BTW, the french Minitel offered similar stuff to nearly everyone in France in 1982. Talk about prior art... | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
Sadly, it's probably not (currently) applicable because there is no "teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine" Minitel with the Internet. Compuserve, Prodigy, etc. were all doing the same thing back in the 80s, but since they weren't using the HTTP protocol, and since there is no written document from that period suggesting to do all that stuff on the WWW, it doesn't count. Completely ridiculous.
But... the Supreme Court is expected to render a decision in KSR v. Teleflex soon, which will likely overturn the "motivation to combine" requirement for obviousness. Assuming they don't grandfather in existing patents, this opens up an entire universe of invalidating prior art.
So, so exciting... :)
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