Subject: a fishing expedition ...

From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 12:23:55 -0800 (PST)

I'm conducting research for a new project, and am on a fishing expedition.
>From time to time, I get notes from people who are lawyers or work for
lawyers asking questions in the form "when did you first do foo" where,
in my case, foo is usually something invented by one of my distinguished
colleagues which I happened to deploy.

What these people are doing (though they always too coy to admit it) is
trying to find prior art to defend against a patent infringement their
client received.  These periodic queries led me to a theory that there
are a large number of patents which cover so-called inventions that were
probably documented at an earlier date in an internet-draft, an ietf
mailing list, an RFC, or perhaps even some form of report generated out
of an IETF, Interop, INET, IEPG, NANOG, RIPE, or Apricot meeting.

My fishing expedition is this:

    Have other people received a lot of these "when did you first"
    queries?  If so, would you send me a private note?  I promise not
    to use your name without your permission and will summarize my
    results for the list if there interest.

Regards,

Carl

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From: Ted Faber <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:35:34 -0800

>     results for the list if there interest.

You don't fool me, Carl.  Who's trying to invalidate your patent on
finding prior art to defend patents? :-)

-- 
Ted Faber
http://www.isi.edu/~faber           PGP: http://www.isi.edu/~faber/pubkeys.asc
Unexpected attachment on this mail? See http://www.isi.edu/~faber/FAQ.html#SIG 
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From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 03:02:48 -0800 (PST)

> finding prior art to defend patents? :-)

The sad thing is now I have to go search and see if somebody actually
did that.  There was indeed a patent granted to two lawyers on a
method for writing patents, if you can believe it.

For those interested in a summary ... a dozen or so people sent
me notes responding that they frequently or infrequently receive 
such queries.  

Regards,

Carl

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From: Ted Faber <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:36:03 -0800

> method for writing patents, if you can believe it.

Stop it.  You're scaring me.