Ok, maybe not all people, and not all of the time. But in ranking the kinds of prior art I'd like to be able to assert against a tech patent, off of the top of my head, I'd rank system references pretty low:
- A U.S. Patent: Simple and easy.
- A foreign patent: Proving authenticity and publication is usually easy (but sometimes not).
- A journal publication: You may have to jump through some hoops, but no big deal.
- A Wayback Machine reference: Now one of those hoops is waiting (and waiting...) for a declaration through the Internet Archive's procedures. But it's not hard to get.
- A book. Now you may be dealing with librarian declarations.
- . . . …
