FTC Investigates Submarine Patents

Schnake writes: "An article on USAToday talks about how the FTC is investigating Sun Microsystems, Unocal, and Rambus to determine whether they illegally kept patents secret while helping set industry standards! And a quote from the ZDNet article: "It noted that all three companies had filed patent infringement lawsuits against firms they say owed them royalties. But the litigation backfired when those firms countersued, charging them with concealing their patents, and complained to the FTC.""

Comments

Patents not secret

[Ed Avis]

The whole point of the patent system is openness. You only get a patent monopoly in exchange for full disclosure. So it should be easy (in principle) to find out what patents cover something you are working on. But in practice the sheer volume of patents out there is too large.

I think that a legally binding 'patent challenge' might be the answer. You should be able to send a letter to Rambus or whoever saying 'I am developing the following... please disclose whether you have any patents or patent applications which cover this area'. The company receiving the letter then has to disclose what they have patented. If they lie or keep quiet, they lose the right to sue you later on. Obviously you couldn't do this for internal R&D, but for standards bodies (where the process is open anyway) this could be a useful tool to reduce threats from submarine patents. The only question is whether it places an unreasonable burden on the patentholding company.

Re:Patents not secret

[pne]

The patent office would then be charged to award the patents with the most merit

Er, I'm sure you've seen examples of some pretty weird patents having been awarded, despite the fact that some people think the thing was obvious to an expert or covered by prior art *cough*One-Click*cough*. Obviously, patent offices are already out of their depth in evaluating the merits of a patent application. What makes you think they will be able to copy with this additional level of scrutiny and evaluation that you're asking for?

Re:Some others worth investigating perhaps ?

[troc]

That's fairly difficult as by steering things in certain directions you run the risk of revealing your ideas before they have been patented, thus increasing the prior art out there and reducing patentability.

Patents were designed to do two things. One was to foster innovation by FORCING disclosure of invention (or runing the risk of having secrets stolen) and thus adding to the sum of knowledge. The other was to protect the inventor so they could profit from their invention. This is why patenting is relatively cheap (here in europe the initial patent fees are substantially below the cost to the office of dealing with them) but the recurrent annual maintainence fees increase almost exponentially towars the last few years the patent can be valid - to dissuade the patentee from holding the patent too long, especially if it turns out to be a pointless patent they aren't making money out of.

Hohum

Troc

PS Yes I am apatent examiner ;)
PPS Here in europe you can't patent software or business methods.....

How can a patent be secret?

[dpbsmith]

How is it possible to keep a patent "secret?" Aren't all patents part of the public record?