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MSNBC Looks At Patent Abusers' Victims
Camel Pilot writes "Patent claims have reached a new low when "inventor" Witold Ziarno sued the American Red Cross for using the web to accept donations. This MSNBC article discusses this case and how it was beat using web archives and prior art!
Also Pangia Intellectual Property has given up hope on extracting fees from small e-commerce websites for its supposedly patent on e-commerce. The only problem with the PanIP case is that they got away without having to pay for the legal fees for the defense in an obvious abuse of the system." (See this previous post for more on PanIP's dropped case.)
I hope the Red Cross sues the dude and demands blood for repayment.
what does it take to chase a charity for alleged patent abuse. How does he sleep at night?
There is a difference between the date applied for and the date granted - often measured in years. None of those facts alters the poor ethics of suing a charity (for purposes of the current discussion).
C|N>K
If the patent holder loses it's case in court, it's forced to pay the legal fees of the defendant.
Oh yes, they get kicked in the nuts afterwords.
Also, the patent office needs to be held accountable as well. Maybe they could fire the examiner that issued the patent.
I'm not saying that this is the difinitive answer, just some ideas to change things for the better.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The main argument behind patents is that without them, nobody would have motivation to come up with new ideas and no research and development would be done.
I say bullshit.
Patents are holding developments back. If you have an idea for a better mousetrap build it and sell it. If someone else copies your idea then you'll just have to improve it, or find a way to make it cheaper than them, or whatever. You'll have to act quicker to make money on your ideas, and innovate faster. I think that's a good thing.
The main argument behind patents is that without them, nobody would have motivation to come up with new ideas and no research and development would be done.
The actual argument for patents is that, without patents, people who use new inventions and innovations would waste huge amounts of effort keeping their discoveries secret from the competition.
The patent process is designed to encourage inventors to publish their ideas so that other people can build off of them. And after a number of years, the patent expires, and anyone can use the work for free.
The article is really more for shock value than anything else. This has gone on for a long time, but when you see something like this "Man sues red cross for trying to accept donations" it jumps out at you. I don't think the fact that it is a charity matters, The main issue is how stupid it makes the patent system out to be.
However, my grandfather used to work at the patent office, and still is a practicing patent attorney (at age 90), and will defend to the death the needs of patents. He is incredibly conservative and an old engineer who was in the army during WW2 and then went to a steady job at GE. The main issue is that people like him are controlling the importance of patents, and from prior experience debating with him, he has no understanding of the new type of intellectual property and the new needs of the patent system. Sadly, since people like him are the ones making the decisions, I doubt the patent system will change in the near future.
My dad was looking to apply for a patent on something a few years ago. The problem is that it was something like $2000 just to apply! This is why they are mainly granted to big companies, because the have the monetary backing.
"Something can be simple, but we shouldn't be deceived by this," said Jack Slobodin, another patent attorney. "If no one has done it before or thought of it, it deserves a patent. Like the paper clip, or the Post-it note." And the inventor deserves compensation, Slobodin said."
Protecting the rights of inventors is a necessary part of the research and investment fields, said Slobodin.
Otherwise, he said, there would be little incentive for taking risks: "The inventor should have a key to the courthouse. There's a long, sordid history of big companies stealing the work of private inventors."
The same old hopelessly flawed logic and a very good example of it: To make paperclips available to the World, which is what you are expected to do in return for the exclusive rights to profit from doing so, you need to invest in a paperclip factory, it's workforce, distribution network and all the other expenses associated with manufacturing investment. There lies the risk - a very great financial risk and rightly addressed by the patent system. If you consider an equivalently simple software or business method idea, where is that risk now? Just what exactly is it that needs to be protected? The only investment risk that needs to be protected in this case is the investment in the patent application itself and the litigation expenses required to extort money from legitimate and honest businesses and organisations.
Just who do the legislators think they're protecting when they engineer a system that enables worthless parasites like PanIP to persecute small businesses and others even to gratuitously attack charities?