From: Julian Eyre Subject: Re: APPS: Someone has patented VR apps for mental health! Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 16:54:00 +0000 Message-ID: <199709111553.QAA29826@andromeda.ndirect.co.uk> On 10 Sep 1997, Guiseppe said: > > I've just received this message about an approved patent related to > "VIRTUAL REALITY MENTAL CONDITIONING MEDIUM" As you can read below, > this patent can strongly influence research related to VR applications > in the treatment of mental health (phobias, autism, etc.), even if > research in this field has been working since late '80s. Do you know > any way to counter such a claim? Any help is welcomed. In response to Guiseppe's request for advice, I would offer the following. 1. For a patent to be granted, the specified invention MUST be new and non-obvious. It must also be capable of manufacture by a person sufficiently knowledgeable within the field. 2. For the purpose of deciding whether an invention is new or obvious, any prior disclosure, whether written, oral, or by use, may be taken into account if it was published or publically known before the date of patent application. However, the patent examiner will normally only consider prior patent specification documents to decide newness or obviousness. 3. In light of point 2 above, it is quite possible for the US patent office to allow a patent claim if prior work is either not widely published or known about. However, this means that if you can prove that similar work was carried out prior to the patent application date, whether published or not (e.g. internal dated reports, personal records, published papers, etc.) this would invalidate any part of a patent that claimed that area of development. 4. If you are in possession of any such documented evidence in Point 3 above, you would not need to do anything to counter the claim(s). It would be up to the patent holder to challenge any product that you may develop and market. If at that point you could demonstrate that prior knowledge existed, his challenge would fail. 5. The patent, as I understand, is for the USA only. It can only protect the patent holder (if valid) within the US. It cannot stop others from manufacturing and selling the product elsewhere in the world. For this, they would need a PCT (so-called World Patent), or at least separate patents for each of the countries within which they wished to protect their invention. DISCLAIMER: I hope that the above points have helped, but please note that I am not an expert on patent law, just someone who has been through the patent process. I therefore cannot be held liable for any ommisions or errors in my posting, which are my own personal opinion. Always take proper legal advice from a qualified source before deciding on any course of action which may result in legal proceedings being taken. Julian ------------------------------------------- Julian Eyre Principal Design Engineer VR_Systems U.K. e-mail: j.r.s.eyre@vr-systems.ndirect.co.uk URL: http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~vr-systems Tel: +44 (0)1794 342050 Fax: +44 (0)1794 342051