3 ms·

Well that is also Googles fear. That some patent troll will come along and patent the tech.

• 0-_-0 7y ago
  You don't need to patent something to prevent others from patenting it, prior art prevents patenting by itself.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • joshuamorton 7y ago
    The existence of Google's patents on things like these are proof otherwise. Yes, it is sometimes possible to prevent a patent from being filed with prior art, but you need to know about the application to provide the prior art, or you need to hope the patent examiner does due diligence, which they often don't. So you have two options: 1. monitor all patent applications and reactively file prior art against any that might be problematic. 2. Just file patents on the things Patent examiners are more likely to find patents than other forms of prior art, so you're more likely to just accomplish (1) anyway, and in a lawsuit, you don't need to spend time proving that your thing was prior art if it was patented. So in a lawsuit it was cheaper. In other words, patents prevent patenting, prior art avoids losing lawsuits, but not-losing a lawsuit is still expensive.