You should go spend a bit more time reading on how that all works. Much the same as the lawyer is confused on the laws, filing something that can be easily shown to not be a true and legitimate filing is still worthless no matter who 'files it first'....


But I do agree some legitimate source should file to provide some level of future protection from much craftier lawyer types.

I doubt that this bill removes the prior art restrictions. This is probably about inventors who record their ideas without publishing them and then cry foul when someone else files a patent application for one of those ideas. Since Satoshi published a paper describing Bitcoin in detail, it is prior art.

lets hope so. my office's law department interprets this as:

In the bill, when two or more inventors seek a patent for the same invention, the patent would be awarded to the inventor who was the first to file an application.

And then considering the absurdity of software patents in the first place ( http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_patents_wiki:_home_page )
we could still get screwed.

i still vote for someone to patent bitcoins to protect the community. One single patent troll lawyer could take down all of bitcoin easily if he wanted to.

But if prior art can be documented, neither will be awarded a patent. Do you understand the novelty requirement for patentable inventions?

You can't patent "Publicly Available Information." That's one of the rules that prevents you from patenting a previous patent: by the act of being patented, the previous patent was published as publicly available information by the USPTO. I had some MAJOR issues with this rule/law this past may, trying to argue to the patent clerk that no, the thing I am patenting is NOT like that other thing he found that's publicly published and available. Spoiler: I did end up getting the patent)

If you want to stay safe, just keep a search going on USPTO for any applications with mention or technology keywords similar to bitcoin. The applications will have the patent clerk's name on there as well, and if someone tries this, just contact them and point out to them that it's already public. Also, patent clerks don't get in trouble for rejecting patent applications, but they get in HUGE trouble for approving them, and then having to have the upper management rescind them. This means they have a huge incentive to reject everything they come across, and makes patenting stuff (at least by little, unestablished companies, not like *cough*patent-troll-apple*cough* incredibly difficult)

From the bill:


IANAL, but according to this Bitcoin still can't be patented since it is already publicly available.

No one has tried to patent bitcoin. They tried to copyright (edit: trademark) the term "bitcoin". There really isn't anything about bitcoin to patent. It is based on long existing algorithms and systems.

My mistake, I thought I was using the wrong term, thanks.

Well, to be honest, the term limitations on that one expired 1,600 years ago