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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.
- 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)
This is a downright horrible idea.
1) With the way the system currently works, patents aren't easy to overturn, even with substantial prior art.
2) Everything and anything would be patented (things even more rediculous), and the USPO would have to spend more time overturning all the senseless ones. At least they're disalloqing some of the patents at the moment.
My 2/5 of a nickel.
--ravyn
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I'm an exhibit on the mounted animal nature trail.
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.