[linux-audio-dev] a new patent to worry about

[Jan Depner]

On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 11:09, Jennifer Dillon wrote:

> I have been experimenting with psychoacoustic mehods and enhancement in both 
> hardware and software for the last 20 years and there already is quite a lot 
> of information in the Public Domain. Do the new patent laws allow somebody to 
> patent methods that are already in the public domain???

	Technically no.  This would be prior art.  Knowingly filing a patent on
prior art would be illegal, however, Miro$oft seems to keep filing and
getting patents (and, hopefully, getting them shot down) on things that
had prior art.  I guess they don't "knowingly" do it ;-)

Jan