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Originally posted by J$tyle$
BTW - If your existing business model (for years) was based on something you invented (and you could prove so), wouldn't you expect to have the right to patent it and control your intellectual property?
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If you were doing business (and had documentation), and someone after you got a patent that describes what you do or what your business was going to evolve/grow into, you would not have to pay them patent royalties, since you would be a prior inventor.
Most people don't publish their business, they innovate and make money... you may have business plans that talk about growing beyond the affiliate program... while documenation like a business plan that could describe the "virtual affilaite" system is NOT prior art, it can be documentation to prove the company as a "prior inventor".
Burden of proof is on the company to prove that it was documented.. but that's usually the way small companies get out from a patent that covers what they do that was issued after them.
I know of a company that has a business plan from 20 years ago that talks about selling digital audio/video electronically.. this company's business plan (with the dust blown off), would be excempt from Acacia, but they would not be prior art to knock out the patent, because it was not published.
Patent Law has alot of angles to it, and I don't give the complexity of the issue justice by oversimplifying it, but atleast to convey what i have learned about this very tricky subject in the last year.
When patents popup, years after they were issued, like Acacia, they are refered as "submarine patents".. where they sit quiet, waiting for the world to use the "invention", and then spring up. Unisys did this with their enforcement of the GIF image file format a few years before the patent expired.... when everyone was using GIF.
Fight the Submarine Business Plan!