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Scientific American On Bad Patents
dltallan writes: "Scientific American has a short article in which Gregory Aharonian presents his picks for the four worst patents granted. I like the patent for training with manuals (1998)." The Bustpatents site is worth spending some eye-rubbing time on.
You know, the patent of Gene Profiling or Effectiveness of an Ad is a ubiquitous as ignoring two little kids attaching Cambpell soup cans with a string as prior art to the telephone. I understand that there are rules and regulations that are followed to grant/deny patents, but these two seem like I can patent the art of breathing and collect royalties all over the world...
- Documented Research and Development
- Resource Usage on R&D documented
- Professional Acceptance of Patent (Maybe a part of the USPO acts as a mentor program(?)
- Possible Prior Art and Explanations why it is not (I really like this one)
- Penalties for Obvious Patents
- Business Models and complex sociological functions unpatentable
- Physical patents require working model
- Web related patents with comparable real-life applications unpatentable (Amazon One-click)
And the list goes on and on"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
...so that all patent applications would be automatically acknowledged, and then the dubious ones could be challenged by any interested party? The patent office would not have to employ enough specialists to sort out the validity of every silly application, they would only have to have enough knowledge to be able to verify the claims of people who dispute the alleged patent.
Comic-not
Existence usually comes as a surprise (Idem)
While this article is really funny to read, it just shows the problems that are now going on at the PTO. There are two main problems - the first being what this article points out - that the agents are not doing enough research to make good judgement. It makes you wonder how much of a background in these particular fields the patent agents have?
The other problem is that the PTO has gotten to the point where people are actually rewarded for issuing as many patents as possible. This is a system that really has to be reviewed. It has gotten the PTO to the point where they basically pass EVERYTHING and then let the courts throw out the frivilous stuff. What a waste of time, and even more money since court costs can be astronomical.
This doesn't even raise the problem of issues like people patenting something in HOPES that it becomes an industry standard and only when it is well entrenched - THEN do they say - I HAVE THE PATENT!!! Um, isn't the whole idea that anyone can come up with idea prove that the need for the patent is dumb?
While the PTO was origionally started as a great idea, over the past two decades things have just gotten out of control. Software and Business Methods are something that are just so unreasonable to patent that the PTO needs to either go back and decide:
1- this is something that will have to be SERIOUSLY researched before a patent is issued, OR
2- These are just things that CAN'T be patented
Good luck to them, because either way, they have a big problem facing them.
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Personally, I find that to be rather a bad idea. I think up interesting things all the time, and I think I should be able to patent them, even if I haven't got the capital to build a working model or anything like that.
Maybe the burden of proof could be higher or something for a corporation rather then an individual. But I don't really see a reason for not allowing people to patent something if it wasn't difficult to come up with, I mean sometimes the most useful things are 'obvious' in retrospect and their genesis consisted mostly of a flash of insight and a quick jotting down. I read a report on a guy who made most of his money coming up with new kinds of condiments containers. Those things do make your life better, and might not even ever be developed if the person who thought them up didn't think they could make money off of it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
IMHO one of the core issue with those IP problems is the notion that everything must be owned by someone. I suppose it makes kind of sense, if everything is owned, then money will be made out of everything.
When there will be a patent on the process of "a mother singing to help her children sleep", we will know for sure that we are slaves.
From the article: "Three-Dimensional Presentation of Multiple Data Sets in Unitary Format with Pie Charts"
Gah, and you thought Marketing was the only group that made up complex phrases to describe something so obvious.
It appears to be commonplace for patent applicants to use overcomplicated language and jargon in an attempt to convince patent examiners that something is original.
The best way to stop this would be to have a rule that if an application can't be understood then at least that application is void, possibly any future application for something similar is also voided.
Another important thing is that the "obvious", to people skilled in the relevent area, may well not show up simply because people don't put obvious things in journal papera. Because doing so would be redundant.
One can never expect the applicant to do adequate research on prior art: it's in his best interested that there is no prior art found.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
In the software/internet field, I think that the main problem is not that prior art is not found -- in a new field it may not exist -- but that the obviousness criterion is not tested.
IANAL, but AIUI, in order to be patentable, an invention must be both novel and non-obvious. But read this interview in which the Director of the US Patent Office demonstrated quite clearly that he did not understand the difference between these two concepts.
It appears that the US Patent Office believes that obviousness can be ascertained by determining whether there is any prior art. Of course obviousness is much harder to prove conclusively. But until they understand that an invention has to satisfy both of these criteria separately, we will continue to get more ridiculous software and e-businness patents.
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Trouble with the PTO not paying attention to their applications is that every bad patent makes them less credible, eventually to the point that every patent issued becomes suspicious. Or course the reason for these 4 was the hope of settling some lawsuits out of court and retiring. I know in this forum patents are evil by default, but that's a bit extreme. There are small companies that need that sort of protection to get their business off the ground. Every obvious, ridiculous patent issued reduces this level of protection. The solution? First let's eliminate lawyers everywhere, second, well that's been mentioned enough already.
I posted above on some of the internal reasons how productions incentives has degraded the ethic to do quality work in the PTO. The problem is one of a managment philosophy over the last 30+ years to worship the god of production over the virtue of quality. Even the most diligent examiner is faced with the problem of being diligent with the reality of not getting fired for low production, not turning around amended cases quickly enough, etc.
There really are lots of bright people in the PTO (as well as the ususal portion of duds) but they get eroded down to either always being on the edge of being fired (because their production is low) or they have to compromise their own standards to avoid this fate. Either way, they are miserable, and, if they have waited too long, they are trapped in an occupation that has limited applicability elsewhere (Patent Attorney/Agent/Searcher).
The result: lots of turnover from people who make the correct decision quickly (leave fast, stay long enough to get law degree then go on the outside, etc.) leaving the inept and otherwise unemployable, the competant but ground down by the institutional crappy environment, and the few who ae luck to be competant and in an art that enables them to do good work and satisfy the bean counters.
And the management wonders why turnover is so high.