When Good Patents Go Bad

will writes "The Washington Post has a good review of patents in the information age. The insanity of the US patent system has been chronicled on this site numerous times in the past (for example, an FTC report on patent policy, some patents for obvious applications such as Microsoft patenting local weather, and Amazon patenting inside book searching). The Washington Post article does a good job of overviewing IP issues today, why the current US patent systems fails in the information age, and gives an example of patent extortion. Excuse me while I patent my DNA."

Comments

I just have one question for the writer.

[saskboy]

Excuse me while I patent my DNA."

Would that be YOUR DNA, or your clones'?

Pertinent link : bustpatents.com

[Lord Satri]

www.bustpatents.com

Arn't we allready there?

[yoshi_mon]

Last time I heard our law schools were turning out 1 potental lawyer for every 4 americans.

So are more lawyer really the anwser?

One Click Local Weather reports

[Camel Pilot]

I recently modified the shopping cart on my wife's hot sauce store to give a discount if the client is identified as Mozilla or Linux O/S. A friendly feature to encourage the use of alternative browsers (and desktop operating systems). This is the first cart with such a "feature" I know of.

After I finished, it was a _tough_ one night hack, the thought occurred to me that some folks have patented less (ie One click shopping, local weather etc.). It demonstrated to me the need to be change the patents laws to prevent the locking up of obvious or trival application of emerging technology.

EU patent law campaign

[levell]

This might be interesting if you are currently writing to your local MP (or equivalent for EU countries other than the UK) as the FFII are imploring you to do if you don't want the EU to pass bad software patent law. It might be an idea to mention this article in your letter as it gives an easily readable summary of what if wrong with the American system that is written by a "respected" source.

Let's hope we get the law as the EU parliament framed it....

Re:Another reason for ridiculous patents

[willtsmith]

We need to have financial incentives in place for people who defeat patents with prior art searches. Basically, you would put bounties on killing patents as a way of clearing the roles of nonsense patents. This would be the IP euivalent of selling-short (betting on stocks going down).

A challenge phase needs to be put in place so that our patent killers (as well as competitors) have a chance to savage a patent with prior art claims before it officially goes on the rolls.

Finally, we need new categories of IP that try to make things a little more clear. Copyright and Patent no longer covers the range of intellectual property out there.

Patent - Applies only to physical machines. Applies specifically to a problem and the machine that solves it.

Copyright - A written and performed work of art. Computer programs do NOT apply.

Software (4 years)- A very specific process for creating something new. Data structures may be involved, but only in conjunction with a related algorithm. Alternative methodoligies for using the same data formats (reverse engineering) is specifically allowed.

Method/Application Patents (4 years) - Protect a novel way of doing something. This may apply to a business method or a software application.

Pharma (15 years) - A chemical composition for curing a specific ailment or modifying a biological process. All Pharma patents must be vetted. That is, the research must be done showing that it actually does what it CLAIMS it does.

Pharma Use (non-exclusive 10 years) - A set of research that proves an additional use for an Pharma substance. This could apply to something as mundane as aspirin. A court could grant intellectual property rights proportional to the scope of a new use for that substance which would increase it's use. For example, proving that Aspirin helps prevent heart attacks increases the use of Aspirin.

This one sounds weird, but it encourages people to do more research on existing substances. Pharma research is EXPENSIVE. This research should be rewarded since it adds to the level of human knowledge and increases the use of EXISTING products making the whole process more effecient.

The IP would work as a royalty granted by IP courts levied on producers of that substance.

Research patents (non-exclusive 10 years) - Like Pharma patents, this would expensive basic research. It would be a royalty applied to products which profit from knowledge derived from expensive research.

The most obvious IP in this area would be human and animal genome. It's not an invention, it's an expensive process of discovery. Additional types of IP could relate to materials science, and even advanced physics (like the guys slowing light down, quantum entanglement methods (advanced communications)).

Engineered Organisms - A company that engineers an organism would have rights to re-produce and sell that organism. Any one else with access to that organism could breed it, but not for profit.

Re-production of the organism using unique methodologies would be allowable and would constitute a unique organism IP. Though, other IPs may apply.

New IP categories. The IP office would have staff and processes devoted to exploring new categories of IP and their associated rights, and fees. They could write legislation and submit it to congress for consideration and ultimate approval.

Re:All I can say is...

[One Louder]

If the WWW had been encumbered by patents, it might not have gained world-wide acceptance, and the patent would subsequently have had no value whatsoever.

It's a classic Catch-22 situation - attempting to capture the value destroys the value.

A good review on why software patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Found this in Lawrence Lessig's blog discussions:

Software Patents in Action

- an ominous coward

Re:Gillettes new razor 37 has patents

[TDiddy]

Here's a link to the Patent Office web site where I put in a query for the term "razor" in any patent with Gillette as the assignee: Gillette Razor Patents I am one of the 13 patent examiners who would ever examine a patent for a razor (among other things), so I am all too familiar with slogging through a bunch of crap to find decent prior art. As far as the 37 patent on the Mach 3, a bunch of those are design patents and another bunch are older technology that may apply to the Mach 3 tangentially at best. As for a patent examiner's take on the present state of affairs here at the USPTO, I'll just say that things are pretty messed up, and it looks like it is only gonna get worse. Then again, Rogan just "stepped down," so who knows what's gonna happen.