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CONTENT SYNDICATION
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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Thursday, March 11, 2004Ex-post Censorship of published Patent Documents? Dan Gillmor writes in his blog:"[...] Bruce Schneier, in an e-mail, writes: In October 1962, the U.S. Patent Office granted patent [...]165 regarding the use of ricin as a biological weapon. Published patents are, of course, publicly available. That's the point.Is this the beginning of a more widespread attempt to establish something like an ex-post patent database censorship? Those proactive Officials within the US-PTO who have removed said '165 patent might have started a dangerous game. Availability of patent documents to the general public is one of the essential cornerstones of the patent system. And there is an awful lot of potentially dangerous "dual use" technology disclosesd in the patent literature of the world. Classified "secret patents" have ever been a foreign matter to any open patent system. Fortunately, even in the "cold war" times only for a very small fraction of patent applications a pre-publication secrecy order was issued. Scrutinising already puiblished patent documents in order to pick candidates for ex-post censorship challenges the basic social contract behind the entire patent system: Grant of a temporary monopoly in exchange for public disclosure of an invention. Hence, attempting to exert some kind of ex-post censorship on already published patent documents puts the entire patent system at risk but does not help to combat crime or terrorism (those bad guys will manage to obtain a copy anyway, if they desire to do so).
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