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Technology Stocks : Creative Labs (CREAF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis G. who wrote (5895)	11/18/1997 11:45:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13925

Dennis, they filled out the paperwork, supplied the requisite pretty pictures, and were issued a patent. This is pretty-much how it works. The patent office doesn't do a whole lot of checking, and I'd bet they do a lot less checking into prior art than they do prior claims. I father that it's just not really their responsibility to do this. This is determined later when interferences are filed. It could well be that nobody had ever filed a claim on this before, yet it is still in the prior art, and will be ultimately disallowed, since you cannot patent something that is in the prior art - whether or not anybody else has bothered to patent it. In this case, the patent office wouldn't really have much to go on to determine if there was prior art, as they'd simply draw a blank when searching for previously-issued patents. It would take some expertise and knowledge in this particular field - which the patent office is probably lacking - to know that it was in the prior art. This will not be difficult for Creative to prove.