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New Patent Legislation Makes Some Headway
dreamchaser writes "EETimes has an article discussing new legislation that will stop Congress from siphoning off money from the Patent Office. The hope is that increased money in the coffers will allow the hiring of more highly skilled engineers to look at technical patents, as well as speed up the sometimes ponderous process of securing a patent. The bill has passed the house with a resounding 379-28 vote, and now goes to the Senate. Given all the discussions about how so many bad patents are being granted, could this be a good thing?"
How do we know that this wasn't just some insignificant rider on some more important "terrorist fighting legislation"?
What is the House Bill number?
I have been pwned because my
Wouldn't it be grand if when a patent was applied for it was sent out to a number of people who had signed up to review patents of a certain type. These people would provide feedback to the patent auditor and there would then be the possibility of a quick rejection.
Otherwise the auditor would have to do the same leg work as before, but this should reduce the amount of time a paid employee would have to review a patent, and allow more time for them to evaulate the "tricky" ones.
"My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality." - Muad'Dib
I used to work in the Trademark Division at the USPTO. One of the criticisms my friends on the Patent side had was that there were too many patent examiners who were engineers and not lawyers as well. They would issue patents even though there was caselaw to support not granting a patent in a particular case. My friends felt the Patet side needed more lawyers, who understand the legal theory behind the patent system and less engineers, who appeared to issue patents based purely on scientific theory.
I don't know if there are right or not. And I am certain there are some lousy lawyers as well as some lousy engineers issuing patents in the Patent Office. The question is, why should the Patent office be any different than any other Federal agency that requires an attorney to represent the interests of the public good?
There are good patents. Patents on compression are a good example of such patents. They involve some serious work by one or two geniuses who deserve some monetary reward on their work.
Others would disagree. What is a compression method? It's an algorithm for altering the representation of data from one form to another, smaller one.
You see, an algorithm is math. It's pure thought-- an idea of how to do something, not a method.
Math results aren't patentable even though a lot of work goes into them. They are ideas, or discoveries.
Patents were never intended to protect ideas or discoveries. They were created to protect methods and designs.
Combustion is a discovery.
The combustion engine -- that's an idea.
A design for a combustion engine - that's a method.
This is why patents work well. People are still free to use the original idea, but with a different method, or implementation. You can still build a combustion engine, it just can't work the exact same way. The distinction is simple.
With software, that distinction is not there. What's the difference between binary code, C++ code, pseudocode or just a plain description of the algorithm?
The idea is not distinct from the implementation.
The other question is why patents are required? The software industry is hugely successful as it is.
Why encumber it with patents? Competition disadvantages are a far greater problem than code theft in the software industry. Patents are state-given, time-limited monopolies.
I don't see any evidence that creating further disadvantages will work to eradicate those that already exist.
I'm worried they will work to increase them.