The patent office, and patent attorneys, look for prior patents for prior art, not the entire internet. It's simple logistics - they have to process a large number of patent applications with a limited staff. If there's prior art, the submitter is required to submit it as a part of the patent application, and from a legal perspective them failing to do so invalidates the patent application. Unfortunately, to prove it requires paying someone to fight the patent claim, unless they can find a lawyer to do the work pro bono. It might be worth contacting the EFF's Patent Busting Project https://www.eff.org/issues/patent-busting-project for help. The prior art is obvious, as is the damage being done, trying to patent others' work that's being shared publicly.
While I certainly agree that leaking an album could create buzz which could then sell more legit copies, that's not the only dynamic going on. There's lots of evidence that piracy of already popular albums hurts sales; there are plenty of sales charts where you can see sales ramping up, then the album appears on file sharing networks, and sales drop dramatically. To some degree it depends on the kinds of fans that a band has - some fans will buy the album even if it's on the file sharing networks, to support the band, or to get a clean copy with cover art, etc., - some fans won't. If your fans are 90% people who would prefer to buy legit, then any buzz is good. If 90% of your fans would prefer to download for free, then buzz just drives downloads, not legit sales. So if you look at the data, some bands are popular file sharing downloads and also sell really well, and some bands are popular file sharing downloads but don't sell well at all.
Of course, any buzz sells concert tickets, T-shirts, fan club memberships, etc., so it's all good for the band. But typically the label only makes money on CD/download sales, so as much as "piracy" reduces CD sales it hurts their only revenue stream, while for the bands, selling fewer CDs but selling more concert tickets is a great tradeoff. Leads to interesting discussions.
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The patent office checks for prior patents...
The patent office, and patent attorneys, look for prior patents for prior art, not the entire internet. It's simple logistics - they have to process a large number of patent applications with a limited staff. If there's prior art, the submitter is required to submit it as a part of the patent application, and from a legal perspective them failing to do so invalidates the patent application. Unfortunately, to prove it requires paying someone to fight the patent claim, unless they can find a lawyer to do the work pro bono. It might be worth contacting the EFF's Patent Busting Project https://www.eff.org/issues/patent-busting-project for help. The prior art is obvious, as is the damage being done, trying to patent others' work that's being shared publicly.
Re: Tokyoflash's response
Classy!
It's not that simple
While I certainly agree that leaking an album could create buzz which could then sell more legit copies, that's not the only dynamic going on. There's lots of evidence that piracy of already popular albums hurts sales; there are plenty of sales charts where you can see sales ramping up, then the album appears on file sharing networks, and sales drop dramatically. To some degree it depends on the kinds of fans that a band has - some fans will buy the album even if it's on the file sharing networks, to support the band, or to get a clean copy with cover art, etc., - some fans won't. If your fans are 90% people who would prefer to buy legit, then any buzz is good. If 90% of your fans would prefer to download for free, then buzz just drives downloads, not legit sales. So if you look at the data, some bands are popular file sharing downloads and also sell really well, and some bands are popular file sharing downloads but don't sell well at all.
Of course, any buzz sells concert tickets, T-shirts, fan club memberships, etc., so it's all good for the band. But typically the label only makes money on CD/download sales, so as much as "piracy" reduces CD sales it hurts their only revenue stream, while for the bands, selling fewer CDs but selling more concert tickets is a great tradeoff. Leads to interesting discussions.