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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?"
The legislation would keep patent office revenue in-house and thus could expedite the patent-application process, which grows lengthier and more costly as technology gets more complex, sources said.
Is it just me, or does this sound like it is just throwing more money at a problem and hoping it will solve itself? If the legislation doesn't have provisions to specify new procedures to actually get around to solving the problems, it is unlikely to solve much of anything.
You probably shouldn't click this.
If the patent office is still run the same way as it is now (with the quantity of approvals vs. quality), this will be worthless. Only with true reforms of the patent system (non-obvious patents, abolishment of software patents, protection of inventions, not algorithms) will the patent office really be reformed.
Subject pretty much says it all.
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
I am not particularly a big fan of patents in general because of the amount of abuse that the system receives, this 'extra' cash in the coffers could either go one of two ways. Patents will be forced to become more realistic and used properly, or people will be able to 'specialise' patents to an even greater degree and so create more crap than before.
Patents in general are still a bad thing IMHO.
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
"Could this be a good thing?"
Well, it COULD... It doesn't seem likely to me, though. As far as I can tell, the people who grant patents tend to be missing the point entirely. How is one-click shopping really an innovation that should be protected???
No, if you ask me, it needs a complete overhaul, not just more money. And disregarding the practical considerations, I still think it's ethically ridiculous to lay claim to an idea.
Anything that could result in more engineers being hired is automatically good, from my point of view.
...
But of course, do you know anybody to work harder when they're paid more?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
The facts are:
I'm surprised the patent office is undergoing such a wild goose chase with no data to back the project up. We expect more from services funded by tax payers.
While I would hope that higher salaries would attract better employees, I seriously doubt that the government ever could (or should) compete with the range of salaries that these lawyers can earn in the private sector, especially if you factor in the occasional large jury award.
I think it's more important to attract more of the people who enjoy that kind of work and less of those who are using this as a stepping-stone. Increasing the salary is not very likely to accomplish this, unless the increase is for those who work there more than just five years.
to privatize the patent office. Contract out the work of reviewing patents, and renew the contracts of the best workers when the contracts expire.
They must be trying to make up for the
Madrid Protocol
where now you have a direct means of applying for registration in 60 countries throughout Europe, Asia, Latin and South America by filing a single application in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
hmmmm......
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
A step in the right direction, but isn't the relentless siphoning of funds from Social Security a more pressing issue? The longer we ignore these issues, the more momentum the debt train builds up and the harder it will be to stop it.
Every week the government takes money from my paycheck, ostensibly for my retirement. Then they spend the money for their own pet projects, and have no feasible plans for restoring those funds. If a bank did the same thing it would be called fraud, massive fraud. (Banks reinvest your funds they don't spend your money to pay expenses.)
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
A good thing? LoL. All the article talks about is this making patents go through the system faster. "the company has been frustrated by the long wait for several key patents that, if granted, could strengthen its intellectual-property position in its target digital audio, infrared and MP3 chip markets" YAY! Maybe congress was siphoning off funds because the patent office is worthless? Congress isn't usually as dumb as you think :) What it sounds like to me is tons of intellectual property companies lobied congress hard for this change, they just want their patents to fly through the system faster.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
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?
The question isn't whether more money for the USPTO will result in better engineers being hired, the question is whether it will remove the income incentive for approving as many patents as possible. Well, that and whether that change will shift the balance of interests enough to influence PTO behaviour.
Will there still be pressure from large corporations to get lots of patents approved? We've seen patent disputes cut both ways, so that may be a wash.
Anyway, don't hold your breath for this little change to result in massive review of the bad patents already issued. Patent law won't be in order until it's been thoroughly scoured by Congress with the express purpose of fixing it, and changing the status quo is the hardest thing for a legislative body of wealthy elites to decide to do...
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
What so called experts will they hire? Tech experts who have been in the industry for several years or more politicians who could siphon off a bit more money to advance their political status? WHy does it seem that whenever it comes to patents, everyone is either passing the buck, or chasing their own tail.
I'll give an example, an absurd one. Somebody actually succeeded in getting a patent for a helmet that you wore on your head that was airtight - except you would be breathing oxygen generated by little cactus's that sat on a shelf near your ears inside the helmet !!!! No, it's not a gag!
The point is that anyone but that inventor knows that that patent is wasted time and effort on the inventors part, but he paid his share of the fees too. I dont want some one at the government looking at my patent for worthyness or not; that's NOT what they should do. The *marketplace* determines that, not the patent office. A patent on a stupid or unneeded thing is worthless.
We dont need armies of government types doing this. The marketplace does it for us.
This may be heartening news.
As things stand today, getting a patent, from the most complex biotechnologies, to the simplest gadget costs tons and takes years.
If, for once, the government does it right, ignores the lobbyists, and provides for the patent office to be less of a cash-cow by taxing crackpots, and granting every unscrupulous firm that asks a seventeen-year lock on breathing, we might see a time when it costs less to come up with an idea and use it to quit your day-job.
And on that day, I for one will shout 'Halliluyah!'
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
Smith, who chairs of the House Judiciary Committee's IP panel, said his bill, H.R. 1561, could result in 140,000 more patents being issued in the next five years. "That's 140,000 more economic opportunities for the American people," Smith said.
Maybe, but chances are for every one of those 140,000 monopolies there will be ten potential competitors who won't have any economic opportunities at all.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The fundamental breakage in the patent system today is that the patent office has only incentives from people getting patents. They get money per patent issued. They have every incentive to issue patents. They have no real incentives to be careful. That diffused cost is borne through society, but isn't an issue that is ever raised with the patent office.
This kind of feedback loop is well-known to economists. It goes under the name, "regulatory capture". And the patent office which was meant to regulate the patent system has indeed been completely captured by the interests of people who want patents issued.
Increasing how efficiently people get rewarded for existing behaviour doesn't help. Attempting to speed the process up while leaving the incentive system in its current broken state will make things worse.
Fix the incentives. First.
If the patent office recieves a fixed budget regardless or the number of patents they grant, they can objectively determine whether or not to grant the patent.
If their budget depends on the number of patent applications they get, which depends on the number of patents they grant, then it is in their interest to grant more and more patents - regardless of merit.
Just post each new questionable patent idea on Slashdot and let the responses guide the search.
This is too little too late, even if it is well intentioned. There are enough bad patents out there to make a fortune for the owners for the next 20 years. Worse, the patent litigation process is so expensive for defendants that they often settle even knowing that the plantiff could never prevail in court. Not too many small companies have $1 million, which can be necessary to spend on a patent defense. So even with reforms, it will still be just as possible to bully small firms with patent barratry as a business model. Until it is more realistic for someone to defend themselves against bogus patent claims, new laws about what you can patent won't do much good.
The facts are:
1. There are bad patents. No one disputes that - like the amazon patent on one-click shopping and the transmeta patent on code-morphing.
2. 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.
This is the whole problem, too many people don't see patents for what they are. They are not a form of "protection", they are a form of controll. Sort of like saying "well the King disallows bad religions, and the King disallows good religions - so we should do a study of which religions are good and which religions are bad" . NO, Pull your head out!!! Annytime you restrict how people can use any type of innovation you are going to have negative and unpredictable consequences. Some are worse than others, but lets get real - as long as patents exist you are not going to have a fair patent system any more then we could expect a King to fairly choose which religions people can worship. (eg. how do you know that 50 other people wouldn't have independently invented similar compression routines within the next year or so anyhow patents or not, is their work and effort worthless)
The end in itself is to get rid of Patents, anything that goes in that direction is inherently good, anything that pulls away from it is inherehtly bad.
Take this new appropriation and use it to reward diligence by examiners to correctly declare a patent obvious and/or covered by prior art. This should reduce the frivolous filings and motivate the examiners to perform the job to the best of their ability. Findings by the initial examiner should be anonymously verified by a more senior examiner. Take it a step further, REQUIRE that a minimum number of possible "prior art" candidates be attached to the patent by the initial examiner. Points off their bounty for those that do not pass muster and bonuses for those that do.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
It says Congress has taken away $750 million in revenue since 1992. That's less than $70 million per year. Adding that $70 million back into the patent office's $1 billion budget is only a 7% increase. Should we expect a huge difference?
I took a patent law class this year at school, and the professor started the class with a video put out by the patent office. it went something like this - an inventor creates an invention. he sees a lawyer who will fill out some documents for the invention and sends it to the patent office. once at the patent office, it gets sorted and passed to the examiner's office, where it SITS IN A PILE AND WAITS ITS TURN! AFTER ALL THE EXAMINER IS VERY BUSY, AND THE DOCUMENTS MUST WAIT THEIR TURN!
If that's not a prime example of inefficiency....
This may just be the cynic in me speaking, but getting the senate to vote on whether or not they can siphon off money doesn't seem like it will work.
That is like taking a vote to see if your industry will take a paycut.
Hey, maybe that can be the next Slashdot poll
Would you take a paycut to continue doing your current job?
1. Yes
2. No
3. I am an American IT worker... I have no job
I am not stubborn. I am right!
being a patent examiner is essentially an entry-level position. Patent examiners tend to be young law-school graduates with technical undergraduate degrees.
I agree with the statements, but the emphasis may be wrong. Patent Examiner may not be the final goal of someone's career, but it should not be entry level. Patents have too much effect to be controlled by people with no experience.
Patent examiners need to:
1. Check if prior art exists.
2. Decide if it is obvious.
3. Make certain the patent is specific enough to be applicable.
4. Make certain the patent is written in legalese so normal people will not know if they are violating it.
Lawyer types have the research ability needed for #1, but so do most information scientists (librarians). Good computer applications would help.
#2 seems to be skipped completely in the current process.
#3 is the responsibility of the applicant's IP lawyer. That is why applying for a patent without your own lawyer is usually a waste of money. The patent office could offer service to assist with this, but not until they have the resources to handle it.
#4 is the part the lawyers enjoy. When they are done editing a patent, even a see-saw can seem to be innovative. ("A manual device for vertical transportation using a lever to create equilibrium between the masses." IANAL. This is still too lucid for a patent.) That is the only part where legal training is essential.
Does the patent office have recognized experts to assist with #1 and #2? It should help the resume of an electronics engineer to have a few years of patent research. Maybe there should be an organization of (amateur) patent examiners. Anybody can assist, but pay only starts (and is a very small annual award) if the peers vote you to the level of "Master", either within the organization or by other professioanl organizations. Each year they award the rank to 30 people, 10 voted in by the community, 3 appointed by the IEEE-USA, others for the skills that are required for the current patent applications. (Add a rule that you cannot be active if you have a patent being processed.)
A public forum could help with this, especially #2, if the patent office had the time to read the responses, but it would have to be done very carefully. Post the issue the patent is claiming to solve. Then read the responses to see how many match the patent. They could even "sell themselves" by suggesting to contributors of unique solutions that they apply for a patent. The responses would also help limit the patent by specifying what is not being patentable.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
The patent system is at its weakest when the examiners make obvious mistakes, like granting patents for technological advances that have significant prior art or are blazingly obvious extensions of existing tech.
People question the system, with reason, each time it is obviously serving to stifle innovation, like when a company with a questionable patent uses it purely to bring lawsuits against "violators" instead of even trying to develop a product.
More resources for the patent office will probably result in more and better examiners who will be able to avoid these kinds of extreme abuses... which in turn will reduce press coverage and public awareness of the continuing (but more subtle) problems -- which will in turn serve perpetuate the patent system in spite of its fundamental flaws that remain unresolved.
Making a wheel less squeaky doesn't get it greased.
Personally, I think it's a good move, simply because I don't see the patent system as a "house of cards" type of thing. There will be changes eventually (probably later rather than sooner), but it's not the kind of system that will collapse -- after all, it does serve a purpose in spite of its weaknesses and loopholes.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
In the debate on HR 1561, Howard Berman said, "Using a random sampling methodology, the PTO estimates its error rate for patents issued in fiscal year 2003 at 4.4 percent. That means more than 7,000 patents were issued in error. That means that at any given time given the 7-year pendency term for patents , there are over 120,000 bad patents in force. " He meant 17 year life, not "7-year pendancy", but his 120,000 figure was in the right ballpark. PTO currently gets $1.2 billion dollars to examine patents on everything under the sun... from blue lasers to new cleaning solvents to fishing reels. While some /.ers question whether giving PTO more money is wise, I can't see where starving it for cash will make it operate any better. Because it takes years not days to get a patent, USPTO is under pressure to speed things up. Speeding things up either means hiring more people to handle the cases, or spending less time on each application. Hiring more people requires more money. Spending less time means there will be more than 120,000 bad patents floating around at any given time.
When judgements for single patents can cost $500 million, as in the Eolas case, and patents on drugs can be worth a billion a year (e.g., Viagra) does it really make sense to cut back the PTO budget? Again, PTO gets a mere 1.2 billion. It's not like an extra billion will break the US budget. HR 1561, which was supported by the National Association of Manufacturers, the Intellectual Property Owners Association, and the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association, will only add an extra $300 million.
$385 billion gets spent on the military and national defence. $332 Billion gets spent on interest on the national debt. $278.5 billion on health care. $46.2 billion on the federal Department of Education.
Only $1.2 billion for the agency that is supposed to protect all the R&D investments made in the US?
>>"new legislation that will stop Congress from siphoning off money from the Patent Office."
This isn't about throwing money at the problem, it's about removing some of the profit motive from recklessly granting patents. As things stand now, Congress is profiting off of the current patent madness. A Congressman can use that money to buy votes in his state with pork projects, which'll make him damn likely to support any patent that comes along.
Basically, no government agency (short of the IRS) should be turning a profit. If they are, they're either over charging or under-funding themselves.
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