Slashdot Mirror
Chip Firm Hit By 45-Year-Old Patent
JPMH writes "The Register is reporting that a Taiwanese chip foundry is being sued over two chemistry patents, one over 45 years old. The patents at issue were filed in 1957 and 1964, but are still in force because they were not granted until 1987 and 1992 respectively. The first patent, 4,702,808, details an apparatus and method for initiating chemical reactions by focusing "radiant energy, such as a laser" onto streams of particles. The second patent, 5,131,941 also details an apparatus and method for initiating chemical reactions, but this time radiation is used to provide the energy kick needed to get the compounds to interact."
This may be a death rattle for Lemelson's submrine patents. The dead "inventor" recently had suits thrown out on this issue. Basically, under prosecution laches, they are charged with gaming the system deliberately or without any reasonable reason. Fortunately, this old trick is harder to perform now that patent terms run from the date of filing (with some possible adjustments) instead of date of issuance.
Aside from the fact the Description of the patents makes them sound like a patent on FIRE and if its held up I want the wheel, isn't there enough out there to show our patent system is completely broken ?
The primary purpose of the patent system seems to be allowing those that don't plan on developing technology, improving technology or doing any of the work needed to advance technology to practise legal extortion on those that do.
See, before the 1990's, patents took decades to be approved. They've now gone and made things work the other way, approving them too fast now.
Can someone *PLEASE* find a happy medium between friggin fast and damned slow?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The irony which you have to admire is that US citizens hate importing shit cuz they lose jobs. But US industry loves it because instead of paying a skilled labourer say 15$/h or whatnot they can get a way with "we won't kill your family today" as a wage in a third world asian country.
What I don't get though, aren't US industry leaders also US citizens? So basically they steal jobs from their neighbours to support slave labour. And we admire these people as "famous CNN headshots" because???
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Where do people like you come up with such rubbish. These people who applied for the inventions were "way" ahead of their time. Look at the year of their filing. Unbelievable!
Things are obvious to you because someone else did the hard work and showed it to you. Go and do something original just once in your life.
It's the patent office's fault for taking so long to approve the patent that is the real problem.
Why? The patents don't appear to be of the obvious "one-click shopping" type and the holders are initiating the action (rather than some company that bought the rights, a la PanIP). Clearly the work took a lot of research and specialized knowlegde, and the researchers were granted a patent for their work.
Are you anti-patent in general or were you just exhibiting a typical slashdot knee-jerk response?
The idea would be obvious to a thoughtful undergraduate student. Actually *doing* it, on the other hand, is an impressive feat.
... ". A few weeks later the guy came back and said "Submarine is taken, but the rocket and some other ones are still free ... " I think someone eventually wrote up the "Nuclear Rocket" patent for him.
That's what so frustrating about the US patent system. So many obvious ideas which require little though have been patented, and when someone puts an enormous amount of effort into actually *implementing* something they get sued. No frickin way did the engineers who built that particular part of the chip plant read that patent. And they get sued by someone who couldn't have implemented it in a million years.
I read yesterday that when the physicist Richard Feynman was at Los Alamos working on the bomb he was approached by some government legal advisor who said that they should patent any ideas they might get. Feynman replied that couldn't possibly keep track of all the ideas that crossed his mind, let alone write patents on them. The legal beaver replied that "just let us know about them" so Feynman said "OK, how about a nuclear powered submarine, a nuclear rocket, a nuclear reactor
Imagine that, someone had patented a nuclear powered submarine propulsion system before anyone had even exploded an atom bomb.
The point is so many of these patents are granted to people who haven't implemented anything when all the work is in the implementation.
:wq
Those are what as known as submarine patents. The entity getting the patent purposely manipulated the patent process so that the patents were granted long after the application was filed, giving an effective patent lifetime far in excess of that normally granted by the patent system.
Patents should be granted from the date of filing, not the date of issue. Submarine patents are a nasty abuse of the system.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Okay...so if the patent is 45 years old (1958) but was patented in 1987, I see a big catch-22.
If the patent does not start until 1987, then anything doing this from before 1987 should now be prior art.
If anything from before 1987 is not considered prior art because the patent was created in 1958, then the patent should be enforced from that date, not the 1987 date, and therefore expired.
Oh...sorry Government and sense...my bad
Bingo! I've decided that the powers that be want to leave the patent system as is not because it fosters innovation, but because it feeds the American tendancy to want something for nothing (which is why Lotto is so popular here). What is (most) every American's dream? Strike it rich and retire, even though this means that if you are rich many other people will be poor. I'm no communist, but this strike it rich mentality is just absurd.
I would like to live in a world where doing something is rewarded, rather than being the first to think of that something.
"But isn't getting filthy rich the American dream?", I recently had someone ask me.
Well, no, it isn't. The American Dream (tm) is to own your own property and to make your living from it so you don't have to hire yourself out as a servant.
Somewhere along the line The American Dream has turned into the idea that you hire yourself out as a servant ( or you're a worthless bum) so that you have the proceeds to buy lottery tickets in the hopes of hitting it rich by chance.
That isn't the American Dream, that's the American Nightmare.
KFG