Subject: Re: [Asrg] Forbes: Pay up

From: "Jed Margolin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 10:45:31 -0700

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Schear" <[email-masked]>
To: "ASRG" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 4:16 PM
Subject: [Asrg] Forbes: Pay up

> A promising way to curb spam: Charge the sender.
>
> Hoping to stop the evil epidemic of spam, Philip Raymond is putting a
> price on it. The 46-year-old software executive has a provisional patent
> on a service called Vanquish, which requires e-mail senders to post a
> cash bond of 5 cents into a bank account for every piece of e-mail they
send.

- snip -

Stop right there.

There is no such thing as a provisional patent.

There is a "provisional patent application" which is a provisional
application for a patent which simply serves as a good way to establish
priority later on. (It also lets you tell people you have a "patent pending"
on something.)

It's not even a real patent application except for the purpose of filing a
patent application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

You have one year to file a real patent application to claim the benefits of
the provisional application.

However, a provisonal application for a patent is not examined on its merits
by the Patent Office and it gives the Applicant none of the rights that
accrue from having an issued patent.

See  http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/provapp.htm for more information.

Jed Margolin
(Not a Patent Attorney, but then, I'm not charging you $300 an hour,
either.)

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