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How to Become a Patent Millionaire
An anonymous reader writes "SF Gate has an article about people who patent ideas for things they have no intentions of building, hoping to license technology or block competitors from doing something similar. As if the patent system weren't screwed up enough already."
Of course, there are legitimate cases for filing a patent without means to produce the product. The inventor may not have the resources, and must have the patent in hand to round up financial backing. Where do you draw the line as to what is being developed and what is not?
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There are quite a number of companies that perpetuate fantasies that the ordinary person can make a lot of money by getting a patent on an idea, and then marketing it to companies. Things go so bad that Congress passed a law to control these invention promotion firms. A form for reporting abusive forms of these services can be found at http://www.uspto.gov/web/forms/2048.pdf
(It is sad to see people who paid $10,000 to have a really bad idea for a dishwasher written up in 10 pages of form paragraphs, and the promotion activity be limited to being told that GE and Whirlpool make dishwashers.)
The reason for the reporting that is required is that many of these companies had never had a patent issue and be licensed to anyone.
Sure, there are the rare exceptions, I know of a couple personally, but for each of those there are 100 people who shelled out $10,000 for pretty much nothing.
1) Start Lord Slepnir beverages. I'll need to scrounge around for startup capital, get a factory, distribution, find a way to market it, etc. If I fail, I have to declare bankrupcy, and wind up having my house and car repoed. If I end up making a lot of money off of it, I have about 7 years to grow enough to compete with Coke and Pepsi, who will push their own knockoff of this flavor as soon as the patent runs out.
2) I contact coke or pepsi and tell them I have a new flavor. They give me a lump of cash, they take all the risk (I'm not ruined if it fails), they market it, and I get a small royality check to live off.
SF Gate has an article about people who patent ideas for things they have no intentions of building, hoping to license technology or block competitors from doing something similar
How about people who buy land they have no intention of building on, hoping to sell it to others while blocking other people from building on this land?
Exactly. Grant the patent and somebody else has to go to court. Deny the patent and YOU have to go to court...
Sorry, but PTO workers are gov-scale paid workers...there ain't enough in their salary to deal with all those lawyers. Better to pass the patent and pass the buck.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Otis Elevator Company is the other classic story -- Mr Otis invented the safty brake (which automatically catches an elevator if the cable breaks) and patented the idea. He then gave free license to use the invention to any and all competitors, since it would save lives.
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..as I understand it, is that the PTO gets more money if it actually grants the patent then if it refuses it.
Considering that it gets squat for federal money these days, you can see how this situation leads to the patenting of crap-on-a-stick and so forth.
So to fix this, do it the other way around. Charge slightly more should the patent examiner determine the invention is "obvious" and a lot more should it be determined that there is prior art.
I'd even be willing to give the examiners a direct incentive should they find prior art. (But set up an appeals process if you do that) This would discourage companies and individuals from patenting utter crap, and strongly encourage patent applicants to do a good search of the prior art, rather then (as now) choosing to avoid looking (because if you don't see it, you can say you didn't know)
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