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Disclosure As A Strategy In The Patent Race, Scott Baker, Claudio Mezzetti
Disclosure As A Strategy In The Patent Race, Scott Baker, Claudio Mezzetti
Scholarship@WashULaw
Research firms disclose a surprisingly large amount of information to the patent office through “targeted” disclosures, that is, disclosures intended to make the patent office aware of potentially patentable information. Conventional wisdom holds that these disclosures are made for defensive purposes; the disclosing firm does not itself plan to pursue patents related to the disclosed information, so the firm discloses to create prior art that might stop rivals from patenting. But firms have an incentive to disclose even if they intend to pursue patent protection. The reason is that, by making it more difficult to patent, disclosure extends the patent …
Strategic Disclosure In The Patent System, Douglas Lichtman, Scott Baker, Kate Kraus
Strategic Disclosure In The Patent System, Douglas Lichtman, Scott Baker, Kate Kraus
Scholarship@WashULaw
Patent applications are evaluated in light of the prior art. What this means is that patent examiners evaluate a claimed invention by comparing it with what in a rough sense corresponds to the set of ideas and inventions already known to the public. This is done for three reasons. First, the comparison helps to ensure that patents issue only in cases where an inventor has made a non-trivial contribution to the public's store of knowledge. Second, it protects a possible reliance interest on the part of the public since, once an invention is widely known, members of the public might …