Software patents cost Vonage $250 million, despite the existence of prior art:
The work of the VoIP Forum built on the ITU H.323 standard, which dates back to 1991 , so Vonage’s loss in court does not owe to a lack of prior art. Vonage lost because of the difficulty in finding the proper documentation of prior art 15 years after the fact.
Given the ubiquity of computers and search engines, prior art should not be difficult to locate, the linked article describes a process for making it available.
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