> I think the US patent office have a bad habit of granting
> patents that they have no legal right to, even things that
> have already been done and are even on sale in other countries.
> I suppose it is an attempt to bolster US commercial interests,
> many times when there is a grey area and the patent would not
> be granted on the UK or here in Australia someone in the US
> can still patent it. The patent doesn't guarantee legal
> ownership, it is just a record of a claim of ownership.

The Malaysian Government had a programme a couple of years ago trying to
encourage Malaysians to go off and register other people's patents locally -
the idea was that it didn't matter to them that there was a valid
US/whatever patent on it, so long as it wasn't already registered there...

Peter

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