Slashdot Mirror
Information Patents in the US and Europe
Over_and_Done writes "First Monday has an article up discussing the differences in information process patents between the US and Europe. The author mentions that the United States reform is too focused on process reform, arguing that they should be instead focusing on what is and is not patentable (i.e. Business Method patents). He also states that Europe is choosing to instead follow a different track, and make the process a little more restrictive, resulting in a rift between the US and Europe. The article raises a lot of interesting facts that I was not aware of, including the incident where the US threatened to walk out of the WIPO
meeting because the proposed treaty did not 'mandate patents for all fields of activity.' The author, although critical of the policies on both sides of the pond states that the rift is in some ways healthy, as it encourages an open debate and requires people to look at the patent issue from many different angles."
I have a patent on writing comments on a news story for the purpose of discussion, and Slashdot doesn't have a license to use my technology.
What I believe should be patentable are Algorithms and Scientific Ideas, not patterns such as those making up the genome and so forth. Those belong to their owners therefore falling under the arena of copyrighting. IMHO.
Checking out my form of escapism.
US threatened to walk out of the WIPO meeting because the proposed treaty did not 'mandate patents for all fields of activity.' Just like the U.S. pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty since Bush "will not accept a plan that will harm our economy." Or, just like the U.S. is "upholding international law" by walking out on the U.N. when an absolute mandate for war was not immediately and unconditionally accepted.
Software patents lead to innovation only within the company that owns them.
Strangely, software development continues in the rest of the world without patent protection.
(sorry, couldn't help the shameless plug!)
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
The patent hijinks in the US in recent years seems to highlight the strong nexus between government and business in America. Intellectual Property has been willingly converted from a protective 'shield' designed to foster innovation into a 'sword' to strike down competitors. The most obvious example is the various startup companies who have no actual products, just a patent, and who proceed to work their way up the food chain suing others for patent infringement or demanding royalties.
As a non-American, it seems logical to me that you should expect your government to make a conscious decision before a legal doctrine should undergo such a transformation. Instead, you have a situation where business has made the decision and then gradually weaselled it into law through undue influence of your executive (patent office) and parliamentary government.
Reforming your patent laws might help this particular problem, but if you want a long term solution to this kind of crap then some more fundamental separation of private and public interests is in order. Campaign finance, political donations, and restrictions on the activities of lobby groups might be a good start...
Read Pynchon.
Ah, the attitude that has endeared you so to the feeble, poverty stricken, technologically inferior masses of the world...
Somehow things went ok during the industrial revolution without the ridiculous patent laws you have today.
Read Pynchon.
Slashdot and other news sites present high quality peer-reviewed commentary by involving large numbers of members of the web community in recommending and rating items.
I was with them until this point.
I stole this Sig
Dear Anonymous Coward,
Thank you for your feedback. While America tries to accomodate most people, we occasionally find a person who is not a right match for America. We regret that things did not work out, and wish you luck in your future endeavors. If you are not satisfied with America, you are encouraged to stop using our products, services, technologies, or visiting our locally hosted websites.
Thanks again,
America
This abuse of patent law is nothing new. I forget his name, but in the early days of automobiles, someone actually put a patent on the car. He forced everyone to pay royalties until a determined Henry Ford fought him in court and won. Oh yeah, just giving everyone notice, I am putting a patent on the process of breathing. You will all now have to pay me a royalty or stop breathing altogetherl
when will you people LEARN?! Don't feed the trolls!!!!!!!!!!
You guys need to stop being cynical and start fixing this problem.
Jefferson and co. weren't perfect themselves, but I think they would be quite upset if they could see the current arrangement in action.
Read Pynchon.
Info patents in The U.S. and Europe can Not patent haikus
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
The US pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty because it was so lax on "developing nations", including China.
This is what is called an "excuse." The real reason is that it would have forced the US to face the unsustainability of it's current environmental regime with regard to carbon emissions and the impact switching to a better model would have on the economy. Given that the US is in a shitload of trouble now that Bush has let the budget deficit skyrocket (while handing a fat tax break to the wealthiest of Americans), it looks like a smart move. But eventually, this is going to have to be faced, as well as, the incredibly unsustainable foreign trade imbalance will be too. The EU could embargo us and put the lights out, given the current levels of productivity there and our insatiable need to consume.
BTW, China is not the world's largest polluter. Not even in terms of per capita. The US is.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Algorithms are essentially ideas, and ideas are neither patentable nor do they qualify for copyright. A particular expression of an idea can be copyrighted, and its use in a process can be patentable, but ideas are not, at least in principle. The idea that you can patent a naturally occuring pattern (i.e. a gene or genes) is ridiculous. It might be ok to give a patent on say a genetic test for a particular condition, but it seems to me that there isn't much invention beyond the basic science (idea) that links the gene and the condition.
The truth is (as explained in this very good paper) that the patent authorities in both the US and Europe have bent over backwards to extend the scope of patents. The paper lays out how patent professionals keep pushing this, sometimes in spite of any attempt of anyone outside their circle to attempt to set policy, even lawmakers. Check this out for an indication of just how out of control the EPO is. They make money from handing out these patents whether it is good for the rest of us or not, and there is little effective control on any of it.
what to hold, what to let go,
is that really what you want to achieve?what to kill, what to let grow?
and what, i ask, would thou say,
to the god 'ere festooned and bid to relay?
a toiling towards abject misery without a reprieve?
carry on, then, carry on, and do your just part.
carry on, then, carry on, you've made a good start.
(this poem is hereby placed in the public domain by its Author.)
People are putting too much faith in the patent system, and even worse is that they're assuming that patents are good for commerce, business, and free markets. IMHO, this is a bad road to go down, the problems of patents are well documented, and things will only get worse as society gets more advanced.
I think removing the creator's ability to dictate use in general could solve a lot of the current problems with "intellectual property". The radio industry, oddly, is a good example in that any station can play any music without having to negotiate separately with each distributor. Instead, they pay a central collection organization based on how many times they play each song.
I believe this would be a good model for patents etc, because it would remove not only the uncertainty relating to lawsuits but also it would allow useful technologies to become widely spread. Also, holders of IP would benefit in direct proportion to the usefulness of their inventions. Not to mention, that business would save the expense of an IP legal department.
We might even see less of these trivial patents that have been granted lately. I think that might be asking too much though.
Why write to yourself?
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
I think you're misunderstanding something here. The end game is not equality between nations, or even the environemnt, it is freedom and liberty.
The problem with patents is that too many people assume that patents are just like other property rights. Normally, property rights protect freedom and free markets. Patents do not. Unlike other properties they are an artificial construct of government without any foundation in the real world, or without any foundation such as finite physical utility.
This property ignorance is pushed only by a very narrow group of people, but since there are few large industrial forces that have motive to oppose them, and since they are so entrenched in US culture, it is really hard to get rid of them.
Like a leech they just keep growing bigger and bigger until the host can't bear it anymore. In some countries like Barzil and Africa, it took millions of people dying of AIDS and drugs that they could not manufacture or controll to get them to wake up - in the USA I shudder to think what it will take, but it will half to happen soooner or later.
It's rather futile to expect the US to change its ways voluntarily.
If you study your link, you'll note that the largest differentials between US consumption and other nations are in two areas: automotive travel and home heating. Hell, if you got those in line, the US bar would start looking rather average.
I can think of a few reasons why this would be. First, Americans keep their houses hot. Not me personally - I like it at 60-65F - or even less- that's because i'm diabetic and always feeling hot anyway. I keep it above 60 for the benefit of others, else no one would stay in my house. But most people in the US keep it at 70 or 72. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to like it around 60. Big energy savings there, for sure.
Automobiles are woven into American culture - you could blame Eisenhower if you wanted, he was the one that blessed (or cursed) us with the Interstate highway system. While this is a fine system of roads, best in the world for such a large country (I personally like the Autobahns better - you can drive faster), it has created a culture of people who believe in their hearts it is their God-given right to drive from point A to point B, no matter how far removed. Whereas, in Europe, I note that the cars are smaller, and less prevalent. Trains and other mass transport are used far more.
Something that has been tried and failed before in the US is stuffing environmental regulation down the people's throats to the detriment of their day to day life. You wouldn't believe the bitching about low-flow toilets - i've heard dozens of people talk about keeping their old toilets so they don't have to use the shitty (no pun intended) new ones that don't flush properly.
Even the R-12 CFC reduction was done in such a way that there was no consumer impact. Sure, appliance repairmen and air conditioning/refrigeration manufacturers went through hell, but the general public never saw that. And for good reason.
What passes for an environmentalist in the US by and large is a soccer mom driving an SUV with a home room temperature that makes a decent greenhouse for her plants. Tell her she has to turn her thermostat down, can't build the summer house on the well-forested mountainside, and has to take the train, and watch how fast all pretense to environmentalism fades.
Kyoto was nixed because it would have impacted people's lives negatively and would have sealed the fate of any politician tied to them. Maybe Clinton would have been slick enough to stop himself from being taken down by it, but I can't think of anyone else who could have endured the backlash.
Say what you will about US politicians, they like getting re-elected. Moreover, I don't see the landscape changing appreciably in the short term.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Businesses can take back control of this if it is important enough to them, because they ultimately control the purse strings on the experts, but a critical mass of business leaders has to understand the economic arguments and get behind changing things.
I read that as "Information Pants in the US and Europe"
Pants! What is the fastest land-based animal?
Argh, maybe I should go back to coffee...
Reforming your patent laws might help this particular problem, but if you want a long term solution to this kind of crap then some more fundamental separation of private and public interests is in order. Campaign finance, political donations, and restrictions on the activities of lobby groups might be a good start...
This will do nothing, because it treats the symptom and not the cause. If you want to keep business out of government - then first keep government out of peoples business. Then they will have little motive or reason to interfere.
Granting artifical monopoiles in the name of promoting small inventors is just asking for abuse. It almost guarentees that the same tools will be used by big business to lock out everyone else. Now all of a sudden people are asking how could things go so wrong? The only thing worse than big business abusing government granted monopolies is government micro-regulating industries and business to prevent patent "abuses". No Thanks. The problem isn't business, it the belief in patents all together.
I'm glad the EU countries have a differnt take on it. Unfortunately, the US government is becoming notorious for not caring about what the rest of the world thinks. The "best method" is probably somewhere in the middle, but we'll never see it in the US as long as the business that bought the government still get their way.
Did it ever occur to you that this "best method" attitude is why the EU is becomming so irrelavent? Right or wrong, we should at least have the balls to consider things taken to their logical conclusion. Patents are cut and dry, they are useless and simply need to go.
I can think of a few reasons why this would be. First, Americans keep their houses hot. Not me personally - I like it at 60-65F - or even less- that's because i'm diabetic and always feeling hot anyway. I keep it above 60 for the benefit of others, else no one would stay in my house. But most people in the US keep it at 70 or 72. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to like it around 60. Big energy savings there, for sure.
Actually I like it around 17. The secret is very simple - stubborn Americans just have to change to the metric system and the numbers come way down ;-)
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
It seems that the majority of the /. crowd (including myself) opposes most modern US patent activity in general and software patents in particular. For me, this is strong evidence that the system is horribly broken.
We, the /.ers, are the ones the patent system is supposed to protect. Innovators, with wildly creative ideas and the will to implement them. Small players, who cannot afford the tactics of large corporations for profiting from their innovations. Contributors to the greater technical and social good.
If we are against software patents, what can possibly be the argument for them? This is a system corrupted by the few and unethical at the expense of the american inventor. Shame on those who promote it.
this would also make your president's iq suddenly break through the room-temperature barrier. :)
Free as in mason.
On the other hand, Converting American shoe sizes to their Continental European equivalents would make the number on the president's IQ test results smaller than the one on the sole of his shoe.
Thank you for your memo. While the civilised world tries to accommodate most people, we occasionally find a country that is not up to our high standards. The USA is such a country. We regret that things did not work out, and wish your people luck in finding alternative accommodation. If you, at some point in the future, wish to rejoin the civilised world, you are encouraged to: stop polluting the environment; declaring war on other non civilised world countries for fictional reasons; suppressing the freedom of your people; believing that money is the goal; patenting obvious ideas; shooting yourselves; and generally acting like the French (who we have our eyes on anyway, but they at least make good food).
Please remove your products, services and technologies since we have our own which are actually much better than your attempts and will likely flourish without your questionable practices.
Thanks again,
The Civilised World
PS We were trying to think who of your peoples we might give asylum to; but to be honest, we couldn't think of one living person.
Europeans don't liek to change there ways either. For instance the Dutch government invested loads of money in special lanes on highways for car pooling to decrease traffic jams and pollution at the same time. The lanes were monitored with cameras and it was separated from the normal lanes by walls.
As it turned out, hardly anyone actually wanted to share his/her car. The car pool lanes remained almost empty and the traffic jams on the normal lanes were worse than ever. Another amount of money had to be spent to convert the car pool lanes into normal lanes.
On the other hand, I think in Europe there are more restrictions on how much pollutive gases a car may produce. Same with diesel oil, home heating installations, toilets, etc. Of course, in the end, as a consumer, you are paying for all these improvements. But even that does not change your behavior towards the environment.
Yes, the EPO is not bound by the EU.
However, the EU can nevertheless issue directives (guidelines to amend national law) and regulations (binding law) relating to patents. This can be extended towards the EPO, by letting EU member states have it put in the EPC (European Patent Convention). For example, this happened with the biotech directive.
Besides that, it is still possible to invalidate patents in front of a national court and in the future in front of a European court. With this, bear in mind that litigation costs in Mainland Europe are about 1% of costs in US (For UK, take 10%).
With respect to the remark in the posting:
The truth is (as explained in this very good paper) that the patent authorities in both the US and Europe have bent over backwards to extend the scope of patents.
That is not fully true for the EPO. The software patent policy goes quite far, but the EPO has mentioned several times that it will not do anything with busines method patent applications; they will not even be searched, say bye bye to your search fee. And this is not likely to change in the near future.
The paper lays out how patent professionals keep pushing this,
That's what I get paid for. The examiner gets paid for not allowing patents that do not meet the requirments of the EPC.
IANAL (still 9 months to go)
That's what I thought second terms were for; the first was to get re-elected so they could actually do stuff in the second :/
:(
Appart from that, fuelefficiency and insulation should go a long way to bring consumption down, as would better use of solar and wind power. Too bad that all those plans formed during the first oilcrisis in the 70's were nixed
That might even have prevented the whole course of actions that led to 9/11.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
the theory of relativity, ruthford's model of the atom, and maxwells laws - while all expressed as slgorithms - are not discoveries of nature and not patentable subject matter. not then, not now.
google's search engine - also expressable as a mathematical algorithm - IS patentable because it is an invention, not a discovery in nature.
the fundamental question is whether or not people have a right to own their ideas - not whether or not algorithms should be patentable. indeed, algorithms since they are so easily copied, are in great need ot patent protection.
that the US constitutional mandate that patents and copyrights should "promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences" is an unmodern way of viewing intellectual property.
fortunately, the US Constitution is infinitely malleable to commercial (and political) interests. it is hard to imagine that a business method patent would be seen as promoting the "progress of science and the useful arts" in any way, shape, or form which would have been recognizeable to a slave owner like Thomas Jefferson, yet this did not hinder the US Congress from embracing this as an entirely new area for patenting."
ironically, in Europe, where copyright is seen as a natural right, and patents as industrial rights, there is intense debate over whether or not to allow business method patents for fear that they will not promote the progress of science.
i believe people have a natural right to own their inventions regardless of the impact on the public. like free speech, it may be inconvient in certain instances, but on the whole society is better of with it, than without it.
It's a great and lengthy article, but am I the only one who feels that they misrepresent the Microsoft vs Stac case?
They first state it as a victory for patents, but didnt Stacker go bancrupt during the case, because of the violation by Microsoft?
And Microsoft didnt break the negotiations and develop their own product infringing on a patent. They broke the negotiations and released code stolen from Stacker as their own.
With this "poster" case punctured, can anyone come up with a case where a patent has protected a small company against a much larger?
When it is fairness to the poor it is "Class Warfare." When it is fairness to the rich, it is "an economic plan."
The latest budget, which you wouldn't know about because the propaganda box talks nothing about it because of the diversionary war, was whacked in half. Left in place though: all of the breaks for the richest 1-2 percent of Americans. And they cut 28 billion from veteran's programs to keep the dividend tax reduction. People impacted by the dividend tax reduction make over 150000 a year. People who receive veteran's benefits (mainly because the weathly don't serve) 24000 a year.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Humm...I don't get why people seem to think about "U.S. and the rest of the world" that often...it's not one big country (the U.S.) against another big country ("the rest of the world"), it's one country against many others.
First of all we have seen, that many countries - not only in the Arab world - are economically dependent of the U.S. and others are not. In fact that's probably what made the echoes to the USUK-Alliance so inconsistent.
Telling the U.S. to stick their patents where the sun don't shine would for many countries result in breaking treaties with the U.S - and not only with the U.S., as these treaties are multilateral. While the U.S. obviously doesn't care about international treaties - at least with Dubya as President - the U.S. can make _other_ countries care using economic measures. Though the damage the U.S. can do to countries differs, probably a large number of countries won't be game offending the U.S. by ignoring U.S.-patents.
I'm not a U.S. citizen and I'm rather pissed off by the rambo-like manners the U.S. shows in many international issues, yet when taking it realistically, the view "U.S. vs. the rest of the world" is just nonsense.
There is a strong Anti-Patent movement in Europe. The German based organsation FFII is a very important player in the defence against lawyer interest groups. The EU wanted to introduce software patents back in 1999, the battle is still not over. Eurolinux alliance started an petition against Software patents with more than 140 000 signatures. Of course everybody shall try to talk to EU parliamentarians, esp. Arlene McCarthy(UK labour), Würmling (EVP) ecc. They have Email. European parliament: http://www.europarl.eu.int/ You should also protest against patent policy of EPO at EU Ombudsman
Electricity.
Nope, I'm afraid your wrong again, Frenchie. The USA produces 754.9 Billion KWhs. France only makes 395.0 Billion KWhs.
But the previous poster was talking specifically about California, not the USA as a whole. In 2000, California consumed 264,000GWh, while only generating 226,000GWh, forcing them to become a net importer. And as you say, France produces 395,000GWh. In fact, France is an electricity exporter. If the French wanted to, they could brownout half of southern England simply by pulling the plug.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I would like to point out that most companies are not patenting everything possible so they can control the world. My company, a large well-known systems company has about 3000 patents (not IBM, who has 30,000). We have never actively sued someone for patent infrigment. Once we went after someone who sued us for another reason and we counter-sued with patents in hand. But 99% of the time we wait for a start-up or even a large company to come after us and then attend the meeting with 10-15 of our patents in hand.
google's search method a discovery? really? it was always there waiting for someone to get hit on the head by an apple and notice it?
or was it the result of some smart people doing a lot of hard thinking, making some mistakes, enduring frustration, having flashes of brilliance, and developing a technique which provides a great deal of value to a lot of people?
a reasonable assumption would be that google's patent is a result of the latter.
in other words, this was an invention, not a discovery.
the method by which the search is performed (i.e., the algorithm) is definitely patentable.
claims may be method or apparatus. an algorithm is claimed as method.
when the method is used "in a contraption" the INFRINGEMENT occurs which i think is the source of your confusion about "algorithms" being unpatentable.
The official report of the discussion is here. The part in question starts on page 27.
By the way, civilised is spelled wrong. ;\
Perhaps someone should tell Bush and the other neo-conservative crazies. It seems that the EU and the Euro may be more relevant than many people realise at the moment.
incident where the US threatened to walk out of the WIPO meeting
That is the bottom line for current american diplomatic efforts... not getting your way? drop out like a baby.
this is ABSOLUTELY on-topic and relevant... how can the world "negotiate" with a nation that acts like this????
Or have pensions. Those who save money for their retirement do so by (indirectly) buying shares (and related assets, such as bonds) with that money. When they come to retire, those shares then provide their income in retirement.
Yours is a very common misconception, that somehow "shareholders" are a separate species. They aren't. Have a 401(k)? You're one of them. A non-government pension? Same. Even the money in a deposit account in a bank is invested in companies, via credit facilities. Basically, if you have money in any form other than cash under the bed, you are one of those corporate investors who will benefit!
Trolling right along
Both Winter AND Summer games.
Summer: Paris, 1900. Paris, 1924.
Winter: Chamonix, 1924. Grenoble, 1968. Albertville 1992
They are clearly an interesting case as they were against software and business method patents originally, but they have also gathered a large mass of such patents since then (well, I'm not sure if they have gathered business method patents as yet, and they may have apposed this more than the software patents). For them, Linux is probably just a cheap way to get software for their services and hardware, with the side benefit of possibly damagine MS.
I've seen plans for a house that was built in New England that supposedly required cooling during the winter, because the normal activities of the occupants caused it to overheat. But it was well enough insulated that it didn't take much more cooling in the summer. It was slightly more expensive than a normal house, but not excessively so, and the heating/cooling bill reduction would probably pay for that within a couple of years. But you couldn't add this to a normal house, it needed to be designed in. It was a single family dwelling unit, and it would probably be a bit difficult to redesign later without destroying much of the efficiency (but I'm not an architect or a thermal engineer).
This house was designed in the 1970s. I'm sure something better could be designed now. But nobody builds them. (Well, to be fair you can't open the windows, as they are all triple paned glass. And there are a few other features that are less than ideally attractive.) I think this one may even have had solar hot water, but that may have been for the heat-sink. I know it made extensive use of vertical pipes with fans in them to regulate the distribution of heat... but that may not have been necessary. And there was a heat sink in the basement that acted as a thermal ballast. So keeping the house warm doesn't have to be energetically expensive, with proper design. (Have you noticed how well good thermos bottles and ice chests work these days.)
Cars are more of a problem, but the Toyota Station Wagon we drive did better than 32 miles per gallon when it was new. But that was around 1990. We haven't been able to find something as good on the market since we started looking about 3 years ago. The Prius might be good, but it isn't a 4-door station wagon. (We want a car that can haul a harpsichord.) Perhaps the VW Jetta would work, we should check it out. (I didn't hear about that until last year, so you can tell we haven't been searching too vigorously.)
But fuel cell cars and hybrids allow the fuel usage of cars to be made manageable. If the government feels it desireable.
There would be a lot of conversion costs, but the cost of the converted economy would be lower than the current cost. And nearly as flexible. A president who wanted to head that direction could have. If he were a leader, people would have followed (it's not an automatically inspiring future, but it's nice, it looks comfortable, and it sounds idealisticly green [it isn't, but it's pretty good]). But he wanted to head in a different direction.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You do not receive dividends on 401(k) investments (which are tax free, no?) as you do not directly own the stocks, therefore you do not pay the tax on dividend income because you do not receive dividends. Corporate investors (in the telescoped version of the American investing world you present) do not see tax savings under Bush's non-economic plan as those are nothing but bottom-line gravy for the corporations controlling the money. Of course, if you directly owned the stock in those corporations, then you could get a dividend from that gravy but then you would pay the tax.
One the greatest problems with arguing about this is that most people don't realize that it is not as simple as it looks. In this case, the Republicans conflate dividends on stocks with mom-and-pop investing in a 401(k). The two are mutually exclusive.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Right. They went broke, not bankrupt.
Stacker originally refused to sell out to MS, but MS ruined the company. They had to pay restitution, but the company was dead, and the restitution didn't allow them to be revived.
Millions sounds like a lot. And it is for a person. It's twice the cost of a decent house in Silicon Valley (last year). But it isn't a lot for a company. 20 years ago a million was half the cost of a decent building. IF you already owned the land.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't think frivolous patents are the whole problem. I think an unspoken problem is that nobody has a good method of determining if something is patented at all, not even the patent offices. A big boost for patent use would be a way to quickly determine if something was patented, and if so, who by. Requesting a patent search does not guarantee that a patent does not exist for what you're looking for. It only tells you that it probably does not. Not very comforting given the high litigation rate for violated patents. It's hard to base a company on something so shaky as a patent that can't be guaranteed is valid.
What's more, once a patent has expired what happens to it? Arguably it is supposed to have been replaced with a new and better patent making the old one obsolete. If these expired patented inventions fall into the public domain, where are they listed? Where can I obtain a list of expired patents and the inventions they corrsepond to? If such a list has been compiled (or can be), would it be relevent? If patents are to provide a benefit to society (why else would we grant them?) but don't expire until they are completely worthless, what's the point?
IF the Jetta is big enough, go for the TDI. Its a turbo-diesel, which does have higher sulfur emissions in PPM, but since it gets more than 40 MPG, number of millions lower, so the number of parts is not as big a deal.
Its pretty suprising the gas mileage that the CRV & RAV-4 get, too. If you get the 2wd versions, they get high-20s, IIRC.
I've always wanted to start a business designing active-management for passive-solar type housing. Lots of sensors optimizing fan usage in crawl spaces, automatically extending shades over the windows to minimize solar heating in the summer, maximize insulation in the winter, and control passive heating/cooling much better in the spring/fall. It always pissed me off that the cars in the garage were dumping heat into the house in summer, and there wasn't a good way to vent it in my old house.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Something that has been tried and failed before in the US is stuffing environmental regulation down the people's throats to the detriment of their day to day life. You wouldn't believe the bitching about low-flow toilets - i've heard dozens of people talk about keeping their old toilets so they don't have to use the shitty (no pun intended) new ones that don't flush properly.
You're using that as an example without giving all the information. It isn't necissarily the problem that people don't like having regulations shoved down their throats in this case, but that they don't like having poorly thought out and inflexible regulations stuffed down their throats. Sure, low-flow toilets sound like a good idea, especially if you live in an area where water conservation is important (yes there are areas where it isn't as important), but you can't just tell people to use them without thinking through the details. Speciffically that flushing with less water doesn't push solid waste as far along pipes as the older, higher water usage toilets do. Most houses and septic systems weren't designed with low flow toilets in mind, so in the most benign case, you may have stuff left in your toilet after a flush, and in the worst case your basement could fill up with shit just because you did some work in your bathroom and the law said that you had to change your toilet to one that doesn't move stuff all the way out to the tank. I don't know if you've ever shoveled shit out of your basement, but I have and believe me, it's a good reason to bitch about a poorly thought out regulation.
Saw this on google news today. An article from the BBC where Greenspan says he recognizes the shift "towards intangibles and ideas and away from concrete products."
The first step to a solution is for someone in power to at least realize that something is changing. Good job Alan!
hooray! it's a sex wiki
The thing is, patents are a good thing, it's abuse of the system - and its original intent - that is the problem.
Those in power should realize how much of a problem this is, and do something to reform the poor patent system. If the US can't do it, then maybe another country can to set a good example. It's not the idea that's broken: it's the system, and perhaps those using it.
Like anything of good intent, sometimes people need a stern punishment for abusing the process (people in this case being large corporations). No consequences with large gains almost always breeds abuse when money and large (or even small) organizations are involved.