasing role establishing prior art and
Murray-Rust sent an invitation to use XML-DEV for this
purpose when appropriate :
"Ideas per se are not patentable - it is
the expression or implementation
of the idea - so records of this would be needed. As
'moderator' I try to
take a neutral stand, but if members wish to use XML-DEV to
publish in the
public domain, please be considerate about volume, relevancy
to XML, and
value."