Prior art is a very nuanced thing. When I have a lot of money, I can have my talented legal staff persuasively argue that "many of us were doing similar things in the field at the time of this invention, and other public disclosures did not provide proof of invention, but rather an interest in similar applications," or something of that nature. Our new patent regime will be "First Inventor To File," so you just have to convince the patent examiners that the genius engineers at your LargeCo were clearly thinking about the ideas and creating the same inventions as anything else a prior art search might turn up.

You made me think about something, however. Maybe one of our solutions to this problem should be a very well organized, completely open source, "open registry." One of the other changes -- a concession, really -- that will come into place along with the new patent system will be a much-expanded definition of prior art. Now, as things currently stand it will become very easy to shoot down searches of discussion list postings and the sort as being relevant, but what if there was a true open, public registry of ideas/inventions? And moreover, what if we as a collective community encouraged ideas to go in there through social incentive; i.e., if I add a new invention to the registry that is actually awesome, people vote it up and I gain cred in the industry -- and if it's already in existence or something, others can comment/explain I'm not the genius I thought I was. You could also have some sort of a system whereby you could see inventions that are "forks" of others' ideas -- basically, a software version of the citations on a patent application.

Once we built this, and started using it, we could get the patent office (and patent offices around the world) to incorporate it into their workflow when evaluating applications. This could really help us in cutting down bogus filings, while making their job easier (music to every government employee's ears).

I know people have been making moves in this area, but perhaps it's time we get really serious about it. We seem to be better at coding things, than at lobbying, so maybe this is the way to go...