[FYI] Ex-post Censorship of published Patent Documents?

["Axel H Horns" <axel.h.horns@gmx.net>]

<http://www.ipjur.com/03.php3>
<http://www.ipjur.com/2004_03_01_archive.php3#107902171366471476>

Ex-post Censorship of published Patent Documents?

Dan Gillmor writes in his blog:

"[...] Bruce Schneier, in an e-mail, writes: In October 1962, the 
U.S. Patent Office granted patent [...]165 regarding the use of ricin 
as a biological weapon. Published patents are, of course, publicly 
available. That's the point.

All US patents are available from the USPTO website: "full-text since 
1976, full-page images since 1790." However, for some reason, this 
particular patent is no longer in the database:

Clicking on "Images" only produces a "Patent not found" image.

The patent is still available in foreign databases, so it seems like 
a rather futile exercise if the removal was due to concerns about 
knowledge of WMDs.

This hiding of public information is just the sort of thing we need 
to fight against. If the bad guys can get a copy of the patent 
without any trouble, how is this helping?

Comments

That's the traditional American way to deal with problems.

If you hide from it long enough it will go away.

Just like teen pregnancies will stop if we hide nudity from 
television.... [...]"

Is this the beginning of a more widespread attempt to establish 
something like an ex-post patent database censorship? 

[...]




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