FTC Issues Report Critical Of Patent Policy

hayek writes "The Federal Trade Commission issued a report yesterday regarding failings in current U.S. patent policy. Among other things, the FTC recommends that the burden of proof on parties challenging patents in court be lowered from the current 'clear and convincing' standard, to the easier 'preponderance of the evidence' standard. Even if you don't think the FTC recommendations go far enough, implementing them would be a good start to solving some of the problems caused by the current system." nolife points out a report at Law.com indicating that, under the current system, "Patent examiners have from 8 to 25 hours to read and understand each application, search for prior art, evaluate patentability, communicate with the applicant, work out necessary revisions, and reach and write up conclusions."

Comments

If you'd like to RTFA . . .

[PMuse]

Executive Summary
Official Press Release
Full Report: Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy
A Report by the Federal Trade Commission, October 2003

Of course, it would have been nice if some one had submitted this article yesterday. ;)
2003-10-28 18:40:17 FTC Issues Report on Competition and Patent Policy (articles,patents) (rejected)

Re:A fix to all this

[servoled]

huh?

Hacker == Criminal to most people

[newMe]

Oh, just give up on the term "hacker." Most people equate "hacker" with "computer criminal" and you are not going to change that.

I don't care how much you want and whine about the term "cracker." The general population has decided what the word "hacker" means and your definition lost. Pick a new one.

Once a definition has been decided it has a tendency to stick even if the Special Interest Group is forceful in changing it. "Queer" still means "Homosexual" (at least in part) even if we came up with the new, improved, prefered term "Gay." You don't want to be thought of as computer criminals? Get the general public to think of a new word (or new defintion of an old word) when they think of your definition of "hacker." Because they ain't going to change their definition of "hacker" to make you happy.

Maybe then you can work on a logo. (And, BTW, the Go/Othelo/Life logo is pretty stupid anyhow. You want a logo? Get one that is cute and personable, like the Penguin or Daemon.) But don't worry about a logo right now. The Hacker community has bigger public relations problems.