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Re: BGP-based blackholing/hijacking patented in Australia?

  • From: Paul Jakma
  • Date: Thu Aug 12 12:14:17 2004 
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Andre Oppermann wrote:


You have to be aware that the Australian Patent System is of declaratory
nature only.  Anyone can claim anything in an patent application.  There
is no check on the content done by the patent office.  Only the general
formal outline of an patent application has to be fulfilled.




Essentially any Australian Patent is worthless and the owner needs to
establish its validity in court first before infringement stuff starts.





We have basically the same situation in Switzerland. Pretty crappy. Although

prior art occurs very fast. Anything known to the public (more than two
people

outsite of your company) before the date of filing is considered prior art.

Even patents in flight while you file your patent establish prior art. So

patenting anything that can be found in any mailing list archive, posting

or whatever with a date prior to your filing sinks your patent if you go to

court. (Which is unlike the US system where you have up to twelve month from

disclosing to filing your patent application).



Conclusion: Just ignore any Australian Patent. It needs to be validated by

a court first (which is highly unlikely considering the substantial prior

art).



This sounds far saner than the approach used in US and over here.
Patents are examined before they're granting, but still any old crap
gets through, and once granted, AIUI, the patents have the
presumption of validity and are very hard to knock down.



So at least under the Australian system you recognise that patents
arent worth much if only the patent office has examined them,
presumably they're not presumed valid on first litigation either?
Hence making the crap-flood of patents less of a problem?



Ie, it sounds like au. and ch. are sane, compared to the insane
system in some of rest of 1st world, rather than other way around as
you claim.



PS: How do the pending trade treaties between US and AU affect
things? Will AU get "presumed-valid and very hard to defeat" for the
patent cruddage that are granted everywhere else?



regards,

--

Paul Jakma [email protected] [email protected] Key ID: 64A2FF6A

Fortune:

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