[astrodust]

Although it triggers a frothing at the mouth sort of anger that it's now a race to file first, a more careful reading of it suggests that your patent should be denied if any evidence of your invention occurs before you file for it.

That is, one-click shopping cart type patents would be automatically invalid if any such thing already existed or this sort of mechanism was published or discussed by another party. Is this correct?

[tptacek]

Hasn't that always been the case? That's why when people start asserting bad patents, the Internet lights up with quests to find prior art to invalidate the patent.

[astrodust]

Usually this is after the patent has been issued which is very difficult to unravel.

Plus even if there is prior art, the entity applying for the patent could assert their "invention" came prior to the prior art.