> There's no way currently that any patent office (nor any 
> inventor) can research prior art "in any country" reasonably 

The current practice is AFAIK that you can file a patent and get without
any researhc in to "newness", but when you want to sue someone for
infringement you must supply a newness-research-report. 

> Which then makes the value of a patent that what it currently 
> is, mostly: it's worth as much as you can spend to defend it.

Or the inverse: inversely proportional to the amount your opponent can
spend to attack it.

> Is there ever a law that is in its entirety "easily defined"? :)

No, but there are gradations.

I once went to a real law lesson (not the law lessons for techies, but
one for first year as-yet-to-be lawyers). I was so fascinated by the
subject that I bought the book and swallowed it in a few days. It was
about the history of legislation (the writing down of laws). There are
two conflicting principles that law has to satisfy: fairness and
predictability.  So we start with very simple, well defined, predictable
laws, which are unfortunately after a short time felt unfair. New laws
are added, and more freedom is give to judges, to enhance the fairness.
But this leads to unpredicatability, and in the end people ask again for
simple, predicatable laws and the cycle starts again. In ancient Rome
there have actually been a few cycles of this.

I in opinion the current laws are to far to the unpredictable side. I
would accept quite some amount of unfairness in exchange for more
predicatbility.

Wouter van Ooijen

-- -------------------------------------------
Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 

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