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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."
Somebody patent that!
We need a department that has the power to review and revoke a patent. If you're not going to produce what you patent, or if your patent is overly broad (or just plain stupid) it should be revoked.
Amazon and Microsoft announced joint patents of a new concept: "A grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time."
They're expected to make billions off the royalties.
I'm patenting the process of obtaining patents on patenting the idea of patents being used to become wealthy without actually doing any work.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
This is the definition of an inventor. There are many patents which require large amounts of capital to produce. What some inventors will do is patent the idea then pitch it to companies hoping they will purchase the rights to the patent and produce the product.
The entire design of patents is to prevent someone from bulding something you claim as yours. This article just points out the obvious.
What's wrong with inventing something and then charging someone else to develop and market it? Think of it as being an independent R&D department.
What's wrong with the patent system is people getting patents for things that should not be patented, not that you don't have to build the item yourself to enjoy royalties from its invention.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
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?
He cited the standards of Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) technology, in which transmission speeds have been rapidly advancing during the past three years from 11 megabits per second in 1999 to more than 50.
I was aware that the "fi" in "hi-fi" stands for "fidelity", but I don't think the same can be assumed here . . .
Lemelson did not invent the bar code. In fact he engaged in practices very similar to the ones described in the article. His patent was an extremely generic one for machine vision applications, which according to his interpretation covered bar code readers. He was one of the people who never implemented any of their ideas, preferring to wait for other people to reinvent them and then ask for royalties.
Can I patent something that is going to make some huge corporations tons of money and then release it to the public? Basically that would mean that now no one has an exclusive patent on it and everyone benefits. When Salk invented the polio vaccine I think he either refused to patent it or he patented it and then gave it away so everyone could manufacture it. He didn't want to profit off of the pain and suffering of others. Cool guy.
So why can't the Patent Office do something similar? Would it be so hard to ask, "Gee, how's that invention coming along? Have a prototype yet?" and after a certain amount of time, just revoke the patent because work hasn't been done on it yet. This might actually stimulate some growth once the patent is back up for grabs. Perhaps even offer it up at auction. Then companies could be compelled to make good on the patent application because of the captial investment to get it at auction.
Let's see now... if I register a domain name with the intent of selling it to someone else instead of using it myself, I'm "cybersquating" and ICANN will forcibly take the domain name aways from me. However, if I register an idea with the intent of selling to someone else instead of using it myself, the US Patent Office will assist me in extorting money out of anyone who wishes to sell a product based on a simular idea? I find this curiously inconsistent.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
That's a good point - supposedly, shouldn't there be a tighter restriction on patent applications that haven't been "reduced to practice" (as in your example)? Because if they'd enforce that, the problem would be largely solved, I expect.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Whatever claims people had that the current copyright and patent system work are refuted by this.
Companies could make their entire business collecting royalties from patents they will never use. The company would never need to produce a product to profit, relying instead on revenues from lawsuits and royalties. The company would probably only consist of Marketing and legal departments with a few inventors to make it look vaguely legitimate.
Oddly enough, this report focused on small companies doing this. I would think that large companies with powerful market research divisions and possibly knowledge of industrial espionage would benefit more from this than a small corporation.
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musings on politics and technol
Here are some of the patents I have decided to file:
10. Time Travel. I've registered any method of moving through time. This includes moving into the future at the regular pace. If I have to sue, Johnny Cochrane will have a slogan for the courtroom: "If you live another day, then us you will have to pay".
9. Death. I should be able to collect through the funeral parlors on this one. Cochran zez: "If into the coffin you fall it will come from your wallet"
8. Space Travel. If I see you step one foot past Jupiter, buster, you're going to pay.
7. A patent on the drink dispension technique of spilling hot coffee on your own lap. I'll sue that lady who sued McDonald's.
6. The Internet itself. Al Gore may have invented it, but I'm the one who patents it.
5. Pop-up ads. I'll charge those who do this without permission so much they will never do it again.
4. I've patented the monopoly. Not only does Milton-Bradley owe me money, so does Microsoft, Cisco, etc etc etc.
3. I've patented "Item # 3"
2. Top 10 Lists. Letterman, you will get a letter from my attorney, man.
1. The Knife-Spoon-Fork icon. If you use such an icon anywhere, such as a News for Nerds site, you need to pay me.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
What's wrong with that?
The way patents are meant to help the common man (Horatio Alger version): lone genius working out of an attic in Pittsburgh invents new UltraWidget. He gets a patent for it, then takes it around to the major widget manufacturers and offers to sell them his invention. WidgetWorks, Inc. realizes that this is the next stage in the evolution of the widget, and lone genius retires to Key West.
The way patents are abused: lone sleazo lawyer in Menlo Park looks through industry rags for future trends in widgets. He patents rough concepts for UltraWidgets, TurboWidgets, Widget64, and WidgetXP. WidgetWorks, Inc., which is busy actually fucking innovating and employs engineers rather than lawyers, is working on their own next-generation widget. As soon as it appears that WidgetWorks is going to corner the market, lawyer shoves his patents up their ass. WidgetWorks pays up, lawyer now has hot tub full of Benjamins.
This is not the way patents are supposed to work. Patents are supposed to "promote the progress of science and useful arts", and protect inventions. Technology will advance without these fuckwads filing preemptive patents, and the effect of their activities is actually to slow innovation down. Companies have to waste precious resources covering their ass lest some IP law firm take them from behind. Hell, the lawyers in the article even admit that they're using patents explicitly as a competitive tool, rather than to protect their own investment and hard work.
Blame for this pathetic state of affairs can partly be laid at the feet of IBM, since they pretty much pioneered the use of patents to pre-emptively squash a competitor.
The problem is: A jury is made of 12 people of average intelligence. Such people are not always capable of detecting bogus patents.
We would have less legal problems in this country if they only allowed the top 2% (130+ IQ) to participate in jury duty (and paid them at least $400/day for their time).
My wife came up with an idea a while back for a product, and we're still trying to get a prototype built. When we went to do an online patent search, we discovered at least 8 or 9 potentially troublesome patents already in place for similar devices to ours. Upon closer inspection though, they all appeared to be filed by people who never sold a product based on any of them. In most of the cases, it looked like they were written up by other people like us, trying to piece something together from parts lying around the house. (One guy described how his unit functioned using such things as an aquarium water pump and a tire inner-tube, for example.)
I can understand why the people wanted to patent their ideas, but as others pointed out - it seems like these unimplemented patents should automatically expire after a period of time. (Perhaps 2 years is enough of a time-frame to say "Show evidence of progress, or the patent gets removed."?)
As it stands now, all of these existing patents place artifical limits on the ways we can opt to accomplish specific goals inside our final product. I'd prefer not to disclose exactly what we're trying to do, but just for example - if we want to heat and distill some water in our product, we might have to use a peltier device instead of a heating coil. Even if the heating coil is the superior solutuon, it might put our device into questionable patent territory, since another (fairly broadly worded) patent already describes a device not too different than ours, using a heating coil for this function.
The purpose of patents is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. . ."
The practice of pre-emptive patenting does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
Therefore, if current law permits this practice, then Congress has a clear responsibility to change the laws.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Case in point. My father was an engineer in the 30's and early 40's. He patented the first working variable pitch propellor. The first two patents were for designs that couldn't handle the stresses involved - he figured out how to solve both problems simultaneously. Chances are you've flown on a plane that used a variant of his invention. He tried to peddle the design but the company he was dealing with didn't like his terms so they just took the idea. The contingency lawyers he talked to wanted such a big slice of any payout that he didn't figure it was worth pursuing that avenue. My father didn't have enough money to fund a lawsuit and that was that. He did a bit more work after that - designed the landing gear for the DC-3 among other things.
It's worth noting that the article is talking about a lawyer patenting his own ideas. That perfectly illustrates who the patent system is set up to benefit.
IANAL (YET!)
So, first of all, a patent can easily cost $15K. Patent a few things that nobody wants and pretty soon, you've got through a lot of cash. Even if you do actually get a worthwhile patent, enforcing it is completely another manner -- your target company can tie you up in court for YEARS (costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars), at the end of which you may lose.
Secondly, you can't patent obvious or already existing technologies -- it's one of the reasons people can lose patent fights -- they patented something that somebody else invented or that anybody reasonably knowledgeable in the field would predict.
Finally, though, you can't just patent an idea -- it needs to be "reduced to practice." In other words, Wilbur and Orville couldn't just say "We have this great idea -- a flying machine. Please give us a patent on it." Part of the patent describes exactly how it works. Just patenting an idea while lying to the patent office that you've reduced it to practice is considered fraud.
Now, the problem with all this is that people regularly patent already existing ideas, they regularly patent obvious things and they regularly patent things that don't (or can't) exist. The patent office does not have the ability to make sure that every patent is good (cost, manpower, cost, speed of technology, cost, etc....) Instead, the USPTO effectively relies on patent litigation as a method of getting rid of crummy patents. Very inefficient and leads to people licensing technologies rather than spending the money to litigate obviously bad patents.
How about simply enforcing existing rules about things like harassing litigation? If judges slapped contempt of court fines on every lawyer who tried to drain his opponents funding (and at punitive levels) then we'd see these tactics disappearing. Big corporate industry group goes after small guy who states online that they bought the product and it didn't work? See if they do that again after getting a $50 million contempt of court fine. Big companies can afford to just throw $50k at a trial knowing that the little guy will sign anything to make it go away.
When you decide to construct a building and file for a site plan and building permit, they both have limitations in them, such as "significant construction must commence within 12 months of the granting of this application". There are fairly rigid definitions of what that means. If we had something like that for patents, then in some number of months after granting a blocking patent, it would be pulled and would have to be re-applied for. Meanwhile, other parties could make progress on the subject.
Patent examiners generally start at the GS-7/9 grades making roughly 50-60k a year. Promtion can be rapid, and it is possible to make 90k a year before bonuses/overtime. There was a pay increase several years ago to keep examiners from quiting to work in the private sector as patent agents.
http://www.popa.org/newsletters/julaug00.shtml
Patent examiners are paid on GS scale with specailly 1224, it tops out around 120k for a gs15/10. Attorneys generally make around 100k to start and go up to around 400k.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
..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)
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I had an idea for a web site I like to call my technology wish list. Basically everyone can enter their ideas for products they would like to see, like "a wi-fi access point in a cell phone that my pda, laptop, and my car's on-board computer can use to connect to the internet" and then cross our fingers and hope someone decides to make it. Others could comment on and improve the ideas or tell the person that it already exists and where to find it.
If there is a patent case comes up involving one of the wishes then the postings might serve as prior art.
(If this web site already exists somewhere please post a link to it.)
Coding Blog
"You don't have to build it," Ferrell said. "You just have to conceive it. By filing a couple of patents, you essentially have co-opted the standards road map. Anybody who wants to go from G to X has to get through your toll road."
That quote, from a patent Attorney, says all anyone needs to know about why patents on non-tangible things are bad. If you're going to patent something, I think you should have to build it before you're allowed to apply for a patent. If it can't be physically built, then it can't be patented.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.