Patent Attorneys Sued For Copyright Infringement

From Slashdot (h/t Peter Surda):

Patent blogger Dennis Crouch writes on Patently-O of a catch-22 for attorneys. Patent attorneys are required to submit all prior art that they know of to the patent office. Failing to do so is an ethical violation, and can result in a patent being invalidated. But now the Hoboken Publishing Company and the American Institute of Physics are suing a major patent firm for copyright infringement, because they submit articles to the patent office without paying a separate royalty.

What’s this world coming to when one state granted of monopoly privilege interferes with the process for obtaining another state grant of monopoly privilege? They’re supposed to complement each other!¹

1. See “Controls breed controls, Monopolies breed monopolies”; Microsoft Copyrights –> Patent Dominance. [↩]