A Look at the US Patent System 249
cheesedog writes "The LA Times published an interesting editorial on the current state of our patent system. From the article: 'on many levels, the U.S. patent system is profoundly flawed. Too many patents are issued for 'innovations' that are obvious, vague or already in wide use.' Online reaction has been mixed, with PatentHawk striking out in defense of the patent system, and Right to Create providing some support for the LA Times editorial."
Patent Hawk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent Hawk Invention Assistance is $125 per hour. Contact Patent Hawk for further details, and to find out whether Patent Hawk can help.
"Patent Hawk's Contributers" (Score:4, Informative)
About the Contributers
Peter A. Haas
Peter A. Haas, a registered patent attorney in Portland, Oregon, offers a full line of intellectual property law services, but focuses his practice on patent procurement and infringement opinions. An eight-year career in engineering prior to his entry into the legal profession, Peter understands good project management - a strategy reflected in his own practice - allowing him to offer many services on a fixed-fee arrangement. In addition to serving clients, Peter serves the legal community as an instructor of intellectual property law at Portland Community College.
Intellectual Assets - David McFeeters-Krone
David McFeeters-Krone of Intellectual Assets has an extensive background in patent licensing from working with MIT, NASA, and Intel. Since founding Intellectual Assets, David has provided Intellectual Property strategy services to DoD, NASA, Sharp Technology Ventures, Tektronix, Deloitte, OHSU, Providence Medical Center, PSC Inc., and the National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC). David's projects entail portfolio triage, technology evaluation, licensing and IP process implementation.
Patent Hawk - Gary Odom
Patent Hawk is a patent technical consultancy, serving attorneys, companies, and individual inventors. Patent Hawk services include: prior art search for patentability and patent validity; non-/infringement analysis; technically accurate claim construction; patent valuation and infringement damage assessment; assisting companies and individuals in profiting from their patents; helping companies maximize their patent portfolio by expanding the scope of their inventions; technical assistance in working around patents; mentoring individual inventors in patenting their own inventions.
Re:Patent Hawk? (Score:2)
Although this is certainly relevant to consider, don't just discount people because of their interest in a subject.
The people who work in a field usually have much more education in it, and much more time to devote to thinking about it.
Re:Patent Hawk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patent Hawk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I don't think they even read their own website.
From "Profiting from Patents": [patenthawk.com]
Having a patent granted provides little assurance that the patent is valid. Patent examiners are time-pressured production line workers; quality control suffers sometimes. Patents are commonly invalidated during litigation. Patent Hawk has personally invalidated well over a dozen patents through prior art search.
From THESE SAME PEOPLE'S response to the editorial:
"Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use." - On what authority or statistical basis? This ignorant assertion is hoary, with no basis other than anecdotal evidence of patents occasionally being found invalid.
"On what authority"? On their OWN authority! Patents cannot be both "commonly" and "occasionally" invalidated, depending which one's convenient for them at the time!
Re:They make a lot of complete misrepresentations. (Score:2)
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
s/abyss/"U.S. Patent System/g;
Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:2)
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
But no, an editorial in a big newspaper isn't going to do it. Most people don't care, and there's a lot of powerful people (big companies, lawyers, etc.) who are very interested in making sure that the current system stays in place. But perhaps if people can start attributing the massive increases in costs in healthcare to patent abuse, or how AIDS drugs can't even be afforded by poor countries to help their people, that might be a good start. (And yet pharmacuticals are exactly the sort of things where patents make a lot of sense -- they're not obvious and cost lots of money to research. They're not good examples as /. readers often see them, but they're what the masses will understand.)
Re:Finally (Score:2)
And your updated, unbroken alternative is??? (Score:2)
Does the patent system have problems? Yep. Easy to fix? Nope. Great alternatives? Nope.
alternative is: (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely and utterly revoke all non-physical property laws.
The only people that seem to be calling out for protections are middlemen, not inventors. The human race has been creative since the dawn of time: whether it's music, art, or any one of inventions (like the lil' disk we call a "wheel") that predates all modern inventions, and upon which all modern inventions are based (in some way, shape or form) - - they all have one thing in common: they were made in the complete absence of any protection whatsoever.
Patents 'fixed' something that wasn't broken, and yes, an entire industry was built around it, and yes, if patents are removed some people will lose some money. But the more important issue is that the human race will win, and it will remove the imbalance and inherent problems created when artificial scarcity was created, and your physical property rights were usurped by the notion of intellect as property.
Re:Poor example proves the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, unless you have some special powers the rest of us don't, you don't know this as a fact. The current set of patent holders would like to convince everyone (and it's been quite successful) that w/o protections no one would invent.
As I pointed out earlier, for this to be true there could be no invention that predated protections.
Reality #1: Drug companies make billions of dollars of pro
Only if you count free drugs for the elderly and (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, since when spreading information a waste? I am not sure what point you are trying to make.
You have no clue at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Scientists and inventors are paid what their information worth -
Nice to see (Score:5, Insightful)
Patenting is really a boring issue unless your directly involved with its consequences but im happy the issue is starting to come up in mainstream media.
Re:Nice to see (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice to see (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think the peoblem is that MOST people aren't thinking about this. It doesn't impact peoples lives in a "missing blond girl" kind of way. They don't know, don't show, or don't care about what goes on in the USPTO.
joe
Re:Nice to see (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Funny)
The uppermost section can be styled to the person's personal teste.
I sure hope that is a typo.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
So well put. It kills competition. And there are hundreds of companies who's sole existance is to hide behind a limited Incorporation or LLC just to sue people and companies for success.
Now if some DC lard asses could get some insight they would force software into copywrite law and say it is what it is, authorship. The only difference between a book and a program is who/what reads it. In the case of a book, people, in the case of a program a computer reads it. I have never understood why software algorithms and program methods ever made it to the patent office in the first place.
I would even go as far as to say 99% of all patents (not just software) are in fact stolen ideas from other sources and should be tossed out with prejudice. That is, if challenged they have ot pay the legal costs times 10 if they loose.
The patent system as it is has become a gag order on software innovation and a legal tool for extortion.
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Abstract: A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.
The application concludes with:
Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measur
Re:Yes (Score:2)
CEASE AND DESIST (Score:5, Funny)
I have previously patented the right to complain about patents, specifically U.S. patents: I should further inform you that I have already actively started placing patents in other countries as well, regarding this issue.
As you did not pay me to post this message, I do request that you either pull this post or pay me 60% of all profit. If you are not making profit from this post: I will allow you to continue this post, provided you seek monetary compensation and that I get 60% of it, otherwise it must be removed immediately or face legal action.
You have 100 comments in order to respond,
Thank you.
Please ignore (Score:2)
The poster involved in the previous post (not the most recent post but the post which is this post's parent post) has been sacked.
He may be eligible to receive unemployment compensation in the county, state, commonwealth or province in which he was formerly employed, at his former pay grade (the rate at which he was compensated for the aforementioned post)(not the most recent post but the post which is this post's parent post), t
Patents discouraging entrepreneurs? (Score:5, Interesting)
The late 90s were really fun, I'd like to see that entrepreneurial vibrance happen again, especially because it was fun for the nerds and irksome for the old guard, but I'm worried that perhaps the legal overhead is discouraging a lot of creative and competent people.
Re:Patents discouraging entrepreneurs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Patents discouraging entrepreneurs? (Score:5, Informative)
If people can't see that having to deal with thousands of patents will only diminish innovation in the long run then... well f*^&@!!! people! I can't dumb it down much further. How about:
"Patents Bad"
Re:Patents discouraging entrepreneurs? (Score:2)
Imperical evidence would suggest otherwise (Score:3, Insightful)
you overlook some evidence (Score:2)
Think
Re:you overlook some evidence (Score:2)
You don't think mp3 encoding and LZW compression qualifies as innovation?
Dunno about you, but around here, that stuff still isn't obvious to the layperson. Really, the problems with those two specific things isn't that the patents shouldn't have been granted, but that the companies first said they wouldn't actually enforce the patents, then changed their minds.
Now, the laser pointer/cat patent, I can't argue with that. And in fact, I certainly do think that the patent system ne
Re:you overlook some evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
The other problem with compression is that compression is a mathematical formula, not an invention. Mathematical formulas are supposed to be non-patentable.
Re:you overlook some evidence (Score:2)
From MPEP 2106 [uspto.gov]
Re:you overlook some evidence (Score:2)
Not really. Sony and Phillips had ATRAC in their minidisc and Phillips had PASC in the DCC back in 1992 which are precisely the nature of MP3 (lossy music compression that throws away the part of music that people can't hear in complex passages).
The only difference is that Franhauffer was smart enough to distribute command line MP3 converters in the mid-nineties and look the other way when people included it in non-profit software,
Re:you overlook some evidence (Score:2)
Well, the patents don't cover all forms of lossy audio encoding. But more importantly, the patents related to mp3 encoding [mp3licensing.com] mostly predate 1992. They start at 1986 or so, with a few being applied for in 1995 and 1997, but only a few.
It was. It's just that it wasn't being taken advantage of back then quite as actively as it is
Re:you overlook some evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of the patent system is to encourage the creation, disclosure, and use of novel, nonobvious inventions which would otherwise not be created, disclosed, and used. It is not a reward, it is an enticement to produce these three beneficial results.
In the process there is a small dimunition of these three goods -- where there is a patent, the invention cannot be freely used, and while this might encourage others to 'invent around' the patent, it also tends to discourage productive yet unauthorized work in improving the patent itself (although that too is somewhat countered by the availability of patents on the improvements). Normally these minor harms are significantly outweighed by the good of the patent system.
However, I think that two fields, software and business methods, are special cases. In both fields, there are tremendous encouragements towards creation and use of novel, nonobvious inventions regardless of patents. Typically, these inventions are straightforward enough, or are disclosed for other reasons, such that the goal of disclosure is generally also well-satisfied. I do not think that offering patents in these fields will actually produce any further benefits to the public. These fields would most likely be just as dynamic, and with all the same inventions if no patents were issued.
Where a patent cannot provide any real encouragement, there is no reason to issue it. Furthermore, there is no good from a patent in these fields that outweighs the bad that inevitably results from patents. This is an unusual situation, but I think that because of it, we should not grant patents in these fields until they 'slow down' to the point where a patent would actually provide otherwise-unrealized benefits greater than the harm produced by the same.
So sure, they're perfectly good inventions. But are patents necessary so as to get these inventions? I think not.
Re:Imperical evidence would suggest otherwise (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but what about the unnecessary complications CREATED BY and the innovations HINDERED BY it?
Like *ahem* EOLAS browser plugin patent, *ahem cough* Amazon's one-click buying *cough cough ahem* Linux patent allegations, *cough cough!* blackberry *COUGH COUGH!* lawsuits against farmers for using patented seeds *COUGH! CHOKE *COUGH* SPIT* (oops, is that blood I'm coughing?) *COUGH* Patents on the human genome *COUGH COUGH! *CHOKE* *DIES*
R.I.P. Technological innovation
no no no no no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Imperical evidence would suggest otherwise (Score:4, Insightful)
I just want one example. Something we all couldn't live without and wouldn't have been invented if the inventor couldn't patent it?
Since the whole point is to encourage innovation, I'd like to see some trace of evidence that it has ever accomplished that. You can't simply say "a lot of stuff has been invented lately" because *all* of it would have been invented anyways.
Re:Imperical evidence would suggest otherwise (Score:4, Insightful)
Say I manage to invent some uber-efficient new power cell. Nobody knows how it works, and because my invention is a non-obvious, opening it up and attempting to reverse engineer it is very difficult.
Without a patent system, I sell these power cells and make lots of money. Then a die, and nobody knows how I did it, and the invention is lost. With a patent system, I sell these power cells and make lots of money for a limited time. During that time, I am secure in the knowledge that even if someone else figures out how I did it, I have an exclusive right to that idea. At the end of the period, my exclusive right is revoked, and everyone can now build new inventions on top of my existing power cell (assuming they didn't licence it off me beforehand).
That is how the patent system is supposed to work. It's sort of like a way of mandating open-source for inventions - we'll give you a guaranteed, limited-time monopoly in exchange for telling us how you did it.
The system falls down when non-obvious ideas are patented. In this case, the "schematics for monopoly" deal is a bad deal - society is not interested in the schematics for an obvious invention because, well, it's obvious. But lately patent offices have been making many, many bad deals on behalf of the public, handing out government-sponsored monopolies like they were candy.
I've digressed a little from what I started writing about, so let me just say it again. The patent system is not designed to somehow encourage invention. Inventors will always invent. The patent system is designed to encourage inventors to divulge internal workings that could not be easily inferred from looking at the invention by someone skilled in that area. With our current level of technical skill and technology, there are very few inventions that could not be reverse engineered. Thus there are very few inventions that give the public a good deal on patents.
Inventors will always invent... (Score:2)
Companies hire scientists for the sole reason of producing patents. Without patents, the services of scientists become much less valuable, and therefore you will have fewer of them. Yes, these people will still be smart, but their time, energy, and thoughts will be diverted to other ventures.
Re:Inventors will always invent... (Score:2)
Nowadays, companies hire scientists for the sole purpose of producing patents. In days gone buy, they hired them for the sole purpose of producing products. Patents have been around for yonks, true, but the current patent-frenzy and huge pa
Re:Imperical evidence would suggest otherwise (Score:2)
Re:Imperical evidence would suggest otherwise (Score:2)
Let's not forget about all of the innovation that occurred without such a system. For example, consider the early history of software.
Where would we be today if fundamental ideas such as hashtables, quicksort, language compilers, user accounts, spreadsheets, etc. had been patented by their inventors? The industry would probably have been set back by decades as the patent holders sat back and used their monopoly priv
not "under"... (Score:2, Interesting)
...but despite of the system.
It is part of our lives to have to find solutions for the problems we face. Many times, the solution is just the application of knowledge we have previously acquired (through education, experience). Sometimes we just buy a product that does what we need. But often you need to come up with a solution by going through a creative thinking process. In that case, chances are someone has gone through the same problem and solved it in a similar way, but in most cases this will be very
Patent everything under the sky, or above it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry too much, this can't last forever, the worse it gets the more people will complain. Not that I'm against ending this nonsense here and now.
Perhaps we could change the system so that the first time any patent is used in court, the patent holder has to first defend his patent, then sue?
Re:Patent everything under the sky, or above it... (Score:2)
Re:Patent everything under the sky, or above it... (Score:2)
Easily solved problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
Besides, the near-automatic granting of injunctions can lead to the absurd result of a company being forced to pay royalties to license patents later found to be invalid.
Easy enough to solve-require the holder of any patent later found invalid, or who charges licensing fees for something later ruled not to come under the scope of the patent, to pay back triple such fees and/or court awards they won from the invalid patent or improper use of it. You'll see a lot more caution in patent filings, and a lot more willingness to back down on questionable or obviously invalid stretches.
Re:Easily solved problem... (Score:2)
Filings would drop to zero and no one would ever try to assert their patents. You would basically, with that one change, destroy a large chunk of the value in our economy.
Not to mention the fact that these would basically be massive punitive damages awarded against many completely innocent patentees, and therefore possibly unconstitutional, and at least extremely unfair. A patentee can't always predict how a court is going to rule.
Re:Easily solved problem... (Score:2)
Re:Easily solved problem... (Score:2)
I guess we disagree on the fundamentals then, I don't believe at all that patent filings would drop "to zero". They would certainly fall quite a bit. This would be a good thing, as the ones still filed would be the ones the patent system is genuinely intended to protect, not the ones that misuse it.
Patent lawyers would also become much more diligent-the current advice to "file away, why not!" would become shoddy legal advice, and subject to malpractice claims. They would search much harder for prior art,
Re:Easily solved problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in a country that uses this system, and a look at the listings in my local court/the number of ambulance chasers advertising in the media tells me that this just ain't true.
I'd leave the "triple" aspect of the GP's post to the discretion of the judge: if the judge thinks the plaintiff is, essentially, taking the piss, then he can award it. Otherwise, I'd suggest: retur
my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:5, Insightful)
My impressions of the process that the patent office uses to evaluate whether an invention is novel is that it is fundamentally and deeply flawed.
1. The patent examiner has extremely little time to evaluate a patent. Practically speaking they have just a few hours to spend on each patent. Many of my disclosures have been 40 pages or more in length. How the hell is somebody supposed to read through 40 pages of technical material on a topic they have little knowledge of in 3 or 4 hours?
2. Patent examiners have totally insufficient background in technical areas to evaluate them. They're not stupid people, not by any means, but we're talking about bachelors and masters degrees in the sciences with no research experience evaluating cutting-edge technology done by research phds. The fundamental problem is that the examiner is not up to date with what constitutes prior knowledge in a field. If you get a masters degree in computer science that's all very well, but it hardly brings you up to speed on the latest research, which is what is being patented.
3. The standard for what is an invention is something non-obvious to someone with "ordinary skill in the art". Well, that's a bad standard, because in many fields all product research and design is done by people with beyond ordinary skill in the art. So what _would_ be obvious to ordinary inventors in a field is completely non-obvious to one with ordinary skill. It's like asking asking a casual jogger to evaluate whether a sprinter is really fast.
4. Given the very little time patent examiners have to evaluate a disclosure, they basically perform keyword search on words from the disclosure against previous patents and the web. If they find some other sentences with about the same words, they issue a preliminary rejection. That lets them quickly reply and meet their hour requirements. So your disclosure says "A method for calculating maximum travel windows for freight" and they cite against you a patent on "A method for calculating the maximum size of windows on freight trains".
5. But despite the patent office's initial rejection of almost everything, if you spend more money, which resets the examiner's clock and lets them spend more hours on you, they're perfectly willing to grant you almost anything in the end. In fact that's their job: the patent examiners job description includes trying to help everybody get a patent.
These aren't insights. Almost everybody who has interacted with the patent office has experienced this. And its not going to change, because the patent office is a profit center for the government and they love the system of letting companies get whatever patents they want so long as they pay a lot of money to the patent office to go through the process.
Method to the Madness (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider that the patent office received 406,302 patent applications in FY2005 ( http://www.uspto.gov/ [uspto.gov] ). It would be horribly *inefficient* to evaluate each of those applications thoroughly, especially because the vast majority of those patents are without value and will never be heard of again. What you really need is a system that somehow *selects* valuable patents, and subjects *only those valuable patents* to scrutiny.
The process where the USPTO first rejects an application, then eventually accepts it if you spend the money and persist is one way for the system to select valuable patents: applicants will only spend time and money on multiple resubmissions in proportion to the value they place on the patent.
The fact that patents can be challenged in court is another way the system selects valuable patents: useless patents are never challenged, while those with value will be challenged and carefully scrutinized by a court.
The patent system isn't perfect, but all serious reform proposals, e.g. third party pre-grant challenges, take this selection idea into account.
Re:Method to the Madness (Score:2)
Your arguments do not show the patent system as other than tremendously broken, probably so broken that the best solution is to throw it out totally and reimplement it from scratch. (I'm not fool enough to believe that this is likely to happen, but if it w
Re:Method to the Madness (Score:2)
Re:Method to the Madness (Score:2)
Ah, of course that'd work. A lot like our legal system: by making sure only those with lots of money can sue or defend themselves, we save the court the burden of dealing with the unvaluable petty issues that would oth
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:3, Informative)
on point one, you're wrong. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05720.pdf [gao.gov] , a report by the Government Accountibility Office, details that examiners are expected to review 87 patents a year, spending 19 hours each on them, on average. Other sources, including congressional testimony by the undersecretary of commerce on intellectual property and the head of POPA, th
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA: A federal judge may reinstate the injunction he granted against RIM for violating NTP's patents even though the Patent Office, which is reexamining the patents, has issued preliminary findings that all five are invalid.
Even though the patent office itself has declared that the patents may not pass muster some appointed-for-life judge is prepared to make a ruling worthing hundreds of millions to billions o
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:3, Interesting)
Each patent would be sent to 3-4 reviewers who are knowledgable about the specific field. The reviewers describe the novelty of the patent (or lack of), but must cite sources to reject the patent as not new.
The USPTO examiners then act as judges, read the reviews, perform their own research using the sources given to them by the reviewers, and finally making a judgement.
That way, the examiners ge
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:2)
Sorry, no. It's in the class of plans that start "Assume I have infinite resources..."
Reviewers won't do that work for free, and there already isn't enough money in the system to pay them. Even if you forced them somehow, you'd simply cause society to pay a stiff opportunity cost on their work of their otherwise most-productive members.
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:2)
So, in order to file patents, you might be required to peer-review patents. And the reviewers will see the contents of the patent application before the public, giving them a slight head start. That's a payoff for a relatively small amount of work.
It could work, imo. One question is whether current companies who file many patent applications would favor the status quo or a new, more efficient method.
a little condescending (Score:4, Interesting)
The vast, vast majority of software patents I've seen don't need a Ph.D. to understand -- any difficulty in understanding comes only from the legalese they are written in. Moreover, very few software patent inventors actually have Ph.D.s. Most patents are not on some arcane variation of a data compression algorithm, but some basic user interface feature written by a couple of engineers at Adobe or IBM who got their bachelor's at a state university. (Remember the "Progress Bar" patent?) I should point out, also, that many entrepreneurs like "the boys" at Google, Yahoo!'s founders, and of course Bill Gates dropped out of their programs.
I'm going to assume that you have a Ph.D., and it is your belief that no mere mortal without those letters after his or her name can understand the "cutting-edge" research you are doing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you think that the reason that "obvious" patents are getting issued is that that the patent examiners are too uneducated to know if something is obvious. In fact that's not right as a legal matter. The obviousness standard almost requires the suggestion to be found in the literature; patent examiners (and judges) are not permitted anymore to simply say that an idea looks obvious and reject the patent.
Biotech patents, on the other hand, are often written by patent agents and lawyers with Ph.D.s, reflecting the higher level of knowledge required in practice. And while software patents can usually be had for under $10k, a biotech patent usually runs $50k. The only time Ph.D.s get involved in a software patent dispute is usually at trial, when some security-camera company claims that their patent covers computer network firewalls and the law firm has to hire a professor to tell the judge and the jury that the plaintiff is full of shit.
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:2)
Re:my experience as a prolific patenter (Score:2)
Getting a PhD says you've learned how to learn. I'm currently going for a PhD and I could easily stop what I'm doing, switch into some other topic, learn everything about that topic in 1-2 years, and then do novel work in that field. That's what I did in the first place. That is what having the PhD demonstrates.
And, really, to get a PhD you need a bachelors/masters. So that "broad foundation of knowledge" is never lost. You learn how to u
The Name of the Game (Score:2, Insightful)
The more things which are patentable, the more important the Patent Office becomes. They can then push for a bigger budget, and hire more people to handle the amount of overwork the Examiners are under. Lather, rise, repeat.
There's no incentive whatsoever for them to base things on comman sense. Or to reduce the scope of their influence. Utopia (for the PTO) will only be reached when anything and everything is patentable
Re:The Name of the Game (Score:2)
Go back to requiring models.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Before you scream that novel and non-trivial algorithms wouldn't be patenable (like, for example, a new algorithm for encoding images etc), all algorithms can be represented by specifically designed analog or digital electronics (example of a non-trivial algorithm that can also be represented by a physical device: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=/neta
Things that require code, like hyper-links, one click web ordering, and other patents that most people consider ridiculous would still be protected by copyright on the code... and last time I checked MS, Oracle, Sun, IBM, Apple etc.. didn't have all that much trouble protecting their intellectual property as start-ups without software patents.
Rolling back the clock to require a description of a physical device would both make patents a lot less vague as well as making the obvious harder to obsfucate, without requiring a massive paradigm change for what patents are supposed to protect (this isn't to say that I'm not in favor a more rational system for challenging a patent, especially for prior art issues, but reform tends to move in baby-steps)
Re:Go back to requiring models.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet there was no such requirement in the language of the Constitution.
Requiring a model favors corporations that can afford to throw money away on a prototype or mock-up and penalizes the garage inventor.
The USPTO receives 350,000 applications per year - requiring a model would quickly make it the largest museum on the planet. A museum with storage and operatio
Re:Go back to requiring models.. (Score:2, Informative)
I did not mean to imply that some bricks-and-mortar, or any other tangible prototype had to exist. I was addressing the idea that it used to be required, before software patents, that any patent be accompanied by a clear description of a physical device, whether the patent was for the device itself, or whether that device
Re:Go back to requiring models.. (Score:2)
MPEP 2163 [uspto.gov]
I think you're also combining issues that fall under both 35 USC 112 and 35 USC 101, which cover vastly different topics. Some of the issues under 101 are described in MPEP 2106 [uspto.gov].
To my knowledge, except for perpetual motion devices, patents have n
Re:Go back to requiring models.. (Score:2)
But this would still affect the garage inventor working with radio controlled devices (cars, aeroplanes, robots).
My fav quote from Groklaw... (Score:4, Insightful)
I will write on a huge cement block "By accepting this brick through your window, you accept it as it is and agree to my disclaimer of all warranties, express or implied, as well as disclaimers of all liability, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental, that may arise from the installation of this brick into your building." - PJ
Grok law
Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think all patents do is grant a temporary control over a certain field of creation. If we were to eliminate or limit patents then that means in order to be #1 seller, your product has to be the best and decently priced. Of course, there's also marketing in there but that's a whole other subject.
What I'm trying to say is that Company A makes zig, Company B makes ziglar, a remarkably similar product which may be cheaper and maybe even better. If it's better and cheaper, then hey! How does Company A keep up? They make Zigziglar.
Of course there would need to be some restrictions, but nothing so bizarre as what we have today. This could, of course, be achieved through a more human process than just filling out forms and wording everything a certain way as to persuade different people. But hey, what do I know? I'm not an economist, professional engineer, or a marketer.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
There's two problems I can find with this:
How this affects consumer prices (Score:2)
But as I said, assume half of the licenses are for bogus patents. That'd mean we're paying about $400 more for a laptop than we should actually have to.
I've seen some pretty wild patents. And the USPTO is just handing them out
it's obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Hence, it's just like our good-ol politicians leaving service for some dinky, high-paying lobby job and then exploiting the system since they've worked both sides. It's sad that you'll only see 10% progress from 100% effort, where 90% goes in the pocket of the ex-govvy. What a racket.
I've been in the brand spanking new complex. It's nice, looks like lots of money when into those buildings, though the commissary is crap (then again, old town's a step away for nice $$ lunches). Aside from serving political agendas set by politicians, they have one goal: make money and lots of it--sort of like the rest of government nowadays. Where do those profits go? Now that's what the tax payer should be asking!
Agencies that run this way always remind me that we are currently under another form of government than your ideological democracy
So much for serving the public good.
Re:it's obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
All governments expand to meet the limits of the public's endurance. Democratic governments are no exceptions, they're just more likely to stay at those limit rather than cross over them.
The current US government more resembles the vision of Bismarck than it does the vision of Jefferson.
Re:it's obvious (Score:2)
This is supposed to change soon, since a law was recently passed to stop the practice of fee diversion.
Chewbacca lives on Endor (Score:5, Funny)
The article proposes the following change: if a patent is valid and infringed, there will be no injunction unless the patentholder is using/selling the invention.
But, that change would do nothing to fix the things the article complains about: Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use. Too many patent holders try to extend their claims to devices and services that weren't even contemplated when the patents were granted. And it's a difficult, costly exercise to overturn a questionable patent after it has been awarded.
So "you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. . . . No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does NOT MAKE SENSE! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
The RIM case (Score:2, Informative)
So, there we have it, RIM is expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to NTP for patents that the patent office says are bogus. The patent system and the justice system are both broken. Neither encourages i
don't look!!!! (Score:2)
Variable Patent Terms (Score:2, Insightful)
Require Working Prototypes (Score:5, Interesting)
This should stop at least some junk patents, where someone has thought of a great idea but cannot build it. If you add in fines for failing to have a prototype on demand then you can start reducing the rates of junk filing. If they cannot pay the fines you can then take away their other patents simply by adding the fine to patent renewal fee notices and taking the fine portion out first.
This should help small inventors as they have to store very little compared to large patent hording companies.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Plagiarst (Score:2, Informative)
Seems like there is some plagiarism here (Score:3)
Re:My 2 Cents (Score:2)
Thank you for using the "post stupid idea to slashdot" ego-deflation method (patent pending). Have a nice day.
Re:My 2 Cents (Score:5, Informative)
1. Create a dictionary of all words used in applying for a patent.
See MPEP 2111.01 [uspto.gov]. In applying for a patent, you may define "giraffe" to mean "flashlight". There are at present few (if any) reasons for doing so, but if you're going to "computerize" the patent prior art search as you have described, there is suddenly an extremely good reason to say "giraffe" when you mean "flashlight".
2. A second dictionary of terms which are equal to each other.
See above. As an aside, maybe a better solution would be a classification system that categorizes patents and patent applications according to the technology involved, regardless of the vocabulary invoked? Such a classification could be performed by humans - maybe even get patent examiners involved. If a certain group gets too large, further subdivide it. Try to keep the groups to about 250 patents if possible. (I've described the system that's been in use for at least 100 years, but seriously, this super-thesaurus idea sounds promising. Except useless because of MPEP 2111.01.)
3b. All entries should be listed (just like with Google) in a descending order of revelance.
This has been available to examiners for years.
4. All applied for patents should be kept on file so they too can be checked against.
This was a great idea when Thomas Jefferson first thought of it.
People may say we can't do this.
Yes, but Thomas Jefferson was a great man, and when the computer technology of 1987 implemented the rest of what you're talking about, those people looked like idiots.
As for graphical pictures showing how something works - it depends.
The entire collection of patents (except the X series that burned) are available in image format to the examiners.
You need the bad patents in there as a way to say "Hey! Here are examples of why you can't have a patent!"
I'm not sure how you define a "bad patent" - that is not an invitation to explain - but regardless, this is an absurdly bad idea. As an alternative, investigate what an SIR is at MPEP 1111 [uspto.gov]
Just my $0.02 worth.
Is there a rebate?
Other responses suggest your whole post is plagarized. If so, I imagine it was -extremely- relavant 15 years ago. I really wish Slashdot had a "What Made You Think You Were Qualified To Post?" moderation.
Re:My 2 Cents (Score:4, Interesting)
1. They do. They create a database entry that is stripped of all words like "the" or "and", and this is indexed by the main search engines, EAST and WEST. This covers the abstract, claims, specifications, everything relevent.
2. Done. It's on NORTH, and it's also done internally by the majority of workgroups. They are called synonyms. There is no _good_ automatic way to do it.
3. Yeah, we do that to. It's called a PLUS search, and it compares the distilled word list generated at step 1 to the word lists of all other patents. It's generally not as useful as you might think, and class searching and keyword searches are much more fruitful.
3a. The PLUS search is not constrained by classes/subclasses.
3b. You end up having to pick a threshold, ie "let me see the 200 most relevent", then you can browse the contents of that set.
4. Yep, we do.
Every patent discussion on here puts me off of Slashdot, and reminds me to take everything read with a grain of salt. The patent examiners fight two battles: meet production, don't allow anything that makes the front page of slashdot.
Yes, the managers warn us about you.
Re:Patents don't help the individual anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patents can be cheap.. (Score:2)
Re:Patents can be cheap.. (Score:2)
Re:In a perfect Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Oh wait...