RE: Patent fun

["Scharf, Stephen " <sscharf1 () bloomberg com>]

Surprising then that the linguists did not own all the inventions. Seems
to me that a profitable enterprise would be to try and re-create
scientific proofs matched to the first letters of x number of words. One
could mail out a letter with 1000 random letters and then create their
own prior art for anything if they were creative enough.

-Stephen

-----Original Message-----
From: MOVITS () BLOOMBERG NET 
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 11:39 AM
To: Scharf, Stephen 
Subject: Re: [Dailydave] Patent fun


On Friday 02 July 2004 07:45 am, dave wrote:
>  A database app anyone could submit to, which would store and 
> timestamp any idea you wanted to send it, occasionally submitting 
> hashes to the NY Times or at the bottom of mailing list emails (to 
> verify timestamps). However, this database would not be searchable by 
> the public.

Before scientific discovery became public, it was jealously hoarded.
One 
problem the hoarders ran into was that someone else might independently
make 
the same discovery.  While they may not have wanted to give away the 
knowledge, they *certainly* didn't want to give a way the fame.  The
solution 
they arrived at is similar to your idea.

The author wrote up his discovery in full detail.  Then he "one-way
hashed" it 
by taking the first letter of each word and writing them in sequence.
This 
created a document significantly smaller, consisting of a nonsensical
bunch 
of letters.  He mailed this "proof" far and wide, so as to "timestamp"
it and 
put the prior in prior art.  Now if anyone were to lay claim to the
idea, 
letting the cat out of the bag, the former person would publish the
original 
paper.  The timestamped hash served as proof that the newly published 
document was not newly written.

Mordy
-- 
Mordy Ovits
Network Security
Bloomberg L.P.

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