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"if an author?s writings are not findable through Google then they are rather irrelevant"

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The text -- if an author?s writings are not findable through Google then they are rather irrelevant. -- appears in a comment by Gene Quinn to a post by Gene Quinn [Hal Wegner, You Now Have My Full Attention ] that concerns comments made by Hal Wegner concerning Gene Quinn in Hal's newsletter of 12 Sept 09. Some of Quinn's post:

It would seem that Hal?s newsletter, 13 pages in total, had about half of a page written by Hal, followed by 12 pages written by yours truly. It would seem that Hal didn?t have anything to write about himself, so he chose to simply redistribute my original content without authorization. I guess that means that Hal doesn?t know as much about copyright law or copyright infringement as one would expect from such a distinguished partner at Foley & Lardner. Don?t get me wrong, I am honored that Hal thinks enough of my writing to simply take it to populate what he is passing off as ?his? newsletter. I would have thought that someone with such a distinguished background would understand that citation to a source does not absolve what is otherwise clearly copyright infringement.

One sees that Gene is invoking copyright infringement, not plagiarism. The text in question seems to have been attributed to Gene Quinn.

Returning to the IPBiz title text -- if an author?s writings are not findable through Google then they are rather irrelevant. --, one hopes that assertion is not supposed to apply to prior art in the world of patents. There is lots of stuff not findable through Google. Even in academic patent law, one has many law review articles that are not accessible through Google. And further, there is the Sikahema effect. What Vai Sikahema spoke in "Rutgers is Wrong" is highly relevant today (ask Boise State) even if the piece is no longer on the internet. Many of this author's writings in "Intellectual Property Today" used to be on the internet, but they are not there now. They can be found through LEXIS. Articles at IPFrontline get truncated. Did they become irrelevant because some website guy truncated them?

Quinn attributes to Wegner the text:

With the imprimatur of Patently O, this writer has ventured to explore the writings of ?The IPWatchdog?, the name that Eugene Quinn, the website author, uses to describe himself.

The comment about imprimatur relates back to a poll, conducted by Quinn in 2009, but discussed on Patently O. [IPBiz was not even on the ballot for that poll.]

In comments on the post Junk Examination at Patent Prospector, one person refers to "at the O" in the following text:

I throw up 6?s inane comments about what needs to be searched with the Patently-O link at September 10, 2009 9:06 AM, and 6 responds at 11:39 AM with ?Noise, I take the spec into account. This doesn't mean that I need to import some limitations. This is a no importation of limitations allowed zone. And I strictly enforce this policy.? 6, why are you introducing a non-issue to my point? Importing limitations was not the point at the O. At the O, you proudly proclaimed that you don?t have to read the spec. Here too, the importance of reading the spec (and understanding the claims in light of the spec) is being stressed. You are the one introducing the briar patch of reading in limitations. Do you still believe that you don?t have to read the spec? You ran away at the O trainwreck, and you run away here as well. Is it really that hard for you to admit when you are wrong?

One sees a group of commenters move from blog to blog.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 14, 2009 (boomark / email).