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

Re:Can't read competitors' patents -- huh??

[Halo1]

No, this is a big difference between copyright and patents. You only infringe on someone's copyright, if it can be shown that what you wrote/created is very similar to what someone else did and if it can be proven that you have had access to this other person's work. I.e., if you, completely independent from someone else, come up with exactly the same thing and you can prove this, then you will not infringe on their copyright.

Otoh, patents do not make this discrimination. The only exception is that if you used a patented technique before it was patented (but you never published it, so your work cannot be considered as prior art), then you can continue to use this technique *for personal use* even after the patent has been granted (which excludes any commercial use afaik, though I'm not certain of this). If you independently came up with it after the patent was granted, you're completely out of luck.