[femto]

Anyone here can submit prior art during the patenting process. No suing or courts involved. You only have to care enough to make the submission.

Interestingly, videos don't seem to count? It must be a written description?

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2206.html

[dvdkhlng]

> Interestingly, videos don't seem to count? It must be a written description?

Wondering the same myself. Googeling for this issue turns up this power-point [1] which seems to imply on page 6 that "electronic publications, on-line databases, websites, or Internet publications" are also considered as "printed documents". But this is just a power-point so who knows which standard gets applied in practice.

I get the impression that the "printed document" language got written before digital documents and the internet were a thing.

I am not a laywer, don't know a thing about the topic, this is not legal advice etc.

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/May%20In...

[femto]

The power point says "Public Use or On Sale" counts. That could be interesting, given that the lock was given to a member of the public, the Lock Picking Lawyer, for a public picking. A convenient case of having a lawyer when you need one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecy1FBdCRbQ

[elil17]

The examiner is definitely allowed to consider videos but it might not be easy to submit. Video subtitles/transcript, thumbnails, and comments would definitely count though. I would just print to PDF the YouTube video with the transcript sidebar, that should be enough info for the examiners to reject any overly broad claims.

[ramraj07]

Samsung used 2001: space odessey as prior art for fighting iPad patents so not sure if that’s true.

[renlo]

Do subtitles count?