To: Bill Jackson who wrote (73792 ) 5/28/2001 6:34:09 PM From: Zeev Hed Read Replies (1) | Respond to Bill, small inventors have been using for years the process of "disclosure Document", whereby they send a disclosure to the PTO to get in essence an undisputable date of invention on their new widget. In countries like Japan and Europe, tough luck, even if you can prove you invented the widget first, anyone that visited your basement can go out and patent it. You as the inventor may have some recourses, if an NDA was signed, or if the filer (who in this country has to certify under oath that he is an (or the) inventor of said widget) wrongly claimed to be the inventor (and it is enough for him to add an iota to be "an inventor"), but in general, what happens, an inventor files a patent in Japan or Europe, and before the patent is examined it is made public. Interested parties can contest that patent (frien of the court) prior to issuance, but what is worse, large companies with massive resources go out and gets teams to write "picket fence" patents around the "master patent", often forcing the original inventor to cross license (if he is planning to go into production). That is the kind of situation big business is trying to get here as well.
