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A comment on Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain. Parent comment

Re:Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the publ... by hedora on Sunday June 10, 2018 @11:20AM (#17278499)
Having a patent doesn’t guarantee someone else will not patent the work as part of some other patent. Patent examiners miss things sometimes.

Publicly disclosing the idea in a way that can be verified after the fact establishes prior art just like filing a patent does.

I’m not a lawyer, but I do know there are services that inexpensively publish inventions and vouch for the publication date after the fact.

Also note that the vast majority of patent litigation never makes it to trial, so whether a patent is “valid” or not is a gray area in practice.

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Re:Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the publ... by evrydayhustling on Sunday June 10, 2018 @12:21PM (#17278800)
The problem is defending that disclosure as prior art when someone bigger claims a patent that improves or puts it into practice, which is exactly what this article is about. Even if you take a few steps to make patenting harder, if you invent something valuable it's eventually a game of chicken about preventing others from claiming the space.
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