IBM Flushes Restroom Patent

jdkane writes "As reported in this CNet news article IBM has quietly eliminated a patent it received on a method for determining who gets to use the bathroom next. I say Kudos to IBM because it is a relief (no pun intended) to see some common sense prevail in the patent news. A funny quote from the article is "But just because the patent office granted this and other questionable patents doesn't mean the system is broken".;)"

Comments

stupid patent

[spongman]

apart from the fact that it applies to bathrooms, how is this any different from the age-old "take a number, take a seat" system used in waiting rooms and supermarket delis around the world? I guess the aparatus (claims 17/26) could be said to be new, but harldy a stroke of genius, especially not in 2000AD. I wouldn't be surprised if the Romans used something like this...

This article isn't exactly pleasing to me....

[Anonymous Coward]

But Nyblod said that it's relatively rare for the patent office to re-examine patents it has issued. The office granted 187,882 patents in 2001 but received just 296 requests to re-examine individual patents, she said.

That's 187,586 short if you ask me.
Really, as much as I don't want to be a flaimbait, the "standard examination" or whatever is not quite good enough.
In this day and age, with the amount of educated people at an all time high, and their education at an all time high too, the patent office has to be extra strict with giving patents.

Though everybody at slashdot already knows this, it can't be stressed enoough:
Patents are more a drag than a boost to creativity.

And just a little rant:
For nine years running, IBM has been the leading recipient of patents from the U.S. patent office.

And

We dedicated that patent to the public so that we could continue focusing on our high-quality patent portfolio.

Seem to be in conflict.IBM and patents seem to me to be a issue of quantity not quality.

For Those That Don't Read The Articles

[Anonymous Coward]

The quote about the system not being broken did not come from IBM, it came from a patent attorney.

Personally, I guess the system isn't "broken", but it would be like a wall with cracks running from top to bottom, it's technically still a wall, but it's not something I'd want to lean on.

Re:The patent system needs reform, of course

[loply]

The way the patent system works in the US is that they (the patents people) basically grant any patent, and if you disagree with it, you are supposed to challenge it and a judge decides its validity. It is intended that in the case of questionable patents they should simply be granted and its left to a judge to invalidate it when somebody takes the issue to court.

Key point

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the key point of this article is the phrase: "We dedicated that patent to the public so that we could continue focusing on our high-quality patent portfolio," Andrews said.

Now if only the everyone else would realize this...

The USPTO's "Benefit of the doubt" philosophy

[rollingcalf]

The patent system is broken, and the fact that they issued 187,882 patents in a single year is itself evidence of that. Patents are essentially like world records; there is no way so many new and nonobvious creations can be produced in a year.

The USPTO's procedure is to give the benefit of the doubt to the would-be patentee, and then let the courts sort it afterwards if its validity is questioned. This is based on their apparent philosophy that to mistakenly NOT grant a patent that has validity is more harmful than granting an invalid patent, so they prefer to err on the side of the patent applicant.

But reality works the other way. It is more harmful to grant a bad patent than to deny a good patent application. Denying a patent does not necessarily mean the product will not be produced. The rejected patentee can still go ahead and create the product, and the rest of the world is also free to create the product, although they would not have the benefit on the monopoly. On the other hand, granting a patent that should not have been granted prevents or hinders everybody else from producing it (and derivative products) even though they could have thought of it on their own. In addition, sometimes the patentee does not even produce any working models of the product, so the effect is that the patent has caused the product not to be produced at all. Caution should be exercised in favor of the rest of the world, not the patent applicant.

There should be a penalty for submitting a patent that gets rejected on the basis of prior art. If the fine is kept by the USPTO, they will have plenty incentive to search properly for prior art, and the applicants will also have added incentive to search for it. If the patent is actually granted and the applicant uses the patent to extract license fees, and prior art is discovered afterwards, the penalty should be based on the license fees which the patentee has extracted.

Sounds brutal, but by making a patent application you are making an extremely strong claim against the rest of the human race -- that none of the other 6 billion people has done what you have done -- and attempting to put a restriction on their behavior, that you better be damn well sure that your creation is so brilliant that nobody else has done it before. One of the main reason why the USPTO has so little time to review patents is the high volume of trivial patent applications. If you aren't just about 100% sure that no prior art exists, get out of the way and keep the system open for those who do have actual legitimate inventions.

To help enforce the nonobviousness aspect of it, when a patent application is submitted there should be a short description, of maybe 50 words or less that summarizes what the supposed invention does, with care taken not to reveal any of the claims or how it is actually done. Then that summary should be published, after which there is a set time period of maybe a month or two during which the public is allowed to submit documentation or even a working product that does the same thing. If somebody else can come up with a solution in a few weeks based on such a short description, it does not meet the novel and nonobvious criteria. If any the submitted documents or products are substantially similar to the patent application, the patent must be rejected. Some things would only need a short phrase like "online auction" or "one click shopping" or "swinging on a swing" for somebody else to come up with a solution in a few days or even hours. ("Substantially similar" can be defined as whether the submission would be likely to be guilty of patent infringement if the patent were actually granted and the submission created afterwards, and there can be a nominal fee for such submissions to discourage frivilous challenge submissions, if the volume is too high.)