my understanding is publication in full as an application follows the filing date fairly closely -- not the issue date as a patent.
You are right that I didn't take into account the last patent law change that makes your above assertion technically correct. But as a practical reality I would still say you are incorrect:
1) Before the patent is issued it is often very much in flux. If you tried to steer away from all the claims applied for you could get nowhere (E.g. On one of Momenta's patents being asserted right now it appears that the vast majority of the claims applied for in the original application were removed prior to issuance.). (Note also that even after issuance I would challenge anyone to find all the possible patents applicable to some device in your home - good luck with that. It is essentially impossible.)
2) I doubt there is any company in the world that surfs through pending patents to find all the things that they might be infringing on - precisely because of the problem stated in number 1. That makes for an awful lot of 'theft' - perhaps we should all go to jail?
PS My beef with using the word 'steal' is that it gets people way way too far away from rational decisions. "They did something morally wrong so I want them punished to the maximum extent possible." is a good way to end up with nothing - kinda like the dog who saw his reflection.
NOTE: Pending patents are not published at all until sometime after application date plus 18 months.
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