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Machine Vision Patents Thrown Out
chalker writes "Cognex Corporation, the world's leading supplier of machine vision systems,
announced today that the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas has ruled in favor of Cognex in its lawsuit against the Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation.
It held that the claims of 14 patents asserted by Lemelson are invalid and unenforceable , and not infringed by Cognex. Co-plantiffs included barcode reader manufacturers Symbol Technologies, Accu-sort Systems, and Zebra Technologies amongst others. These patents were classic "submarine" patents orginally applied for in 1954, but tied up in the patent office and changed over the next four decades to cover changes taking place in the machine vision field. Lemelson had threatened to sue numerous end-users, including Motorola and Ford, over the past two decades and had settled all of them out of court for over $1.5 billion in licensing fees. For once a judge has seen how ridiculous our patent system is."
..when so many corporations own patents on so many intangible things that a corporate dynasty like IBM can bring anyone in the world to their knees financially.
Even foreign governments.
Intellectual property in all of its various forms is being abused by the corporate world - both friends and foes of Linux and otherwise. The madness is the laws supporting this behavior continue to pass, bypassing the individual and wholeheartedly supporting the corporation.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.
Not to be funny but has anyone considered the implications of all these recent intellectual property rights and how it seems more and more that we're being pushed into the draconian future of Johnny Mnemonic and Shadowrun? The only way you get information is to steal it. The only way for another corporation to get information is to hire you to steal it.
I grow more and more distressed at the world my son will grow up in, the conditions he will consider normal, the laws he will break just by trying to think.
if something is a truly unique invention, or a truly unique work of art, it deserves a patent or a copyright.
The problem here is that the patent office doesn't have the resources to investigate patents for legitimacy. Anyone can then patent anything and get away with exthorting license fees out of other, unrelated, businesses.
The patent system should be modified such that any significant improvement upon an existing patent negates a new invention from being covered by the previous patent. Then technology is advanced, rather than hindered, by the patent system.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Currently in both academic and policy discussions, there is some debate as to whether it is better to put the "burden of proof" for patents in the application process or the infringement/interference litigation process.
... hence the ongoing debate ...
The current U.S. system is arguably set toward "easier" application and "harder" enforcement - with the idea being that a court room has more flexibility and resources to tackle difficult intellectual property rights issues than the patent office. Moreover, this type of system avoids a bias against inventors: a more "front-loaded" system that applies burden at the application process would delay the patent and perhaps even shorten the patent life significantly (similar to the argument pharmaceuticals make regarding how rigorous FDA testing effectively halves the patent life of new drugs)
So it's nice to see cases like Machine Vision. Of course, for every successful court ruling against a harmful/irrational patent, there are several more that survive the litigation process
- So push it hard, but don't expect to see much movement for a while.
It's not really clear what the average person can do to promote change in the patent system. Do you have any suggestions?I'm completely serious. I like many others are unhappy with the current situation, but I honestly don't see a way to change it. What can the average person do to promote constructive change in the US patent system?
As somebody else mentioned, write your congressman and senator about the situation and push for legislation that would make a difference.
One significant and fairly easy change to make is that once a patent is submitted for registration it may not be altered. It either passes or fails in its current state. If it fails, you have to submit an entirely new patent application. This means make sure you get it right the first time or cough up more money (giving more resources to the patent office to adequately check things) It also means you don't get to say that a patent you submitted in 1954 but have been changing every 3 years to match current technology counts as being patented since 1954.
Another simple change would be to make it so that people who have their patents thrown out in a court of law have to repay any liscence fees previously collected, plus a penalty fine of up to 50% of those total fees to be paid to the court system, (thus reducing the burden on the taxpayer that the "patent to sue" practice places on us by over-use of the courts)
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze