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USPTO Seeks Public Comments On Patent Law Treaty

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the less-patently-absurd dept.

Anonymous Coward writes: "The U.S. Patent and Trademark office is seeking public comments (pdf form) on the Draft Patent Law Treaty. They say the treaty is intended to "simplify the formal requirements associated with patent applications." Here's your chance to weigh in alongside Tim O'Reilly, Jeff Bezos, RMS, et. al." WIPO will be meeting from May 11 to June 2 of this year in Geneva, and all public comments are due by April 21. The pdf linked to above lists fax, snail-mail and e-mail addresses to which you can direct your comments on their efforts to streamline patent applications and patents, "and the subsequent changes to United States law and practice." Non-U.S. residents, remember your voice is important here, too!

1 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. How to fix patents by Pope+Pius+IX · · Score: 5
    I think that there needs to be some kind of general debate on a fix to the patent law that would be acceptable to both sides.

    As I see it, the main problems with the current patent system are twofold:

    A: They are often granted for ideas that do not involve a sufficiently inventive step.

    B: They are often used to stifle innovation by refusing to license them to others in a fair way.

    I am not sure how one would go about dealing with A, but I have been thinking about B, and can see several alternatives that would fix the problem quite easily.

    In order to provoke debate, I propose the following ammentment to patent law:

    1. Licensing of patents to third parties should be compulsary.
    2. This licensing should be done through an easy, standard mechanism, allowing the third party to license several patents at once through the patent office.
    3. The licensing cost should be registered, and not allowed to increase above the rate of inflation.
    4. Licensing should be "per product installation".
    5. Nobody, including the owner of the patent should be allowed to sell their own product for less than the combined value of the patents it uses, thus preventing inflated license costs.
    I have an elaboration of this here.

    This compremise would still allow open source software to use patents. Licenses would only be paid when someone new wanted to install the software, and not when source was passed around.

    I don't think it would be practical, or desirable to abolish software patents all together as that would remove a lot of the motivation for companies to invest in research.

    Any comments?