Prior Art?

[MrCow]

I'm outside the US but my question is for US law.

There is a patent (US20070025185 Underwater geopositioning methods and apparatus ) that i think is now awarded.

However I did all that this invention does for my masters thesis in 2002 at the university of Auckland, new zealand. Its in the libary but not indexed online as far as i know.

My question is, what do i do? This is not inventive really without my work, by my work is rather explicit. As in on slashdot they call it a patent for underwater GPS, which was almost the title for my thesis. In the end the title for my thesis is:Investigation of an Inexpensive Underwater Ranging Device

Thanks in advance

 

[Some Random Guy]

The patent is not on the underwater GPS. It is on the method by which the underwater GPS is done. You should investigate the patent and determine how close the work is to yours.

 

[MrCow]

I did look. And the patent its totaly vage. It is not very specific with what type of signals to send as long as they can be used to mesure distance. What they do say, I said in my Thesis. Using phase and the like is what I worked on. Its not new, it common signal processing methods.

IMO as someone skilled in this art (but not a lawer). This is prior art.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[Some Random Guy]

You have three choices:

1. Contact the company that got the patent and ask to be compensated for your work. You will have very little leverage since you did not patent your work and they already have a patent.

2. Contact an organization like http://www.pubpat.org/ which specilizes in trying to invalidate patents that are based on other people's piror art.

3. Do nothing.

 

[divgradcurl]

The number you provided above is for a patent application that was published in 2007. Patent applications in the U.S. are published after 18 months, so this was filed most likely in mid-to-late 2005. There is no way it has issued yet -- you could check the database at www.uspto.gov to see if the patent has been issued yet, but it is very, very unlikely that it has issued based on the number given above.

The U.S. currently does NOT have an opposition procedure in place for patent applications -- in other words, there is no way for a third party to oppose the allowance of a patent (note that this might change is patent reform gets through Congress). Once a patent has issued, you can follow Some Random Guy's advice. In addition, once the patent issues, you can file for ex parte reexamination of the patent.

Remember, however, that what is in the specification, and what the abstract and description say, is largely irrelevant -- you need to look at the claim language itself to determine whether or not your thesis work actually anticipates or obviates the patent. However, you cannot rely on the claim language in the published application -- it can provide some guidance, probably, but the actual claims that are issued (if a patent ever does issue from this patent) may be very, very different.

You didn't just happen to run across the Slashdot article and base you opinions on Slashdot's analysis, did you? Did you actually read the application and the claims (as published) before you made the determination that your work is prior art?