Please don't trust what I'm going to say without checking with a lawyer or someone who actually knows their stuff - You can email the author, I guess. As far a

Please don't trust what I'm going to say without checking with a lawyer or someone who actually knows their stuff - You can email the author, I guess. As far as I know patent authors have an eternal duty of disclosing prior art on their own patents. I assume that if you email prior art to the author they have to report it to the USPTO. Not sure if the patent would ever be invalidated though