Slashdot Mirror
Battling the Patent Trolls
opus writes "There's an interesting series of
articles at law.com on the current situation in patent law, which has become "a money-minting machine for a few patent holders". Includes an article on Peter Detkin, counsel at Intel, who spends much of his time battling patent infringement claims against Intel, and who coined the term "patent troll". Apparently it's not just the geeks who are unhappy with the current state of affairs in patent law."
Qualcomm is a big meanie with crappy business practices.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
The protocol is broken. Consider the following case, I file for 10 patents, I put them up for auction per the protocol. I then bid for the patents myself (possibly through one of my offshore companies).
Under such a scheme I can bid a billion dollars for my own patent, secure in the knowledge that if I am forced to pay I will be paying myself.
The CMU scheme sounds like the work of someone who has spent too much time reading Aynn Rand and too litte time noticing that most markets are rigged.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Perhaps this is the problem. Someone else mentioned that in times-gone-by, patents had a certain prestige. Now they don't. Back in the old days, most patents (I know I am generalising) were based on actual inventions, and not just ideas.
Unfortunately, once the (concept patenting) ball is rolling, it will be very hard to stop it, and so we are stuck with this current system, and all we can hope for is its gradual improvement/replacement.
What kind of machines do you think the government uses to print money, Einstein? The patent for a money minting-machine probably expired decades ago. /you must be a fucken retard.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
Oh man, isn't there a Python skit about that?
Think it was about taxing it, though.
"Let's have a tax on... you know."
"What... poo-poos?"
"No, you know... "
"Oh! That would make accounting a bit more interesting, wouldn't it?!"
...or something like that
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Which is mostly bollocks, of course.
Ambition, wild imagination and a layman's understanding of Physics are a lousy combination.
Watch me pull a scenario out of my ass!
So, let me get this straight... company A spends 5 years and $4.3 billion developing a new technology. They don't (or can't) patent it. Companies B,C and D all come along and "use" this technology to market their own products, creating a competition lowering prices. Great for the consumer! Now company A is only making 1/4th of the profits (probably less than that due to decrease in cost due to competition) then they would have been making and never recover the $4.3 billion they spent developing their technology. Investors then pull out, employees leave the company, and the company goes out of business. Investors will then not see spending money on investments as a lucrative means of making money for themselves and will stop investing in technological advancements and all funding will go out the window... no more R&D because companies won't be able to afford it without their investments. How is this "conducive to encouraging invention?"
Sorry, but you're going to have to back that argument up with some facts. When has this happened? Who were the companies involved? What was the invention? I'd be willing to bet some big money that you can't come up with any solid examples because it doesn't work that way. If you spend over 4 billion dollars on research, I'm willing to bet that you've come up with something so damn fantastic that the competition can't build a competing product without spending a huge amount of money themselves.
Look at the Mach 3 razor: Gillette spent a fortune (over a billion dollars, IIRC) on R&D for that sucker. Razor designs are commonly duplicated, but I still haven't seen any other triple bladed razors on the market. I don't think it's because somebody patented the "three blades on a razor" idea or that nobody can reverse-engineer it. It's because manufacturing something like that is fiendishly hard and requires a substantial investment in both R&D and implementation. Even if someone did come up with a cheap knock-off, Gillette has already made a huge amount of money on the Mach 3 because they had first-mover advantage and brand recognition as "The developer of the Mach 3".
For an even better example, look at the software industry before the advent of software patents. Companies like IBM, AT&T and Xerox spent billions on research and development, yet their ideas were publicly available and by your argument should have gone out of business. Guess what: IBM, AT&T, and Xerox made vast fortunes off of their software and are still giants today. After software patents came in, innovation slowed down and you got things like Apple suing over "look and feel" and the DMCA bullshit that put Dmitry Skylarov in prison.
You're a patent troll apologist and you make me nauseous. Next time, back up your flights of fancy with some real world examples and I'll take you seriously.
This
Unless you make Patent void when the inventor dies, it'll keep on happening.
Cool. Then the cost of defending against a patent lawsuit is reduced to the cost of hiring a hitman to kill the patent holder. That's gotta be cheaper than a million bucks.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Easily answered - lawyers got involved. Patents don't move as fast as ambulances, apparently.
The best reform idea I've seen (which I think was thought up by an economist at MIT's Sloan School of Mangaement) works something like this: Once you get issued a patent, you must put it up for auction. After the auction is over, flip a coin. Heads, and the government pays you 120% of the winning bid and puts the patent in the public domain. Tails, and the high bidder buys the patent.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
I hope they dont have it in them to start charging royalties from those who get sick. Oops, maybe I shouldnt have bought it up!
From the site:
New Game Coming in August: U.S. Patent Number One Congratulations, you've invented a time machine. But you're not the first person to think of it, and you won't be the last. What really matters is who gets to the Patent Office first. And with a time machine, "first" means "first"!
So, rather than appear foolish afterward, I renounce seeming clever now.
I tried a crack at it, but my solution resulted in a huge reliance on the courts.
Totally unlike current IP laws, which result in a huge abuse of the courts.
BTW, what was your solution? I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.
All of this trouble goes back to a more fundamental problem. As Proudhon wrote, property is theft. Think about it:
Start with a plausible point:
People have the right to own property
Second step: government steps in and implements a police state to enforce these so-called "property rights" instead of letting the market provide a solution (mercenaries, private security guards, etc.).
Shortcomings of the laws become obvious: Wealth in the United States is concentrated among a few fortunate people, many of whom did not "earn" it, but inherited from their parents, while many suffer in poverty. The government reacts by saying that it will be OK because the next generation will become wealthy as entrepreneurs in the new economy, and tightens the restrictions on freedom to take things we want, just because they happen to be "someone else's property."
You are absolutely correct.
I made a similar point in another discussion with respect to copyright law (and its abuses), but I think it applies to any sort of "artificial scarcity" which all IP law ultimately relies on.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
First they came for the Usenet trolls /. trolls
/. troll.
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Usenet troll
Then they came for the Patent trolls
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Patent troll
Then they came for the
and I did not speak out
because I was not a
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
--Blue Troll
I was talking to a lawyer friend of mine today, and from what she tells me, 200,000 dollar payouts are pretty scarce. After she finished law school, she was left with two choices, basically. See, like most law students, she had spent her entire stint at university engaged in an orgiastic romp through the bedrooms of half the students and staff in the faculty. Law students are basically immoral, and will drop their panties at the mention of coitus. I fucken kid you not. I unfortunately missed out on those ribald years of her life, as I did not know her then. Her friends describe her as having been a total slut, and a good fucken lay to boot. I know for a fact that she was not known for wearing panties, but from what I hear, I'm surprised she bothered with skirts. This chick spent all of her college years on all fours giving head to professors while post grads gave it to her dog style. Know what I mean?
Anyway, despite her willingness to make accommodations wherever necessary, she still only managed to scrape through with a B average, since you can't make it to class when you're washing the prof's cum out of your hair every second morning. So her options were, basically, go into shitty ACLU do-gooder jobs which don't pay, and bring you constantly into contact with the worst suburban losers you can imagine. I mean, ACLU work is fucken bullshit. You spend more effort trying not to laugh in the faces of your idiot clients than you do defending them. Fuck that.
Her other option was to suck the cocks of the HR department of every half decent law firm in the city. Let's just say that's a lot of fucken dick. It's a fucken dick-suck marathon, you know what I mean? Fucken right. But she managed to get hired by this patent lawyer who was horny as a fucken goat mainlining viagra. This was a situation unlike anything she had previously faced. This fucken priapic beast of a shyster hires her, and almost goes out of business, because he doesn't have the sense to stop fucking this dumb slut in time to actually serve his clients' interests. Fucken A, man. So now she's spending half her time bent over his desk getting a 55 year old coital pounding. The other half, she's on her knees "placating" irate clients orally.
Holy Fucken Jesus.
So I was having lunch with her today, and I casually ask if she bothered to wipe the cum off her chin before she came to see me. This fucken bitch hits the ceiling! I couldn't fucken believe it. Bitch spends all day giving head to wizened old cock, but one mildly derisive comment about her lifestyle and she's all over me about respect. Fucken cunt.
So that's that, I say to myself. I've got no more use for someone who's attitudes are that fucken twisted. You know how lawyers are, anyway. It's worse to say something than to do it. I figure you don't need to regret not having become one. You probably don't have the appetite for cock, let alone the stomach for cum. When I bade her farewell today, this bitch was trying to develop at taste for cunt as well. Why else would she order the fucken lobster, eh?
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
Well, I don't know about these 'bottom feeders,' but, um, did anyone notice how much money they're making? This one Niro dude - a patent-troll - is making hundreds of millions of dollars for this stuff. I'm sirry, but, uh, as much as I like Intel, I like LOTS of $$$ more. And we all know that we'd ALL take $1,000,000 over having the feeling that we helped some Intel employee have an easier job. At least, I know I would.
that is some seriously messed up shit. I'm sorry, but the legal system, while the best humanity has been able to create, is being used the wrong way. What ever happened to 'the good guys always win'?
i2Corp.com is a Patent Troll. They claim to have patented gambling over the Internet, and plan on suing everybody they can.
That's their business plan. I kid you not.
AN/"intel corporation": 3598 patents.
I am sure you can see the difference in value between patents awarded to a corporation with a R&D department which actually researches the stuff they have patents for, and those of a leech with no research, just the "administration" of other people's patents.
what? :)
Natalie Portman and Hot Grits can finally expose themselves in pink/ greenish hair running around dancing around fire rejoicing and singing troll hymms...
my blog
Did you see the 60 minutes the other night? It was about bio-tech companies patenting genes. Someone DISCOVERED the genes related to breast cancer and patented them. Later on two researchers where doing studies related to breast cancer and got a letter from some lawyers. They had to stop doing research as they were infringing on the patents!
Liar. The only patents mentioned as examples in the linked article are:
- Machine vision
- Bar codes
- The answering machine
- A method for improving the resolution of laser printers
- The method for making Pentium chips compatible with older architectures.
Which of these patents is "disgusting"? They are all non-obvious devices which have been highly useful to the world. You haven't read the article beyond the first couple of lines; alternatively, you are a victim of American education.This guy is a lawyer working for TechSearch and is going after intel for $2 billion to $7 billion in damages
Intel are rich. The owners of the patents are poor (in fact; they're bankrupt). The lawyer's statement is factually correct. The lawyers are anticipating a fifty/fifty share of the profits in return for investing their time and effort in seeing that the (arguably) genuine inventor of the technology is not ripped off by Intel. How is this different from Eric Raymond getting a $40million windfall from Open Source IPOs?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Apparently economists really want to change the patent laws. But unless an economist can come up with a revolutionary new theory, stuff isn't going to change because big corporations have too much vested interest in patents. The problem of patents dates back to radio, but we keep seeing it get worse and worse as time goes by. If you didn't have lawyers and thieves, patents could be a beutiful thing... Imagine open source on all intellectual property instead of restricting access... Bleh, lots of problems, but if you can solve em, everyone would love to hear from you. I tried a crack at it, but my solution resulted in a huge reliance on the courts.
God spoke to me
Well, in fact there is the comparatively rarely exercised latches doctrine. Roughly the idea is that if a patent holder encourages others to freely make use of the patent by making it appear as though it will not be enforced, waiting for them to expend lots of resources in doing so, and then blackmailing them with the patent, the patent can be invalidated with regards to the users. The courts do require that patents not be abused so as to function against their purpose.
Positively enticing use would probably qualify; I'm mostly curious about negatively silently permitting use.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
but then again, what does "natural" and "artificial" mean, apart from attesting value to only one of the statements?
"no wonder communism is bad if before everything was natural and then it was artificial."
suppose you left away those two words, that would take away much of the edge of your statement without actually changing it. then again, if we make our statements depend on their form instead of on their content, how can we claim ethical superiority to lawyers (which i for one do)?
check your speling
-1, Patent Troll
Would be perfect for all of the people who, upon seeing an article about dumb patents, announce that they are going to patent air (or have already done so).
But the threat of an injunction which stops production for a year or so whilst the lawyers fight it out in court is a gun to the head of these companies. So we have what amounts to a protection racket: pay up or be put out of business. At the moment the fees are tolerable, but this kind of thing has a way of growing exponentially as more people catch on to the idea of easy money. Once patent trolls start making a measurable dent in the bottom line you can bet that these companies are going to start complaining to their tame congresscritters.
(Not that I've got anything against large companies in themselves: some things just really do need a large organisation to make happen. But I've noticed that getting something done is just so much easier when you have the president of a large company backing you)
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
So your stage of events is:
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Maybe they could hire those out of work dot-commers?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Someone invents something, but doesn't have the money to produce it. There's no way they can protect their invention, so either they keep it secret, it's stolen by someone who can manufacture it. In either case they make no money on the invention. A tax break on $0 amounts to a $0 benefit. Guess that inventor will be too busy flipping burgers to invent something else.
The players
Company A
Company B
Mr Brain.
Under the new system Mr. Brain would patent his new widget the same as he would now. So Company A sees Mr Brain's (our hero scientist/engineer) widget. Company A decides to manufacture Mr. Brains widget and can do so without his permision under the new system. Mr. Brain is very frustrated and continues flipping burgers.
Company A lets out a manical laugh as it rakes in gobbs of money from Mr. Brains brainy hard work. Big Ego(tm) CEO guy of company A meets Big Ego(tm) guy from company B for lunch and brags about how smart he is and how much money he is making selling widgets.
Company B CEO decides to make some money selling widgets too. His team crunches some numbers to determine his gross profit and decides to start makeing widgets. Then he remembers, "why don't we check the USPO?" He finds the patent #234507458734957349574985798457 and discovers it's for widgets and belongs to Mr. Brain. He contacts Mr. Brain and offers him a cut of their tax break if he sells them the patent. Mr Brain likes the sound of getting paid to do research so he decides to agree. Lawyers are dispatched.
CEO B meets CEO A for lunch and brags about how much money he is going to save with his tax breaks because he bought the rights to and the associated tax breaks for patent #234507458734957349574985798457. His numbers look good, widgets will be cheaper and he now will be making gobs of money.
Fuming that Mr Brain and CEO B has outwitted him CEO A dipatches high speed lawyers(TM) and gets to Mr. Brain first. He offers him more money for the patent. Since no deal was offically made Mr. brain stops, thinks about it and says "I'm waiting for a better offer".
Mr Brain now hires an economic anylist who tells him to wait 4 years and then the widget sales will be close to peaking. Mr Brain holds out and works on other things. And in 4 years plays company A and company B off each other making 25 times what he would have originaly.
Whats different than the current system? Markets can't develop because government granted MONOPOLIES stiffle them. Inventors sell at a much lower cost and profit than they could if they waited for the market to develop. They can't do that now as we know from the .gif situation.
This is the way for the "market to sort it out" Currently the government is sorting it out and that just isn't working. When the government has taxes at stake it will be more picky with patents.
As for copyrights that is another discussion and my hands are tired :)
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
From what I read from the first article, it seems that the law makes it possible for somebody to just patent an idea or concept with no intention to make commercial use of it. I see this similar to "cyber-squatting" (taking a domain name with no intention to use it). This defeats the true spirit of granting patent protection and stiffles innovation and progress rather than promoting it.
Should this not be easy to fix ?. One option: the patent holder should have to establish, her intention to commercially exploit her idea (within a fixed time period after the grant of the patent), before being able to claim damages from somebody else.
Of-course, the US patent office is running amuck and needs to be reined in. This has been mentioned in some of the comments already made.
I suppose letting our society (read government) provide research money to our universities (read central research facility)and generating novel ideas is out of the question here in Pig-dom?
Nikola Tesla's research
Which is mostly bollocks, of course.
Oh yeah, right, like the radio, the AND gate, alternating current and the induction motor, flourescent lights, vacuum tubes, microwaves, hydroelectric generators, etc. He was granted over 40 patents by 1892 on these and many other devices. (My personal favorite invention is the earthquake machine.)
No practical use to those, now is there. Face it, the 21st century as we know it would not exist if it weren't for Tesla.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Its the same for copyrights, J.Hendrix is dead! Why are his cds so expensive?
At the risk of wandering a little from the topic, copyright lasts for (IIRC) 50 years from the death of the creator (although I have a funny feeling that it is longer now). There is a theory that this particular length of time was chosen largely due to the German government wanting Mein Kampf from coming out of copyright, and the US gov wanting to protect Micky Mouse. Not sure this theory stands up to real scrutiny though.Basically it was the value added system, but applied to IP.
All code needs to give out its source.
If I wanted to use your source code, I need to pay you for your product that source code was used in.
So basically if I wanted to write windows 98 Delux Jim Version, and windows 98 was selling for 200$, I'd have to sell for like 250 for a 50$ profit.
The weakness is being able to see the other guy's code, and scoundrels rengineering it and claiming they never used the code. And then you have lawsuits...
I did argue with the professor(God I wish I remembered his name, I'm a fuckwit when it comes to memory, I could look him up)... I argued the courts have lawsuits already... But he stated it wasn't a good enough fix to just switch the entire system around
A better solution may be to instantiate this system of profits to the GNU system of code.
Feel free to distribute and sell your code, but if someone below you is selling, you gotta compensate, or who knows.
God spoke to me
The guy is for patents and admits lefty leanings !! This prooves my point in my other post ! click on my name to find out !!
I'm not convinced that the "croak and poke" strategy really represents a solution in this case.
Unless, that is, you could expedite the croaking somehow... Perhaps you could patent that process :^)
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Sure, Intel might lose a bit of money each year from settlements with holders of dubious patents--but don't think for a second they're in the red in the patents war. I didn't find any figures about how much Intel pulls in each year from just enforcing their own patents (are we sure none of those are spurious?). IBM pulls in $1 billion just from this. I doubt Intel is far behind. As far as I'm concerned, Intel's patent trolls are nowhere close to balancing out Intel's patent-karma. (Remember the 90's?)
It sounds to me like patent money just circulates among the big patent-holding companies, except some of it leaks out to the patent prospectors. Yes, so they are profiting unjustly, and because I have Communist leanings, I don't like it. But for the rest of you, how's this morally different from getting rich off the stock market? Their offense consists of buying a piece of paper, sitting on it, and raking in dough. At least it sounds like they did some research.
Well, if this is all that was to it, I wouldn't be very moved. But then I read that the lawyers who prosecute these cases sometimes ask for 45% of the claim. Now, if you've got an ethos according to which that's not bad, I don't want to hear about it. I know I'd rather the companies keep that 45% sell me gear for less.
Ignoring the issue of Ethics and making pacts with the Devil etc, I believe (especially with the current IT downturn) that I'm in the wrong business! :-)
Some of these Lawyers made $200,000 just by filing a comlaint! And the other guys are trying to sue intel for $7Bn ++!!!
And all this is a legal way to make money!!!
On the one hand I bust a gut working 65hrs+ a week or I sell my soul to the devil and sit on my ass writing ppl nasty letters for a couple of hours a week for exponential sums of money!
Not much competition there...
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
I'm sorry, those genes have been around too long. I don't think they invented them ;)
Help find a cure for cancer!
and patents will have to be abandoned because they create an insurmountable obstacle for doing any sort of business, big or small.
Go, patent trolls, go!
As with all legal areas involving technology, if we as technology professionals do not make our voices heard, as the group most immediately and directly impacted by actions like this, then we have no one but ourselves to blame.
As for the sections of the article dealing with "abuses" by the infamous Jerome Lemelson (I'll let you search yourself if you are not familiar with him and his patent portfolio) and his "submarine patents," the particular aspect of patent law that allowed him to file applications, let them lie dormant for years while industries sprung up, then have new patents issue covering already established practices, the article is merely proagating more FUD. The law has changed and it is no longer possible to do this. In fact, the rule now is that applications are now published 18 months after filing - even before issuance.
Finally, ask yourself: If you worked hard and invented something, wouldn't you want to benefit from it instead of having someone with more resources steal it and sweep you under the rug? Patents provide that benefit. A good patent lawyer is the inventor's best friend because he will make sure the inventor is protected to the maximum extent permitted. And despite popular opinion, the PTO statistics say that fewer than 3% of all patents issued make money for the inventor, so getting a patent is not an instant win in the lottery.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
If she has pants then she's not naked.
Of course, you could mean that the pants are merely adjacent to her, or indeed not in her possession or proximity at all, but then I hardly see the point.
If you already have a Naked Natalie Portman (Pat. Pend.) then why do you need to pour hot grits down some pants at all ?
There are easier ways to dispose of the clothing, and frankly, the dissociation of the pants from the owner probably means it would be just as effective to pour them down your own !
*cough-Martin Bormann-cough*
See if anyone catches that out-of-print reference.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
If I do get this correctly, if the enginer who made it dies, someone can come along and buy the patent off ? Supose you invented ISDN, these guys come, buy it off from you for 10 000 bucks, wait until all companies use it and sue for billions in damages? It hinted somewhere that it was intel engineers who put out the ammo for Techsearch's suit. In that case its partly intels fault (if they pay them like shit and treat them bad). I'm not sure Techsearch are the good guys either, how much of the billions will go to those who really deserve it, plus did the guys who "stole their work" actually made major contributions? Maybee it's the "janitor" who stole the enginer's plans? Its no news that people get away with produceing stricly nothing. Unless you make Patent void when the inventor dies, it'll keep on happening. Its the same for copyrights, J.Hendrix is dead! Why are his cds so expensive?
Unfortunately, this doesn't imply that he can't sue you for infringing. Merely that if you buy a sufficiently good lawyer you should be able to defend yourself. A then there's the filing fees, the transcript fees, the...
This is a battle that only the wealthy have any chance in, even when to an outsider it would appear an open an shut case. If you aren't a patent attorney, you don't even have the right to an opinion. (That trims down the list of mathematicians substantially.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Does this mean that when an Ian Banks -style post-scarcity society becomes possible, we can all leave capitalism and communism behind?
I only ask because it was possible a century ago, but the US Government in collusion with power and oil companies acted to suppress Nikola Tesla's reasearch....
Besides patent the technology, we can also patent the business process and concept. One of my friend has filed several patents which idea come from sci fictions.
Now he's waiting for one of these patents earn him a fortune so that he can retire to an isolated tropical island for the rest of his life.
Well when apple created the sound "sosueme" it was because of the Apple brand of audio equipment.
The deal was something along the line of; we are a computer maker so we can have the same name as you because we dont do audio. Then apple decided to make audio a part of the computer and they created the alert sound "sosueme".
I had a point to this story and then I remembered that the closest thing to me has just pushed me away. Now I have no reason to talk about anything. Good bye....
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Microsoft does not charge you for their browser.
Yes it does, to the tune of USD $320. (I'm ignoring Windows ME pricing, as its reliability is subpar.) If you have FreeBSD, Solaris x86, Linux, or any other non-Windows operating system, you have to buy Windows before being able to use IE, as IE is under a "supplemental EULA" that gives no rights to those who do not have a valid Windows license.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Another advanatge of patents is that, in a way, they are actually good for science. Think about it. If the law did not protect companies' or individuals' inventions they would be forced (in order to save their investment) to keep new knowledge secret. Thus, we'd all miss out.
One condition of patents is that patented information must be made public. This ensures that scientists/engineers have free access to new knowledge. Thus, they are able to use that knowledge in developing further new tech. Sure, they cant exploit it commercially, but who cares, they can use it for further research. The patent holder does not own the idea, just its commercial exploitation.
That's one of the better ones I've heard in a while. I mean, we've got these attorneys who go on fishing expiditions for prior art, and they're patent trolls, right? So, what do you call the dude who insists upon doing his jumping jacks in the middle of the park? A lawn shark!!! Get it?! Oh, god, I slay myself. And anyone who's ever walked near a server room knows about bridge trolls :) What about the people who post /. messages consisting entirely of epithets? PudTrolls!
OK, I'd better stop now. The embarassment quotient is becoming too much to bear. This article is actually about a topic so utterly serious (Once upon a time, the patent system was a noble and good thing, but now it is in dire danger of running amok) that the only way to deal with it is to laugh. Make stupid jokes. And fight the good fight. Or else, who knows? Some company might just make you pay licensing fees for the genome your parents gave you one starry night...
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Start from a plausible moral point:
In one case : Some people spend their lives working for other people, one the sole fact that the latter own the means of production
In the other case: Using (whatever 'using' means) ideas,art, whatever that someone else has made (whatever 'made' means) amounts to taking advantage of that person's work without due compensation
Second step : governments steps in, and tries to devise from scratch a totally arbitrary legal system, consisting in restrictions to freedom, in order to change the things are naturally:
In the case of communism, change the natural scarcity of means of production into an artificial abundance.
In the case of IP, change the natural abundance of an idea into an artificial scarcity.
Third steps, when the shortcommings of the laws become obvious, the government reacts by saying that it will be OK when the next generation has been indoctrinated at school (see recent /. news about the UK), and tightens the restrictions to freedom.
this search at the USPTO, and found:
Searching 1996-2001...
Results of Search in 1996-2001 db for:
AN/"intel corporation": 3598 patents.
Hits 1 through 50 out of 3598
and wondered how I would find the time to burn both ends of that candle.
yeah, you'll be hearing from my lawyer
i patented the phrase "patent troll"(patent pending)
aargh, its late.. bed.
sig?
Poor Intel! my heart bleeds! Something must be done to protect our beloved Intel from these trolls!!!
Can't we charge them under the DMCA or something?
Wouldn't that be a Trademark Troll?
How did a system that was supposed to encourage innovation turn into a moneymaking machine for bottom-feeders? I can not imagine any way that repealing patent law and disbanding patents would be any worse than the situation we have now. It appears unsalvagable -- can't we just hit the reset button and start from scratch?
It does seem to be that way, but isn't there some sort of ruling about "prior art" or some such? In other words, if it can be shown that the patent is on something already in use, it can't be made to stick. (I'm not sure about the specifics though.) I've always wondered about how this applies to people who patent the Light Blue Fruit Tree sap or somesuch, claiming that what they are actually patenting is the use as a medicine, while some Amazonian tribe has been using it in the same way for centuries. Grr...
This is a horrible idea. So much for the little guy being able to make money on inventions. This would destroy the garage inventor. Right now if someone invents something on their own, and can't raise the initial capital to produce the product themselves, they can license the patent to other people who can use it. Without a patent they have to try and raise the money to do this themselves, and their invention itself may be the only thing they have that is valuable enough to use as credit. Besides, what god is a tax credit if you ren't making any money. If other companies aren't paying any development costs, then in many cases they will still be able to undersell you. Technology companies are also a very large part of the US economy. If you give them tax credits on all their inventions, then where do the taxes that run our government come from? If you think the government is just going to spend less, then you're delusional. If you give me the "companies don't pay taxes anyway argument", then what's the purpose of a tax credit in the first place. I don't think this idea was thought through very well.
More of the patents that never should have been issued are issued to companies that in some cases attempt to patent every iteration of some piece of garbage their research department came up with.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Until a "geek" comes up with a new and great idea, you all will continue to think that patents are a bad idea. Here's why patents are actually GOOD for the economy, granted there needs to be some changes (specifically to that of software-based copyrights)...
/. or have ever heard anyone say "Qualcomm is a big meanie." But the fact is, if Qualcomm could not patent the R&D that they do, they could NOT make money and would not be in business. Some may say that it wouldn't make a difference if Qualcomm went away, well, Qualcomm DID develope the *FIRST* really NICE Windows-based E-mail program .... then came outlook. Some may say Eudora is STILL better than Outlook (although, I somewhat disagree). The other thing is, the reason Qualcomm started manufacturing cell phones was to prove their technology was superior! Once they did prove this, they were able to sell licensing on their patents to other companies and then sell off their manufacturing to Ericson (at really no profit to them; their profit is in the patent licensing). And some companies STILL DO NOT license Qualcomm's cell phone technology, instead they did some R&D of their own and developed a similar (and maybe better) alternative which they probably have also patented. Which means, companies like Qualcomm will do more R&D for something better again.
A patent allows an individual or company to make money off the R&D for their products. If a company can't make money off of their original R&D, then why would they bother doing R&D? The perfect example of a company that's primary focus is R&D is Qualcomm. They aren't interested in making products, heck you may be able to name 2 things they actually do make (Eudora and Cell Phones), but they've sold their Cell Phone division to Ericson(sp?). However, if you have ever walked into the main building of the Qualcomm campus in San Diego, CA they have a wall about 20' high and approx. 100' long of just plaques (8x11") of the patents they own. Qualcomm then licenses their technology (the use of their patents) to other companies, and this is where Qualcomm makes their money.
I've never ONCE seen a gripe about Qualcomm's "crappy business practices" on
Patents allow someone to make money from the R&D they do. Patents also force other companies or people to develope new and better ways of "doing something" other than "just copying the other guy's stuff". This means there are LEAPS in innovation, not just a slow crawl.
You better not be doing any encryption technology or else you'll be in violation of the DMCA by doing that reverse engineering.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That is because the people in power doesnt have the knowledge to understand the enormous misstake their making. Patenting Genes is kind of like patenting a dogs bark. "Sir I just heard your dog bark, that will .. be .. 11,50 Sir."
Unlike ideas (and code) genes has been around since the dawn of life the problem is that they can be altered to do or stop doing something, Ex producing Insulin.
If you alter a piece of genetic code, you should have the right to patent that "change" but patenting a piece of genetic code that has been around since mankind ?
There is a thin line here, what if someone is born with a mutation/mutation occurs in laboratory, in otherwords a natural change has occured should that cancel a patent?
Patents on life is something that should NOT EVER be allowed, but sadly it seems to be the only way to keep the cash flowing.
I dont think we even have the knowledge to manipulate with living things yet patent them.
Look around politicians today spend more and more of their time trying to be re-elected.
Politician as a fulltime proffesion should be banned, then we should have a true democracy.
Helping the industry earn money = bigger chance to win next election.
Helping making the planet a better place and piss off big corporations = No money, no votes.
Money is good, but remeber it only exists in our heads, the events that realy changes our lifes and matters a great lot to us can seldom be bought for little pieces of green paper. /Henrik
At first this sounds OK, especially if you look at the 'garage inventors', who spend a lot of free time to create something new.
BUT... as far as I understood, most inventions today are done in research labs of companies or universities, because it requires huge investments. Too much for any private person, but feasible for (some) companies.
Now just imagine how eager those companies will be to do research (or let their employees do research paid by them), if their employees keep running away with new patents, leaving the company behind with the bills (and no patent).
I'm afraid companies will have to be able to hold patents (even though I like the 'garage inventor' principle a lot more), because that's the only way to ensure that the more expensive research will continue.
Companies would even brag about holding a patent in their advertising.
But today, when I hear about someone getting a patent, I'm inclined to think "On what? Fire, the wheel, or did you go all out and invent an incandescent light bulb? By the way, where did you say you got your MBA again?"
Do patents have any prestige left?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
that was sarcasm. It's worth slightly more than 1% of that now.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
wait a minute, you say I cannot patent the right to have no rights?
I venture that most of the "patent issues" that are discussed here are really execution problems.
Patents are granted without real study of the subject or patent infringement claims that are ludicrous. Patent law itself, except for the long and static "time to live" is not seriously flawed IMO.
This guy is a lawyer working for TechSearch and is going after intel for $2 billion to $7 billion in damages. After reading the article it's disgusting how the people patent office can justify some of these patents. I never thought the day would come when I actually would pity Intel. Thanks to Niro, that day has come.
Oh Boy! /me rushes off to patent "a money-minting machine"
wonder if I can patent the concept of making money via fraudulent / nuisance patents...
Rambus may have prior art though, phooey..
The earth is 98% full, please delete anyone you can!
Your suggestion about Time To Live just gave me a silly idea...
:-)
Imagine if the Patent system was operated like that of the DNS system. $70 to register a patent for two years; first come first served! Time to live on the Patent servers might be set at 24 hours, so your patent might temporarily expire if your local patent server crashed...
GreatPatents.com - the Internet's Number 1 patent marketplace - could sell you the leading patents at discount prices!
OK, I'll do some work now!
http://www.themeparks.ie
I actually don't think that he is a troll.
He has a valid point. The idea of patents is to protect ideas that do help out corporations who want to profit off their own research and development. What else is stopping a corporation from just copying someone else's idea? If I am a motorcycle company and i develop a belt drive that makes my motorcycles run smoother and more reliable, why wouldn't another corporation buy one of my motorcycles, take it apart and copy the mechanism that makes my motorcycle better? I have no recourse in a world without patents.
You are right though, that there are abuses going on, but that doesn't mean the idea of patents are bad. It just means that the idea is implemented badly. For example - 20 years is too long in a time when innovation occurs at the rate it does today.
Secondly, I personally think there should be a law, that if you want to file a complaint about a patent violation it has to be done within some time of the initial violation. It is not right for a corporation to sit on a patent and let everyone use it openly and then when it becomes huge to enforce its patent - like what Rambus and some other firms have done.
The breast cancer gene issue I know nothing about, so I won't touch that. But I would think that falls under the abuses category. Since how can you patent something that was created in nature?
JK
It's amazing what the thought of money for nothing does to people.
The classic one was Apple being sued by the original makers of OS9 when they released Mac OS 9.0. I ask you...
http://www.themeparks.ie
It's just before 9:00am where I am. Not everyone in this world lives on the East Coast of the USA :)
http://www.themeparks.ie
...compared to your average /. troll.
;)
I've never wanted to kill someone over a spork until now...
All right, we've established that the patent system is not bad in and of itself (it encourages manufacturing investment in a situation where information is temporarily vulnerable) but simply that there are people who abuse it, like any other system.
I wonder what the judges would think if many of these cases went to court? Surely the fact that the companies suing have never involved themselves in the manufacture or design of any product would weigh against them. Certainly, their track record would show that these people aren't inventors trying to win back the right to produce the fruits of their labors, but pirates who board a company and wave swords around until someone brings up the doubloons from the hold. Their case rests not on the strength of their position, but on the money it will take to pay someone to swim the legal moat to push it over.
A clever bit of roguery, my congratulations. After all, everything worthwhile in the world was built through backstabbing and piracy.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
First and foremost, being awarded a PATENT means very little per se. This is nothing new; it has been this way for at least 100 years. The patent systems main function is largely to be a repository of CLAIMS. Merely making CLAIMS does not mean that it is UNIQUE, WORTHWHILE, or even INNOVATIVE. Contrary to popular opinion, the patent office is not supposed to be the final arbitrator of a patent. Their main role is to keep the database to a reasonably manageable size and scope, to this end, they do some filtration, but only nominally so. It is enough to keep out most of the population's complete and utter flatulence out, but not much more.
All that has really changed is society. PEOPLE today are far more inclined to see the value of mere IDEAS, whereas decades before, PHYSICAL GOODS and SERVICES were more respected. This increasing popularity has lead to MORE patents, unsuprisingly. As a result of this surge of patents, more have been accepted. In the process, the patent office has gotten a little overwhelmed, and has had to step back their review process to some extent; however, when it comes to real industry and substantial companies, not much has changed. Companies and capable innovators still file and recieve sufficient protection. When their patents are challenged, it is the COURTS that play that final and important role, never the patent office.
While it is true that the patent office could improve some things, I think slashdot needs to take a step back and really understand the history and the way the system really works before they jump to conclusions. For instance, I often hear that patents need much more scrutiny (completely ignoring for a minute all the fools that say IP should not exist). But would they really want this? First and foremost, in order to cope with even the legitimate flow of patents, it would require orders of magnitudes more funding. Society would either have to subsidize this or filing fees would have to be dramatically increased--neither are really desirable. Second, this would put a tremendous amount of power into the hands of a few patent office employees (or the "panel" of academics that decides). Patents are NECESSARILY complex animals and there is really no fair and equitable way around some kind of litigation process, whereby both, contesting, parties can make themselves heard--to bring forth their best evidence, experts, and such. In both cases, in order to make the system equitable and profitable, we would still end up with a terribly complex and expensive system, much like the system we have today. Furthermore, if you force this level of review up front, you would lose many of the advantages of our existing system. Our current system allows the amount of resources to scale with the worth and the value of the patent to a large degree.
...oh well this is too involved to lay it all out right now. Just THINK, people.
There seems to be some confusion here. The companies that specialise in patent enforcement generally are there to enforce legitimate patents. There is nothing wrong in making intel pay for the use of some tech that makes them billions. Even if the motives of the lawyers involved are questionable, they do serve a useful purpose. What I object to is some nonsense or obvious patents being filed explicitly to make cash from established technology. That is certainly a bad thing but companies that help me to make money from my All New WonderTech(tm) are certainly not.Think about it, if you come up with some great idea you could either:
- Start a company to make your great technology at great risk but probably a greater return.
- Patent the idea and allow others to take the risk for you (And get a fair amount of return themselves.) For a fee.
These lawyers are there to prevent the other situation:
- A company takes the risk of building your product and makes a stonking pile of money. You get nothing. Think of it as allowing the decoupling of R&D and production
----
Mf
Intellectual property can be the most valuable asset of a high-tech company. Many times, a company's product(s) are based on technology that they have patented. If a competitor uses that patented technology to market a competing product, that can affect the revenue stream of the company holding the patent.
Many companies (including the one I work for) routinely purchase competitors products and take them into product evaluation/reverse engineering labs to see what makes them tick and also to see if they are using technology patented by the company doing the evaluation.
Typically, if a patent violation is found, a letter is sent to the company requesting a meeting, where they try to hammer out a licensing agreement. If that doesn't work, it may end up in court.
Several of my family members are lawyers, and heavily involved in patent law, specifically software patents. We recently had a discussion about the current state of IP law, and we all agreed; it's screwed up. But their hands are tied. Developers MUST protect their intellectual property or risk another party patenting the idea and forcing them out of the market.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
In Europe;, we still don't know have this kind of brevet,and I hope the US firms will not convince our politic men, like Lionel Jospin, Gerhard Schroder, Benito Mussolini II (Silvio Berlusconi). Indeed, the european parliement will decide about this very soon. One french politician told :"we'll decide for the brevet like all the industrialize country (ie Japan+ USA)".
It means, for a great Europe, better the US stay over the ocean.
US GO HOME
We need not your pepsi, coca, mac donald, NBA, wankers, sillicon bubs, $$$, bill gates.
We need our Allan Cox (UK), Linus Torvaldt (Finland), Mozart (Austria), De vinci (Italy), Moliere (France), Antonio Banderas (Spain).
Linux is against the US? I'm very happy of that.
I actually work in the patent licensing division of my company. And to tell you the truth, most companies (except for a few of the super big ones) do NOT wish to go to court, even the ones trying to patent enforce. It is too costly for both sides, and it turns it into a lose-lose situation. Of the big companies that I have seen, only TI is not scared to litigate (but then again, they do spend 250 million a year on lawyer fees alone). Patent enforcement may be going downhill, but I still think it's respectable. IBM, as an example, is quite fair (they do use all their patents), and they charge relatively little. If it weren't for patent enforcement, many companies would lose their products and might end up having to PAY for their own inventions. Look at what everyone is doing off of Stuart Parkin's MTJ patents, for example. It's as if they treated Parkin like he didn't exist.
Check out James Bessen's paper "Sequential Innovation, Patents and Imitation" who makes an economic arguement about why patents are harmful in innovative industries.
I'd rather have Angelina Jolie in the public domain, dude!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/20754.html or if you all consider this post trolling for that matter....
This is pure briliance. Seriously, tax amnisty or at least seriously deep cuts for related profits for 18 years!!!
Someone invents something, but doesn't have the money to produce it. There's no way they can protect their invention, so either they keep it secret, it's stolen by someone who can manufacture it. In either case they make no money on the invention. A tax break on $0 amounts to a $0 benefit. Guess that inventor will be too busy flipping burgers to invent something else.
This could fix the copyright system too.
A songwriter writes a song. That song is performed by some great artists. Recording companies record and sell the music. Media outlets (MTV and radio stations) play the music.
The songwriter gets nothing. Tax break on $0 is still nothing.
The artist/performer gets some money from performing, however if they aren't interested in touring all over the place, or aren't good performers as well as musicians, then they get very little. Tax break on very little, doesn't amount to much. Guess they'll be flipping burgers too, which limits their ability to tour. Maybe McDonalds can work something out where they can work in the closest store to where their concert is.
Recording companies get to sell the media on which they distribute the songs. Of course anyone could make their own media, and sell it as well. Professionally producing music can be very expensive. It's hard to believe that they could offset these costs by tax breaks on their sales of media. Especially when there are no significant media costs when it's distributed over the internet.
Media outlets would have to pay significantly less for their programming. Of course they would probably have to directly contract with artists in order to get quality programming, and as soon as they broadcast it, anyone else could just rebroadcast it, so it's hard to think that they can raise the money to pay for quality programming by advertising. After all why not just advertise with one of the rebroadcasters.
One of the purposes of IP laws is to make it possible for creative people to profit from their creations. A tax break only provides a benefit, if you're already making money from the creation, but doesn't provide a way to make that money.
You think lawyers are going to design the site themselves? Or even that they'll use it if it's not Lexis or WestLaw?
"There must be some mistake, officer, I was only paying her a royalty."
What utter horseshit. Companies like Sun have whole divisions who do nothing but this. They scour the world looking for possible patent violations and then hold up the other party at legal gunpoint. My company does the same - it's a $400 million a year business to us. Listen to them whine they're just being pussies. Hey I think I'll send some lawyers over to them now.
genome fingerprint = 07 13 23 17 42 de ad be ef
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------
I think most of us agree that the patent system needs to be either scuttled or at least massively reformed. However, until that time, I do have an idea on how to fight these 'patent trolls' by using prior art to protect good ideas (even if obvious). IANAL, but maybe someone can suggest if this would be legally tenable..
/. style where people can post neat ideas they've had. Others can then comment on them, improve upon them, etc. The original poster can then write a slightly more formal description of the idea, taking into account the comments. (but not written in confusing patent legalese.. just plain understandable english) Then if someone tries to get a stupid patent, the site can be used as example of prior art. As a side benefit, it would be a fun place for geeks to share innovative ideas and perhaps even for businesses to get ideas on how to improve their products. Sorta like Open Source, but for ideas. (not that it should be necessary..)
Set up a web site in
The CMU scheme sounds like the work of someone who has spent too much time reading Aynn Rand and too litte time noticing that most markets are rigged.
You point about rigged markets, and the possibility of tremendous abuse and defrauding of the government are very valid (and yes, Ayn Rand's view of economics and the human condition was profoundly two dimensional and myopic, but I digress). Clearly if one is bidding on one's own patent in order to drive up the government's 120% then one is engaging in fraud. People have become Prime Bitch in Cellblock A for less than that.
Nevertheless I think the notion deserves some consideration. I would couple it with my own idea (a 100% tax credit for N years to the patent holder, but no, I repeat, no monopoly privelege whatsoever), and modify the notion as follows:
1) Patents confer a 100% tax free profits on the invention if sold alone as a whole, or a pro-rated portion if incorporated into some other product, for a period of time N years. No monopoly privelege, no exclusionary rights beyond the tax credit.
2) A free market will determine the patent's sale price, when the patent holder is ready to sell, he or she may sell at whatever price the market will bear. This may be early or late in the product's cycle, and the patent holder my calculate the pricepoint wisely, or not, as anyone might, selling anything, in a free market economy.
3) The government may purchase the patent at twice the market value (selling price) if it wishes, thereby saving the tax credit burden and enriching the patent holder even further. This may only be done on the First Sale of the patent, all further transactions are at market value and the government may outbid the market as any other company might. The only reason for this clause is to discourage the government from buying up all patents initially (thereby perhaps depressing or inflating the market and certainly influencing it one way or the other in an untoward way) and to reward the initial inventor even more greatly should the government buy up the patent. The only reason the government might buy a patent is to (obviously) avoid the loss in tax revinue it represents. Once again, I reiterate, the patent confers no other privelege beyond the tax savings.
Details can be argued, hammered out, and some reasonable solution reached. What is unacceptable, and must stop, is the issuing of government sponsored monopolies remeniscent of the Royal Monopolies granted inside friends of the King under the British Monarchy with the economic damage, scientific and technological stifling that ensues. Replacing it with a tax-free burdon, then letting free markets reign, appears to be very reasonable, especially if the free market is "rigged" slightly to favor and more generously reward the initial patent holder.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The discussion seem's to be are you for or against patents. Insted of debating the actual merit of the patent. The articles that started this pointed out many firms sue and expect the companies to settle because it is cheaper than going to court. That is extortion. And much different than creating something new and having somebody else make it with out your permission.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
copyright lasts for (IIRC) 50 years from the death of the creator (although I have a funny feeling that it is longer now)
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[?], passed under the same conditions as DMCA (double cover of Kosovo and Lewinsky, lots of corporate bribes, unaccountable voice vote), extended copyright to life + 71 for freelance works written after 1978 and 96 years for all other works. It pretty much amounts to welfare for GGM[?] companies.
US gov wanting to protect Micky Mouse
I'm not sure that's even possible anymore, as Mickey Mouse has fallen into PD because Disney screwed up the copyright notice on the first couple films with Mickey Mouse.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Law.com has some of the shittiest HTML I have ever seen anywhere on the web. Standards? They have no clue.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Until a "geek" comes up with a new and great idea
... unless someone else has been given a government sponsored monopoly on something similar, in which case they are forbidden from doing so for the next twenty years. Indeed, it is rather obvious that patents have the opposite effect ... the forbid anyone from making money on the R&D they have done, unless they happen to be the one who filed with the USPTO first, or (more often) have the most money to hire IP lawyers to defend their own patent or overturn someone elses.
... something I think most women at risk of said disease would not find in the least amusing.
You are clearly a troll (how such a rediculous post got moderated up to +4 is beyond me, but there have been enough tirades about the decline of slashdot this week, so I'll leave it at that), but such misinformation must be responded to nevertheless.
As for geeks comming up with innovative ideas, a quick, short, (and probably patented, but not by their inventors!) list:
The Internet
Usenet NEWS
The World Wide Web
Networked Computer Games
Non-Linear Video Editing
CGI Animation (seen any movies lately?)
Mutli-tasking computer operating systems
Windowing systems (used X or Windoze lately? Both came from Xerox via Apple, invented by geeks, then coopted later by industry, something a patent might well have prevented)
... and the list goes on
Patents allow someone to make money from the R&D they do. Patents also force other companies or people to develope new and better ways of "doing something" other than "just copying the other guy's stuff". This means there are LEAPS in innovation, not just a slow crawl.
What an absolute crock of shit.
It is unnecessary to have a 20-year government sponsored monopoly in order to make money from one's idea. Monopolies are antithetical to the primary means by which free markets operate, namely competition. Furthermore, no idea more advanced than the stone hammer (read: pounding something with a rock) stands alone. Every idea incorporates aspects of earlier ideas, every invention stands on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before. By locking up every new or innovative idea (much less every trivial variation of an old idea the way we do now) you slow down any advancements that might be based on that idea. Dramatically.
Most ideas, when patented, are being developed by numerous, independent people. Why? Because generally, when an idea's "time has come" (ie. it become feasable or technically possible for the first time, usually because the necessary groundwork or supporting technologies become available for the first time) a number of creative people jump on it at roughly the same time. The vast majority of patent infringements aren't a result of people cribbing from the patent applications or even reverse engineering their competitors' products, they are a result of inadvertant infringement resulting from having developed the same or similar idea completely independently.
Whoever wins the footrace to the patent office is granted a monopoly, and everyone else who had developed, or "invented" the idea concurrently is suddenly left in the unenviable position of having their invention stolen out from under them, and being forbidden to exploit their work, or their idea, under penalty of law.
This is not conducive to encouraging invention or progress. Quite the contrary.
Patents do not "allow someone to make money from the R&D they do." This is allowed regardless, by a free market in which anyone can develop an idea, build it and market it
Another example is breat cancer, in which promising research has been scuttled because of existing patents on the genes which were discovered to have an impact, perhaps even be the cause, of the affliction. Scuttled research does not lead to LEAPS in innovation, unless, of course, you use the Microsoft definition of the word
You want to reward someone for winning the footrace to the USPTO? Fine. Give them a 20 year amnesty from federal taxes for income derived from their "invention." Do not give them a monopoly and lock up the very idea (and its derivatives) for the next twenty years! To do so is antithetical to the free market, slows technological development, and cripples the very open exchange of science that is ultimately the foundation of every invention, everywhere.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
These still seem like "discoveries", not "inventions." What exactly did they invent?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Assuming that, I've always thought it would be better if there were some way to get industry groups to "pre-claim" certain ideas as natural/near-obvious extensions of current knowledge.
The difficulty is:
- precisely because they're more obvious, such ideas are difficult to conceive of pre-claiming, e.g. "I discovered that people have noses!"
- creating an _objectively_ (near-)fair evaluation method which allows these pre-claimed ideas to have a "fuzzy" value between 0 and 1 which "phases out" the time they will get the patent.
The first point has obvious difficulties, but is somewhat mitigated by the fact that even the current patent system implicitly warns potential patent holders that their idea can always be rejected, particularly with heavy evidence something is obvious, or nearly so.The second point is the most insidious, since it involves changing the system -- in such a way that something like inventing "1-click" ordering, given the Web, gets "modded down" to something like a quasi-invention (on a continuous scale). We want people to go ahead and *discover* that breast cancer gene -- but the point is that every doctor knows the process to go about doing it.
Perhaps one good idea would be to have an announcement before a patent is issued (which I'm guessing they do) which says, "Hey all you people who have *almost* discovered the breast cancer gene. Give us your current data and we'll give you partial credit based on how close you are."
That's really the point I'm trying to home in on -- partial credit for both the patenter, and his unknown co-conspirators. With the actual patent-holder getting a large amount of the benefit. Kinda like having at least 51% of the outstanding shares of a company.
My company gets the Official Gazette, a summary of patents granted during the preceding week. At about three to a page, each volume is two to three inches thick - and that's just for one week. To give you some idea of what gets through, in the volume for April 17th 2001 my eye falls on number 6,217,074, which appears to be a patent on a ring binder with file tabs (don't take my word for it, look it up for yourself). Or what about number 6,216,363? It took the patent office 62 weeks to process this application so surely the description is worth a few lines space:
"1. A method of treating the diapered area of a child's skin to prevent diaper dermatitis, the method comprising:
"removing a diaper worn by the child;
"washing the diapered area of the child's skin;
"providing a portable drying apparatus that includes a housing having an air admitting inlet and an air discharging outlet, a rotary impeller mechanism disposed within the housing for producing and discharging a flow of air at or near ambient air temperature through the air outlet, and a handle mounted to the housing; and
"drying the diapered area of the child's skin by directing the flow of air at or near ambient temperature towards the diapered area."
In other words, this is a patent on drying a baby's ass using a hair dryer without a heating element. There's even a drawing of a $5.99 travel hair dryer with a folding handle, with all the parts labeled except the (conspicuously absent) heater. But it's not the idea that makes it patentable, it's the application.
I wonder if anyone ever thought of patenting a rotary impeller mechanism, etc, and directing the airflow towards a microprocessor package.
"Real programmers use $ cat > program.tgz"
Keep extending the application as long as you can. This allows you to Extend the life of your patent. You can have an application in for 20 years but the clock doesn't start ticking until it's awarded ... This is now no more
New U.S. patents now expire 20 years after filing (instead of 17 years after they're granted) to prevent just this type of abuse. Our lawmakers aren't completely clueless.
grandfathered
This is what bugs me about another GGM[?] issue: copyright term extension. The Walt Disney Company was able to grandfather its old works into the new 96-year copyright terms when there was no good reason to except for greed, as extending the term of an existing work's monopoly does nothing "To promote the progress of science and useful arts." However, some doubts have been cast as to whether Mickey Mouse's likeness is under copyright at all because of an oversight in the copyright notices for the first two Mickey Mouse films.
See what gets used and invented in the industry during that time. Amend your patent to include these technologies.
Outright fraud. A patent application includes an affidavit to the effect: "I/we invented everything described in the claims." This type of fraud can get the applicant thrown in prison for the life of the patent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Communism TRIES to make abundance out of scarcity, because in a communist view there is plenty for everyone(which may be true, but that never works out).
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Do you really think that most of the investors will sell their stock becuse of this? Their stock price would probably go up. After all, breast cancer treatment is a huge business, and if this company has patents in that area, they are likely to make a fortune from them. The holders of the patents will say that the researchers should license their patents. The researchers didn't get their equipment for free. Their workers don't work for free. They'll ask why they should get the results of their research for free.
Even before the patenting of genes (which I strongly oppose), this moral issue exhisted with the patenting of drugs. In order to research cures to disease, researchers need to use many drugs which they have to buy at extremely high prices from the companies that own the patents on them. This increases the costs of discovering cures to many diseases. This has been drug through the press many times, but those companies stock prices are far from hurting.
Don't think that any publicity is good publicity. Think "RAMBUS".
Rambus' stok price was soaring dispite the bad press. The thing that caused Rambus' stock to go down is when they were found to have committed fraud, and it became likely that they wouldn't be able to collect all the royalties they had claimed they were due.
From the Law.com FAQ:
Can I use Netscape Navigator with Law on the Web?
Don't worry, it's just some lawyers helping out their buddies who happen to own some intellectual property!
He got what?! Holy shit! Someone inform Microsoft right away - there's money to be made in this 'open source' thing!
There's no $$$ in 'team'...
www..--..net - for incisive, w
Ohhhh, Mr. Hosier, rumors can be soo inaccurate! They definitely should have realized that 3 jets and 2 planes is not the same as 5 jets! I mean, if you count the planes as a half jet each, then it only adds up to 4 jets. What an atrocious mistake!
As I understand patents were not originally devised to encourage invention but rather to make disclosure attractive. So if you disclosed how you invention worked and as such safeguarded the knowledge for the future, you were then rewarded with a monopoly. This is not to encourage invention but, to prevent the loss of techniques which was a problem in the past.
Politician (John Cleese): Gentlemen, our MP saw the PM this AM and the PM wants more LSD from the PIB by tomorrow AM or PM at the latest. I told the PM's PPS that AM was NBG so tomorrow PM it is for the PM. Give us a fag or I'll go spare. Now, the fiscal deficit with regard to the monetary balance, the current financial year excluding invisible exports, but adjusted of course for seasonal variations and the incremental statistics of the fiscal and revenue arrangements for the forthcoming annual budgetary period terminating in April.
First Official (Graham Chapman): I think he's talking about taxation.
Politician: Bravo, Madge. Well done. Taxation is indeed the very nub of my gist. Gentlemen, we have to find something new to tax.
Second Official (Eric Idle): I understood that.
Third Official (Terry Jones): If I might put my head on the chopping block so you can kick it around a bit, sir...
Politician: Yes?
Third Official: Well most things we do for pleasure nowadays are taxed, except one.
Politician: What do you mean?
Third Official: Well, er, smoking's been taxed, drinking's been taxed but not... thingy.
Politician: Good Lord, you're not suggesting we should tax... thingy?
First Official: Poo poo's?
Third Official: No.
First Official: Thank God for that. Excuse me for a moment. (leaves)
Third Official: No, no, no - thingy.
Second Official: Number ones?
Third Official: No, thingy.
Politician: Thingy!
Second Official: Ah, thingy. Well it'll certainly make chartered accountancy a much more interesting job.
The /. trolls just have big mouths -- it's not nearly so expensive to make them go away.
The problem is with the Patent Office. They are understaffed (due to constant budget cutting by Congress) and the people they do have are incompetent (like most government employees) and technologicly illiterate. As a result, people are able to obtain patents that never should have been issued.
The body of law is the aggregate weigh of the totality of human cupidity, stupidity, control-freak-ism and special-interests.
Its killing itself and burning us all on its funeral pyre.
The flaw is simple and singular, laws never expire, and the remedy obvious, laws need to have a built-in expiry date.
But the political system is filled with and controlled by lawyers so its never going to happen until the same thing happens to it that happens to all water kingdoms, a drought comes along and the kingdom gets wiped out.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Yoyodyne has a patent on the "Patent Troll" concept. Pay now!
hell, when i used to ride the short bus to school every day, i *dreamed* that one day i could be a supervisor at the patent office. and now i am, and now i eat french fries every day!
yaaaay french fries!
this is an inaccurate perception of the Federal Circuit.
the Federal Circuit was created to handle federal cases, in general. before the federal circuit, there were several types of federal courts, each with their own specific jurisdiction. the specialized court for patent appeals used to be the CCPA (Court of Customs and Patent Appeals). it wasn't good either. the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was responsible for State Street, it's true, probably the worst patent decision in the history of U.S. jurisprudence, but the CCPA came up with plenty of doozies too (and the Supreme Court set it up pretty nicely on more than a few occasions).
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
I will not argue about whether or not patents are a good or bad idea, personally, I don't have an opinion.
Patents, like you describe above, can promote progress by forcing people to do things better, and creating an incentive to do it in the first place.
However, it works both ways. Patents, in their current highly abused form, simply provide a means for companies (law firms, Rambus?) to extort money from others. Patents are far to general, granted way to easily, and are granted by peole who don't even understand what they are granting patents for. All this does is allow companies to make themselves rich by patenting broad ideas and forcing people to pay them.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If you look at the history of patent law you will find that it does a very, very poor job of "protecting the little guy." History is repleat with examples of inventors never seeing a dime on their patents because they couldn't afford the lawyers to enforce them against large companies, of others using various methods to "steal" their patents (Thomas Eddison was notorious for this, for example. See also the history of radio.), etc.
... possibly benefiting the smalltime inventor far more than the current system of handing out absolute monopolies, and without the terrible economic side effects.
A tax credit in place of a government sponsored monopoly would make the situation neither better, nor worse, for the "garage inventor" than it is now. If the "garage inventor" sells their patent to a large company, then that company becomes entitled to the tax break rather than the individual. If anything, there is more incentive to purchase the patent legitimately rather than ignore it or try to get it overturned
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Would we have to pay royalties in order to have sex? For making use of the genetic material?
Humorless sig goes here.
If the Patent Office made patents non-transferrable, and returned all patents to the original inventors, *all* of this would cease to be a problem.
Neither of these points is particularly valid, because they ignore the fact that the scarcity that IP protects is one of creation. It does so by insuring the creator has control over any and all production of the idea.
That is simply not true, or rather it is deceptively stated. Intellectual Property creates an artificial scarcity both of the creation and, in the case of patents (at least), in the creative process as well. Multiple peope often do come up with the same or very similar idea(s) independently, but only he or she who wins the footrace to the USPTO gets any rights, and everyone else is excluded for twenty years!
Creativity isn't scarce. What is scarce is the freedom to use it. As noted elsewhere, the vast majority of patent infringements are a result of people accidentally "rediscovering" a way to do something, not a result of plagerism or reverse engineering. Those who do creatively come up with a solution are then forbidden from using it because someone else was granted a government sponsored twenty-year monopoly on the idea.
To paraphrase, it seems as though people defending IP end up into a pattern of formulating very weak arguments whenever they talk about the need to artificially reward invention at the expense of everyone else.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
1) Working models were originally required. The USPTO stopped routinely requiring this late in the 19th century because they ran out of storage space for all the inventions. (I think the examiner _can_ still require a working model, but it's only invoked when they really don't believe it can work -- and obviously they're quite a bit too credulous.) We need to bring this requirement back, at least to some extent -- the patent office can't store physical models, but they should ask for them, take some photos of the thing running (if it does), then ship it back. And of course software patent applications (if allowed at all) should come with all source code and a working executable on CD-R; if they can store all the paper in an application, they can certainly store these. Without this requirement, every real inventor is hostage to the Lemelson technique: look at what people need, guess what will be invented to fill that need, file a vague, broad application, then sue the real inventor later.
2) Market it or lose it: If you don't build your invention or license it to someone who can, after 2 or 3 years it should become public domain. (I thought this was once the law.) You do not promote the "progress of science and the useful arts" by letting people just sit on a good idea for 20 years. (The same thing should apply to copyrights, and to items that are removed from the market for long periods. If Disney wants to keep it's copyright on Snow White, let them either keep the videotape in stores, get the movie into theaters every couple of years, or post the MPEG on the web with a "download for non-commercial purposes only" notice. Not hold the damn thing off the market for a generation.)
3) Tighten up the definition of "invention." Under the rules of 1960, one could not patent a mathematical algorithm (LZW compression, public key encryption), or a thing of nature (any naturally occurring gene).
As if completely obvious patents weren't enough, we now have patents on things that are mathematically impossible.
At least we don't have to worry about him suing anyone for infringement, since by definition, his patent is impossible to infringe, or for him to even use himself for that matter.
-Wintermute
Fraunhofer/Thompson: MP3 patent
Both of those were probably instances of silently permitting use for a while, so I guess it is legal.
Hopefully intel will win initiative on this one. Too bad their charisma is just so low. :) (You have defeated intel, you have received 5xp and a copper chip).
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
You want to reward someone for winning the footrace to the USPTO? Fine. Give them a 20 year amnesty from federal taxes for income derived from their "invention." Do not give them a monopoly and lock up the very idea (and its derivatives) for the next twenty years! To do so is antithetical to the free market, slows technological development, and cripples the very open exchange of science that is ultimately the foundation of every invention, everywhere.
This is pure briliance. Seriously, tax amnisty or at least seriously deep cuts for related profits for 18 years!!! This could fix the copyright system too.
The best part is the lawyers get to keep their jobs (proving proportions of profit, same IP ownership fights just a different prize.) so they won't fight it.
Monopolies are always bad, even govenment granted ones. When you introduce monopolies the markets ability to "sort it out" is stripped from it. That is what is going on now. The economy will not recover until IP law is fixed! Idea power must be redistributed.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath