PATENTLY PREDICTABLE Available to Purchase

I remember a story of two businessmen looking out of an office window at a man carrying a billboard with the message The End of the World is Nigh on it and one saying to the other,‘ it's not the message I mind, it's the way he keeps looking at his watch.’ We have always had our fair share of prophets predicting imminent doom and gloom in the patent field but they have been wrong so far and I doubt that things will change much in the next six years. Despite the massive increase in electronic handling of all forms of data, patent systems throughout the world have both age and stability on their side and I predict that for most users the patent scene in the year 2000 will be very much like it is now.