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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."
...can be found on Pieter Spronck's aptly named ridiculous patents page. "Scoring based upon goals achieved and subjective elements" - very nice.
The Army reading list
It's not just that it's easy to get ridiculous patents through the Patent office. There are incentives in most companies for employees filing patents such as cash, stock options, etc. This not only inspires some people to come up with good ideas, but it also inspires a lot of people to come up with crap just so that they can get some $$$ (yeah I'm one of them too).
This is going to be a giant windfall for the lawyers in all this as there will have to be an overhaul of the patent laws and system.
Here's a prediction too: after the "fecal matter hits the rotary cooling device" in all this patent fiasco you'll see an increase in the number of people going to law school. Mainly for IP law, too. Don't laugh, remember how the non-geek masses took computer science in the 90's because that's where the money was?
Trolling is a art,
is that they are fishing expeditions. IANAPL (...patent lawyer) and I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of computer-related patents, but there is a fundamental flaw i the patenting world.
For example, as a chemist, I search the patent literature trying to find out what chemical reactions have been reported. It is a well-known fact that you have to take the chemical patent literature with a huge grain of salt (no pun intended!) because many times, the reaciton simply doesn't work the way it is reported to work. The chemical patent literature is not a peer-reviewed process like scientific journals are. It is significantly harder to get an article published in the chemical literature than to patent that material.
I guess what I am getting at, is that there is rampant patenting taking place with few significant things to show for it. Chemists patent anything and everything they can in the off-chance that someone will use it in an industrial process. They are just total fishing expeditions. I know that there will certainly be people out there to correct me with their own opinion, but in my opinion, it just points to a flawed patent system.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
They started as an agriculture research and advocacy group (RAFI) and morphed into ETC about the time they started discovering how broad the patenting system's enclosure of life forms and genetic structures was getting. It's an issue with huge implications, since ideas, biological structures, and living beings are being patented in sometimes outrageous ways.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Categorized and arranged alphabetically in all their royal glory.
My favorite: The Blind Spot Toy:
USA patent 4,477,3358 / Issued 1994
It is never too early to start your Christmas holiday shopping. Why not be original this year and avoid the toys that everyone seems to be buying? Why not give the gift that keeps on giving, the "Apparatus for Aligning Image with Blind Spot of the Eye"!! Patented in 1975, this toy allows the user to locate their blind spot! In order to play this amazingly fun game, strap the toy tightly on the top of your head.
Close your left eye and focus on the dangling tab with your right eye, then switch eyes. Voila! The dangling tab has disappeared into your blind spot. Not only will this invention provide endless hours of fun and good times for everyone (especially at parties), but anyone wearing this apparatus will unquestionably become irresistible to the opposite sex. Enjoy!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
" good review of patents in the information age"
Is it good because it agrees with the Slashdot point of view?
Just ask IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, what they think of patents. I doubt they'll like this article very much.
I can already see it...-12, troll.
Generic post highlighting the fact that patents are really tested post-issuance by courts and not pre-issuance by the Patent Office...
Or in other words - "is it a great wonderfull new idea rather than just an incremental change that would be obvious to any engineer faced with the same problem?"
IMHO probably one of the worst problems with the current patent system is the inability of the patent examiners to judge the "obvious to a practioner of ordinary skill in the field" test. A few years back I was engaged on an x86 cloning project .... it's a patent minefield, with the spectre of Intels lawyers looming at every term .... we came up with a wonderfull (though complicated) way to get around one of Intels primary (and IMHO obvious, with prior art) patents .... only to have a patent appear from a 3rd company with exactly the same solution ... since both companies had come up with the same solution faced with the same problem boxed in by the same Intel problem patent I would argue that the solution was obvious to "ordinary computer architects" at the time ... but there's no way I can see for a patent examiner to know or understand that - and since there's no way to bring these issues up untill after the patent has been granted - which means going to court ....
The patent minefield isn't really getting any bigger ... it'sm just that the mines keep getting closer together ...
The bad news is that Bricklin thinks software patents are bad, but since they are here, you have to try to patent as much as possible. I guess soon we will have to take out patent-infringement insurance with premiums as high as our salaries.
Don't discount the revenue of advertisers to retailers. If Amazon is anything like most grocery/department stores, they get a lot of money for product placement. When I was just out of high school, I worked for a company that was paid to go around to grocery stores, take down a bunch of product from the shelves and put it back up in a different order. Why? Because the stores don't own the layout on the shelves - certain products do (in my case, Gillette happened to own the shaving cream and deodorant shelf layouts).
But this has nothing to do with patents.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
No! I am not punishing anyone. The discount actually comes out of my pocket not the windows user. Look at it this way Open Source developers tend use Mozilla (or other gecko based clients) and linux as a desktop. This is my way or rewarding those folks since I run our store almost exclusively on Open Source software (UPS Worldship and stamps.com requires me to run Windows for some machines :(
I have not had the time to dial in all open source browsers, but will as time permits.
When a store spams you with a "coupon" (a very common practice) does that "punish" all those who do not have the coupon?
You're honestly of the impression that there is actually a sizable minority of people who would like to invent something with no guarantee to their right of exclusive production?
I work as a EE in a company and I've been in this situation myself before. I've become so disgusted with the patent process that I've decided that I'm not filing any more patents. If I was working independently as an entrepreneur I might have a different opinion - and it is my belief that that is the real justification behind patents - to protect the entrepreneur long enough to get their product to the market.
However the patent system today doesn't serve to protect individuals, its now nothing more than a corporate club for litigation against any would be competitors. Its used by companies that are already well established and are in no danger of not getting a product to market. I remember someone once telling me the way patent settlements are reached is that the lawyers all gather in a room and the companies put their stacks of patent papers side-by-side, the difference in height yields the settlement fee. More recently there has been a trend towards reviving old patents on things that are obvious or have been in use for decades (ie. Forgent's "jpeg" patent). Its nothing more than a money grab by parasites abusing the patent system.
So back to the original point, yes I've invented things before - but no I don't care if the company I work for gets exclusive rights to it. You see it takes time and effort on my part to file a patent, and what do I get for my efforts - a small wad of cash, big freaking deal. Now on the other hand if I don't patent it, I get to take that knowledge and use it again, for myself or for any other company I work for. Further as soon as the circuit I worked on gets fabricated, it becomes prior art and can no longer be patented after that. Its a selfish motive on my part (no more selfish than the patent grabbing company though), but in the end my method serves myself and everyone else better (well at least the people I work with since they get direct benefits of that prior knowledge)...
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
There ought to be such a thing as antipatents. These would work like regular patents, in that they would be registered, and somebody gets to claim credit, but also disavow ownership. So whatever the idea is, it's explicitly in the public domain, and whoever claimed it first gets some positive attention. Kind of like the GPL, but not just for code.
interesting points! but my english professor would have burts laughing and spilled red ink all over this flowery soliloquy of abraham lincoln. "like the rapist who drugs his victim and gently penetrates her"??- jesus man, this mellodrama should impress no one but torch waving farmers at the bandstand in 1840.
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
getting a patent or filing a patent, can at least provide some tangible property/proof of a concept, that can enable a startup or small firm to get investors, thus building their business. Its the business standpoint that most people here on slashdot don't consider.
People may complain about abuse, but isn't it better that via the patent system, people disclose their inventions instead of hiding behind trade secrets, thus allowing others to improve upon the inital invention? I would expect that people here would be happy about that since, thanks to the DCMA, reverse engineering is now of questionable legality?
At lot of what people on slashdot say is "obvious" may not be really obvious. One has to look and decide if it was obvious at the time of invention, otherwise it is impermissible hindsight, which is not valid reasons for combining references.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Personally, I doubt that any standard of patentability is high enough, duration short enough and scope narrow enough to make a patent system worth more than the value of the competition and incremental development that it stifles. Perhaps my views are skewed by being based so much on my seeing software development "before" and "after" software patents, but I think that with the advent of computer aided design and faster communications, the development of almost everything that is currently patentable is becoming more like software development or actually becoming software development.
I've been in similar situations and the thing about patents is the drive is usually from the business guys. Mostly, it's from people with little or no technical knowledge, therefore they try to patent everything. I've been asked in the past about patents and ordered to write up patents. Business guys don't care if it's obvious. They only care about whether or not they can make money from it. In fact the patents that are more obvious are the ones they are most eager to file. Their thinking is, if it's obvious, some one will end up implementing it. Therefore who ever owns the patent has a huge advantage, especially if their own implementation sucks. Non-trivial, non-obvious patents are the ones that usually have lower priority.
A good question to ask is: Is it possible to have free markets without authorities? I would say that Copyright and Patent law is needed... but anti-trust law is needed too! and also: Is it possible to have liberty without authorities. This is kind of an oxymoron, but I doubt freedom is possible without control of that freedom. In fact I would argue that freedom is almost impossible, as it is destroyed by both anarchy and control. Its too bad really, but it seems more and more like a phantom dream. and amusingly: What is truth without authority? Absurity? I don't really have any concrete answers to these questions, but I would be interested to hear your views.
I think the whole problem is that we are allowing patents on IP already protected by copyright.
The two protections were designed to be used for different purposes. copyright for IP, patents for inventions.
When you allow both types of protection to be applied to one piece of work, the result is strangulation of innovation.
We need to decide if software should be copyrighted, or patented. It can't be both. It isn't fair to the human race and isn't in anyone's best interest except the software companies (sometimes), which incidentally simultaneously have the most to lose, and the most to gain at the same time.
Paradox is not good for the legal system, or the protection of IP.
l8,
AC
You've chosen a trivial example (one-click shopping) which probably should never have been awarded a patent in the first place due to its obviousness.
Second, I don't like that term "software patent". You don't patent software, you patent algorithms and methodologies which can be implemented in software. Many of the algorithms, however, could conceivably be implemented through something other than through the running of a software program.
The economics of developing new algorithms are no different than developing a new automobile transmission. It entail risk, it costs money, it requires ingenuity and effort, and the results of your labour can easily be ripped off by others who had and did none of these things.
The real problem with "software patents" is the quality of the patents. Many should either never have been allowed, or have been cut back in scope.
It is not that patents are being granted here in the US to large companies who make large contributions to Politicians. Rather, it is the fact the we are pushing this insane approach to patents on other countries and they are actually considering it.
We have created a monster and that should be obvious to all. Yet other nations and regions are considering it. What a nightmare.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If a company has a test that looks for a certain DNA sequence which I have, is my body then considered prior art?
'I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds'
A few months ago, I invented a very clever little circuit. It solves a whole lot of problems with non-ideal component behaviour at the cost of one extra resistor than the more usual and obvious circuits.
I had researched my problem extensively before coming up with that solution, and in hindsight, I was pretty amazed that nobody had written it up before.
Then it dawned on me... useful, novel, non-obvious... patentable!
But... I'm not planning on working here 20 years hence. And I might like to use my little circuit again. It would be really annoying, the next time I have a similar problem, to have to invent yet ANOTHER way to solve it when I already KNOW a good solution.
That, and it's so simple that I suspect it has been invented before and just somehow never made it into the resources I researched.
So I'm keeping my mouth shut on the issue until the opportunity to file patents expires.
Put the Lime in the Coconut
From the Scientific American web site: an article describing the following patent:
Scientific American was not kidding. You could look it up. The patent was issued on October 1, 2002.The gales of laughter must have reached the Patent Office, because the Director ordered the patent to be re-examined, which I assume means that it will be revoked. It is now apparent that you can file a patent on a ham sandwich and the Patent Office will issue it.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Actually there is a story behind this. It was at a time when i was doing alot of thinking about copyrights, but every time i thought about the problems with copyrights - some of the logic - it sounded like somthing i had herd before. I finally came up with an essay comparing it with slavery and sent it to RMS. Believe it or not, he replied, and said somthing like I should be carefull because the suffering caused by slavery was far more atricious than what is suffered by copytights. Like more often than not, he was right.
So anyhow I was chewing on that for awhile, and long behold a week later I stumbled upon an article in the berkley daily planet writen by a pharmacutical exec trying to justify some AIDS patent lawsiuts against africans. The arguments that they had no incentive without patents, and that they were generous to Africans sure sounded like there was no incentive to grow cotton, and we are kind to our slaves on the plantation. From my history lessons.
The meaning of the 1850s today, the quiet violence, the nature of rights, the historical perspective, all those have stories too - but i just dont have time to elaborate here.