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FTC to Examine Patent Application Process
Armchair Dissident writes "The BBC is running an article that suggests that the FTC is to look into the way that patents are reviewed and issued. If this article is correct it seems that many guesses as to how patents are issued were correct; with 95% of patent applications being approved. They may also address the issue of "patent trolls"."
Are you telling me Microsoft didn't really invent the double click?
Did they patent the first post?
It's good to know the biggest corps best businessmen are going to decide on the next generation of patent law.
Here's an editorial discussing and explaining exactly the patent issuing problem in US.
Can it be that somebody at the FTC actually reads slashdot?
"Outlook Positive"!]
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
We're working towards a solution...Suprised that MS is on the list of supporters....
But note the end, which states -
"The last major changes to patent law were in 1952 and there is no legislation before Congress which means that ideas like a patented method for picking up a box by bending your knees may well continue for some time. "
So let's not hold our breath, eh?
My MythTV HowTo
And did anyone else read the last part as "parent" troll instead of "patent" troll? Or is that just me?
Hmmm.
I just took out a patent on running articles that suggest that the FTC is looking into the ways that patents are reviewed and issued.
1. Make a Patent.
2. Enforce the Patent.
3. Profit!!
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Bring on unrestricted patent rights I want to patent the quadruple click :-P
In other words, patents owned by anyone you don't like, or agree with. That is what troll means around here, isn't it?
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
..they'll have people that are 'experts' in given fields. Somebody who knows the difference between a PDA and a general computing device with limited resources. Heh.
... slashdot, check...
... patent office, check...
... FCC, check...
... TV? Well, we have foxnews and soon-to-be AlGores Democratic-fest channel.... check
So... who's left to troll?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
From the article:
"But we have seen instances where companies use that monopoly in an anti-competitive way"
Doesn't a monopoly imply a lack of competition? This would seem to go without saying.
Unknown host pong.
I don't understand why the US legal system doesn't adopt one of our better ideas here in the UK: Make these "patent trolls" and other leeches pay the defendant's legal fees if they lose their cases in
court instead of slithering off to drag someone else in front of a Judge. This would kill an industry built around threatening people
with huge fees stone dead.
It would no longer matter if "Shithead inc."
with their newly acquired patent on "sitting the right way around on a toilet" threatened a shelter for blind puppies with legal action, since Fido and pals could count on a less than gallant army of equally unscrupulous lawfims would work on no-win no-fee no-payout basis to defend them.
Mom and Pop stump-jumper could simply ignore the SCO's of the World and go about their business as the legal vultures and patent maggots preyed upon each-other.
Why the hell should any company (even Microsoft) have to pay out to defend themselves against these parasites?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Any chance this could render some of the more idiotic patents worthless.
Case in point
Microsoft and their double click of death
and
The guy who patented swinging in a swing?
ITS ABOUT TIME THIS WAS REVIEWED
***I GOT NUTHIN***
How about a Slashdot-style modding system on patents? Could we prevent gaming the system?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Well.. logically the next patent in line is the Ctrl-Alt-Del one. It was probably used more than their double-click.
Hmmm.
"the Patent Office ultimately greenlights over 95% of all original applications to issue as a patent.
This compares with 65% in Europe or Japan."
With statistics like that it's obvious that there is something wrong, just wonder why they've left it so long to fix it...
They may also address the issue of "patent trolls
:-)
Does this mean that I should now look at the FTC Website with a -1 setting in Mozilla?
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
How much per click? Who do I write the check to?
At least until the lobby gets built to make EVERYTHING patentable.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Unless something is done, there will come a time when multi-nationals own everything. Has someone already patented the concept of pointing to a location in code? The act of typing an alpha-numeric character into a web based form? The idea of physically depressing an electro-mechanical mechanism to effect change of state in a physical or electronic system? The act of inhaling air and making an energy exchange with human blood? This is just silly. It has to stop.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The problem is that the USPTO cannot thoroughly review all applications. Thus too many fall through the cracks.
Belgium has solved this problem. They issue patents as easily as we can register copyrights. Got a dispute? Take it to the courts.
I like that system. Take the power out of the examiners hands altogether and let courts decide these issues. Yes I know courts already decide issues, but with the way courts invalidate patents, what is the point of the USPTO?
Sure someone will say that might favor big companies as they can afford patent litigation, but we know that getting rid of IP legal protection is not going to work.
We are not going to simply eliminate the patent process (although you can, by Congressional action, or by amending the Constitution). Any of you geeks who think this will happen are in fantasy-land. We simply need to take power out of the hands of the USPTO.
Another good effect of this would be that all those patent prosecution attorneys (aka patent scribes) would lose their jobs, quit the practice of law (since they only went to make more money than an engineer), and flood the engineering/ computer programming market. All the while the demand for patent litigators (more of a REAL lawyer than a patent scribe) would skyrocket.
That would at least stop the outsourcing of patent prosecution to India...
funny responses all used up (darn) so here's the informative one...
"patent troll (PAT.unt trohl) n. A company that purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent.. --adj."
Via The Word Spy http://www.wordspy.com/words/patenttroll.asp
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I already patented a "method for reviewing the process by which patents are reviewed and issued"
ha! I'll have my lawyers contact your lawyers.
I wanted to patent, a process by which grants are made by a governing entity that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time.
And yet, Rambus, Amazon, SCO and others can patent stuff like dirt, and get away with it.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
If trolls are a problem with the patent office, the solution seems simple: start giving citizens patent moderator points.
The National Academy of Sciences is calling for more funding for the patent office where 3,000 examiners handle 350,000 applications a year with an average of 17 to 25 hours to check on the validity of a patent application.
Businesses claim a lack of due diligence at this stage often results in patents being granted that should not see the light of day.
There you have it, the entire problem in a nutshell. Too much work, and not enough people.
And I have a solution.
Public review for patents. Open source meets patent reform.
Here's how the new system might work. Someone applies for a patent, and it gets posted to a website for public review.
That gives the public the ability to search for prior art. If prior art is found, even after the patent is granted...zap. The patent is invalid. And if the prior art is more than...say 5 years old, the idea is now public domain and no longer patentable.
Also, widen the definition of prior art. Best example of that I can think of off the top of my head is Intel patenting a method to detect overclockers. Measure the cpu clock versus an internal clock. Compare. If they differ by more than a small percentage, shut down. In other words, they managed to patent a binary counter. Bogus. Simply using an established widget in a new way shouldn't be patentable. No more Bezos "with a computer" patents.
And no patent should be granted for more than 5 years or so. This is important, otherwise we could wind up in a technological backwater. Small countries (with no extradition treaties with the US) would be the next Silicon Valley. You think you're being outsourced now? Just wait until you can't program at all in the US due to fear of litigation.
I think that it should be possible to have an idea, patent it, and make your million. But not at the expense of the entire tech sector.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go double click something. ;^)
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
because a great deal of work needs to be done in reviewing the market to ensure that a potential patent has not already been patented or is in use already, people seeking patents often perform a great deal of their own research to save themselves in legal fees.
if, in the process of preparing the background for a patent application, you find that there IS previous work, what percentage do you think actually file the application?
My guess is around 5%....
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
I think I should quickly patent patenting!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The notion that pointless patents are somehow new is simply false. It would be nice if we could screen these out better so that examiners weren't wasting valuable time doing work on swingset process applications when they should be working on important business patents.
It's nice to see some optimism that expanding the examiner force should alleviate some of the problem.
And here's a suggestion for eliminating trolls:
Currently a large percentage of patents that go to trial (I remember reading 40-50%) are declared invalid. Why not, in those cases where a patent is declared invalid, require that the plaintiff cover legal fees of the defendant? If that were the case you had really better be sure that your patent was valid. Kind of a specialized "loser pays."
Tell them that the system needs to be fixed, not thrown out. Mine is Goodlatte (R-VA, 6th) and my suggestion to him is to use funds from the axed TSA to hire qualified laid off IT workers to act as screeners since they, unlike typical patent screeners, worked in the industry.
The push should be to limit software patents to 2-3 years so that we don't sound like anti-business commies. Follow it up with hiring good patent examiners and you're suggesting a good solution that moderate congressmen can safely support.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
guess what, after 18 months patents applications are published and are used as prior art.
See the american inventors protection act of 1999
...elminate patents all together...
Its an out dated concept, we no longer need to protect incomes due to invention. If you make a good product you will make money.
End of Story.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
As long as we're allowed to patent business practices and most patents are granted without proper examination, there's a neat way to eliminate the problem: simply patent the business practice of patenting something that doesn't deserve one then suing everybody that's already using your idea.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
we never should have let them patent trolls
can you belive that there are a few still live too?
reg numbers:
2294165
2220615
2241634
damn furry little guys still give me nightmares.
I just don't see how only 5% of patents are rejected if the emphasis at the patent examination level is to reject, reject, reject.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Thank you AC! Didn't know such a thing existed.
But after a quick read, I found this:
All utility patent applications filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office after November 29, 2000 will be published if an applicant does not expressly request on filing that the application not be published. An applicant may make a request for non-publication if (1) the applicant has not filed the application in any other country that publishes applications; and, (2) the applicant does not intend to file the application in any country that publishes applications.
So, it's a little bit better, but not by a whole lot. You can still hide your applications, and it doesn't take into account things already "in the system."
I still say that serious reform needs to take place. But it's nice to know that the law already sees it, AC.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Patents themselves are held in secret until granted. That's the whole "protecting good ideas from being ripped off" spirit of the process.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
That would be like, OMG! LOL! GOATSE! LMAO!
And they'd probably publish it! LOLOL
Hi,
> with an average of 17 to 25 hours to check on the validity of a patent application
Wow, this seems off. They have 2-3 business days per patent? With that, there wouldn't be a problem-- anyone who has done a research project knows you can become a mini-expert on anything in 2 days.
But 3000 workers, 360,000 patents/year, that's 116 patents/year per person... at 24 wks/year 5 working days/wk (note the 2 weeks off for vacation), that's about 1 patent a day.
1/day is a lot different than 3 days per. Plus they likely have meetings, interruptions, etc. Worse, that's an average.
Still, 1 day to a) check patent database for priors, b) google, c) encyclopedia, d) quick call to Encyclopedia Brown or the Baker Street Irregulars or Buckaroo Banzai, then write it up and *poof*
It should work. I suspect the numbers given aren't the full picture, as one patent/day is something a trained person should be able to do a better job.
I think the patent office culture (when it doubt, pass it and let the courts decide) is at fault. And funding won't help that.
A.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
Is that where someone faxes the goatse ascii art to the patent office???
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Public review for patents. Open source meets patent reform.
Unless a request is made when a patent application is filed, an application will be published 18 months from its effective application date.
At this point members of the public have 2 months to submit publications for review. Perhaps the period should be extended to 4 or 6 months? That would allow more time for the word to spread throughout the industry about a particular application.
There you have it, the entire problem in a nutshell. Too much work, and not enough people.
And I have a solution.
Public review for patents. Open source meets patent reform
Yes, but that is not as far from reality as you might think. After the patent is issued it becomes publicly available. And if you can dig up any prior art that the stressed examiner missed, then the patent (or parts of it) will be rendered invalid.
This happens all the time. In particular when someone gets sued by the patent holder, they often go out on a prior arts search that is much more exhaustive than that of the examiner and the applicant put together.
Tor
Does the patent process currently have a public comment phase? That is, are patent applications publicly available, and do (or should) assessors take those comments into account?
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
Leet giberish wrote:
"Patents themselves are held in secret until granted. That's the whole "protecting good ideas from being ripped off" spirit of the process."
Not any more. Patent applications are now published in a searchable database.
go to www.uspto.gov and look.
Do a search in the applications for "RFID", and prepare your bladder for imminent release!
Dr Null
Here's a comment I posted earlier today where I mention the patent reexamination process and suggest a modification. I'll re-print a summary of the data here
It is currently possible to request that a patent be reviewed by the USPTO. This does not require a lawsuit (or technically even a lawyer, though there is a need for a properly-formatted request).
There are two types of re-examination. They differ in several respects. One, inter partes, allows you to basically provide rebuttals to the filer's explanations, and the other ex parte, does not.
My thanks to Thalia for locating the associated fees on the USPTO website: inter partes costs $8800 and ex parte $2500. Both of these costs do not include legal fees, which Thalia estimated (for inter partes) at about $12,000.
The problem is that getting a patent runs about $1,000 (again, not including any legal fees). This tends to slant things towards people acquiring patents, as it is still more expensive to get a patent revoked.
The modification that I'd like to see made would involve *patent owners* having to pay ex parte or inter partes fees if it is determined that their patent was improperly approved. This means that groups like the EFF (and, with some work to make the process particularly easy, perhaps anyone) can initate re-examination requests while supplying prior art examples.
Such a change would encourage patent filers to ensure that their patents really are legitimate when filing (reducing the number of bogus patents), and would not financially penalize someone who knows of prior art and wants to fix the USPTO database (if anything, I'd like to see someone who successfully brings up an example of prior art and gets a patent revoked *paid* a small fee by the patent filer for their time).
This change would involve minimal changes to the system, and not much cost. There might be the issue of collecting from the patent owner, who might be unwilling to pay. I think that an eight-thousand dollar deposit per patent would probably be too weighty, so I'm not sure how to approach that detail yet. However, even if the USPTO needs additional funding to help cover costs of employees needing to review patents where the USPTO cannot collect from the patent filer, I think that we woudl be better off (furthermore, that individual could be barred from being issued future patents until they have paid off their existing dues).
Problem: this change would *have* to grandfather old patents, as companies and individuals would otherwise be liable for masses of money for bogus patents. Irritating as it is that those people were able to get away with such behavior, the system permitted bogus patents, and charging them fees for said patents now is not reasonable (nor would it be acceptable to many people).
I think that this is the only feasible approach to the problem. Trying to ensure that the USPTO never grants invalid patents would require that they maintain a huge staff of PhDs that are up on the bleeding edge in every area of research (and honestly, woudl be better off doing research instead of reviewing patents).
Thoughts?
May we never see th
"Then sleaze-co starts using my invention, I try to sue."
You have to patent something *before it's disclosed to other people*. That's the point. It gives you protection. The way the patent system is *supposed* to work you're also supposed to provide evidence that you've developed said invention, notebooks, diagrams with dates, times etc.
In this case, you patent invention, Sleaze-Co steals it, you sue and win because you have the patent and Sleaze Co pays your legal bill as well as the damages.
Deleted
... disclose prior art fully.
Seriously: I believe the patent examiner does not research prior art; (s)he reviews the prior art listed in the application. It seems to me that many applications that should never have been approved in the first place are lacking in prior art. So, why not add a penalty for failing to be exhaustive in the prior art listings?
If it becomes clear that there was prior art that should have been known to the applicant (though dilligent research), and this was not listed, then the patent should be invalidated in its entirety.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Opening up the opportunity to submit prior art more easily might be a good idea. There may be problems with that approach, but I'm not sure what they would be right now.
As for your other suggestions, for the most part, they are already the law. Simply using an established widget in a new way is not patentable, unless it's novel and nonobvious.
Do you know that almost every single patent application is rejected the first time? Most of them are rejected a number of times. Then the applicants attempt to distinguish their inventions from the prior art found, or draft their claims more narrowly, in order to get the patent issued. So there aren't that many cases where no prior art is found...
At any rate, I thought you guys would be interested in what the Patent Commissioner had to say at a talk he gave last week for the DC Bar.
He mentioned quite a few things, but most interesting was that since, I think it was April this year, ALL applications coming into the PTO are immediately scanned, and everything is done electronically from then on. New papers to go into the file are also scanned when they come in and added to the database. There is one office left that's being phased out of the paper files, but they're apparently on schedule.
There was an incredible amount if inefficiency when these files were being passed around between different buildings to different examiners, and someone had to find the file to insert new correspondence.
They are also working on improving access to most of the file over the web, and developing a new system for electronic filing. (They have one now that apparently is horrible -- I don't know much about it other than that everyone hates it and it's not helpful.)
The other main issue he discussed was the fee bill pending before the Senate. It was passed by the House, and will likely be passed in the Senate now. This will end fee diversion from PTO revenues to other government programs, a major step in the right direction for them. It's been a long haul getting this bill through, since it's obviously not high on the agenda vis-a-vis terrorism, but they seem to have succeeded. This bill contains a compromise requiring any unused fees to be rebated to applicants rather than spent by the PTO, but they don't expect to leave anything around to rebate if they can help it.
I think these changes, and others, are really going in the right direction. The problem, as with all things in the government, is that it's very slow. I'm definitely encouraged by the way things are going though.
"The problem is that the USPTO cannot thoroughly review all applications."
Umm. Then it should simply stop accepting applications until it *can* review them all. The *whole point* of a patent office is to thoroughly review all applications, otherwise it might as well not exist at all. Replace it with a monkey with a rubber stamp and a filing cabinet.
Deleted
straightened out! EFF = Electronic Freedom Foundation and Pubpat = the Public Patent Foundation. They are just getting started at working toward getting this patent mess brought under closer scrutiny. Somebody has to do it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's really nowhere near enough time. Patents are extremely complex, and are often written in a somewhat obfuscated manner to the degree that that's possible.
Plus, of course, the examiner has to be qualified in the field the patent is being applied for; you don't put civil engineer examiners in charge of applications for biotechnology inventions. So there are likely some even more overburdened examiners, since the load cannot be evenly distributed.
You also don't realize that this isn't a matter of looking at one patent all day. Examiners also have to hold meetings to discuss any remediable defects with the applicant, read through revisions of the application, etc. So it's less than you'd think; prosecution of a patent takes on average 18 months to 3 years, IIRC, in part because there is a back and forth with the applicant. It's hard to know an invention thoroughly that you've only looked at for a few hours over a couple years.
AND you cannot blame the PTO for allowing some of the patents we've seen in recent years. They're obligated by law to grant patents unless there's a good reason not to. And worse yet, once granted, it's actually really hard to find inventions unpatentable.
What's needed is more money for the PTO so they can hire more examiners, increased publication requirements, permanent best mode disclosures by damn near everyone, and reduced burdens for challenges to patents (such as using the preponderance of the evidence standard, and being able to reexamine PTO prior art).
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Are you saying you patented a website that was shut down by its registrar for policy violations?
It is always easier to discard the waste than identify the gems.
Now, let us suppose that 99% of the patent examiners perform their duties well, and they can seperate the plainly dumb from the genius.
There will always be that 1% that will not perform properly, are distracted, disgruntled, pissed off, annoyed, freakish - the same group who spit in your burgers, the same group who doodle on chip designs.
If I worked at the patent office, and saw microsofts' obvious fake, I'd let it through just to see the reaction on slash. I would let the guy who earlier wanted to patent breathing.
It's a lot more complicated and expensive than that. Usually it involves courts and lots of lawyers. You can't just file a form.
who read the title as "FTC to Patent Application Process"?
This would screw over all the little guys who have patentable ideas but no way to maximize their profit. Lots of individuals and firms patent things that they sell or license to others.
That's related to the 'loser pays' ideas floating around. The problem is that patents are intended to protect small individual inventors, as the big companies are already able to defend themselves. Loser pays systems tend to discourage small inventors.
.. with whatever legal word means "an earlier claim takes precedence."
The solution is really simple:
1. Make it easier to get patents. Right now, patents are reviewed and issued as if the US PTO was the final arbiter of all truth in the universe. This is of course absurd. A patent should be nothing more than a claim that an idea was developed at a certain date.
2. Make it easier to cancel patents. Patent office arbitration and the legal system are fine for determining the legitimacy of a claim.
If a patent is invalidated by an earlier claim, then the patent is stamped
When a patent expires, it's stamped "public property."
All patents (current and expired) are held forever in an absurdly large database that helps inventors and investigators determine the value of future patents.
Patent officers would no longer be pressed for time; they'd simply comb through the database looking for bad patents, and through their favorite field of study looking for ideas that should not be patentable.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
The problem with the English Rule is that it dramatically increases the nuisance value for a well-monied plaintiff suing a moderate or poorly-monied defendant. The defendant, even with a meritorious case, is far more likely to cave.
Sure, when a company asserts an absolutely meritless patent action against an individual who is capable of bringing a case all the way through trial (or summary judgment) and appeals, an English Rule approach will do justice, and might arguably deter bad acting conduct. On the other hand, when does this really, really happen? What individual can shell out the million or two necessary for her defense?
On the other hand, when a company asserting a probably meritless patent action against a nice mid-sized company. The damages asserted are wildly out-of-touch with reality, but the risk of losing on the downstroke, even where the plaintiff gets a third what they were demanding, means an award of plaintiff's fees, and a million or two kicker, under the English Rule. Accordingly, the defendant has literally NO poker hand to play at the settlement conference.
This is the experience with the Copyright Act, which has an almost dead-nuts lock fee-shifting rule for prevailing plaintiffs, with a pretty-good-chance-but-not-a-lock-shot of getting fees for defendant. The plaintiffs are all over the defendant with even a so-so case, and have little reason in practice to settle reasonably. The more unbalanced the respectice resources of the parties, the worse it is.
THEN, we consider the plight of the little-guy-as-plaintiff-with-a-meritorious-case. This poor shmuck now faces the choice of walking away from a solid claim, or risking personal financial anhialation if he is wrong or lawyerly outmatched.
Since few cases are ever clear, the English rule for IP has the salutary effect of reducing cases brought against defendants. However, it is the poor shmucks who lose out in almost every case. The advantage for the well-heeled is much greater, a story that we don't need here, where the well-heeled have already too much clout. In practice, a poorly monied plaintiff with a great case can consider sharing a piece of the result with a contingency lawyer under the US rule. Under the English Rule, the economics change dramatically.
All rules of general application are bad rules for particular instances, until you consider the consequences. Fee-shifting is no exception. STAC would likely never have gotten its multi-million dollar result against Microsoft under an English Rule approach, while powerful and monied plaintiffs would still be bullying individual and small companies.
That's related to the 'loser pays' ideas floating around. The problem is that patents are intended to protect small individual inventors, as the big companies are already able to defend themselves. Loser pays systems tend to discourage small inventors.
Maybe, but not necessarily.
If the liability was shared between the small individual and his lawyers, then such a system could work. Of course, the proceeds would also be shared.
But consider this: with such an arrangement, lawyers would be attracted to those people with the best cases, instead of those with the biggest wallets.
Seriously folks - put the Slashdot Moderator (and Meta-Moderators) to good use, and let them have-at-it against The Patent Applications.
They've got many years experience dealing with patent (in the sense of obvious/synonym apparent) Trolls.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
.... IT union = zero political power. Always voting for a democrat or republican = zero political power.
No political power = zero economic power.
Zero economic power = modern technofeudalistic serfdom for the producers,and getting worse daily.
I am constantly amazed how so many really *quite smart* people haven't bingoed to this yet.
Did anyone notice this little sidebar?
Did anyone notice that it was never clarified, not even in the article?
Patents have nothing to do with keeping anything secret. That's what Trade Secrets are for. What patents are about is the exact opposite of keeping innovations secret. They are about publishing innovation so that the whole world (or at least country) may benefit. Patents are an insentive to publish the details of newly developed technology. In exchange you get a temporary exclusive rights to the technology that you developed.
This is basic information for anyone that knows anything about Intelectual Property laws. However, it seems that a few people at the BBC either don't have a clear grasp of this, or maybe forgot to clarify this. Consider that the BBC is a lot more thorough than most of the mainstream media here in the states, and how few Americans are likely to pay attention to our own mainstream let alone foreign media like the BBC. It's no wonder that most people are clueless as to how out of control things are getting with to abuses in Intelectual Property Law, and therefore, why so many people are getting away with it.
Heck, a lot of people doing the abusing don't even realize that what they are doing is an abuse of the system, or at least they act like it.
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
Why does it take so much time to research a patent application? The article claims "17-25 hours per application." That seems a bit much in this modern age.
More money to the PTO is not going to help. That's just a gravy trough for lawyers. It is completely unrealistic to expect a government department to properly assess all human knowledge for prior art, no matter how well funded it is. See some patent fixes.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
The FTC issue here is that the FTC has some antitrust responsibilities, and there are situations under which antitrust law can overcome patent law. A crucial issue here is patents which cover de-facto standards. Anyone can get a very narrow patent by narrowing the claims. Normally, a narrow patent isn't useful, because it's easy to do the same thing in some other way. But if, say, Microsoft comes up with a unique way of doing something, makes it a de-facto standard, and patents it, such a patent can prevent interoperability.
But enforcing such a patent may be an antitrust violation. That's where the FTC comes in. If a patent is only useful if you're the dominant player, the patent is valid but enforcing it is a violation of antitrust law. It's not a patentability issue; it's a restraint of trade issue, which is the FTC's area.
If antitrust enforcement hadn't been out to lunch since the Carter administration, we'd have more cases on this and the obnoxious use of narrow patents by dominant players would be far less of a problem. Maybe the FTC is waking up. It seems unlikely from the Bush administration, but some good stuff has actually been happening over there.
That's related to the 'loser pays' ideas floating around. The problem is that patents are intended to protect small individual inventors, as the big companies are already able to defend themselves. Loser pays systems tend to discourage small inventors.
I agree that "loser pays" systems do generally have this issue. However, I do not think that this is an serious problem in this case, for several reasons:
1) The cost is bounded, and *relatively* small. The increase in worst-case cost is less than order-of-magnitude. This is not like exposing someone to legal liability, where insane judgements can be made. Furthermore, I would expect that if demand for reexamination increases (relative to initial examination), improvements in
processing efficiency may be made. Remember that capital had to come from somewhere to patent the thing in the first place.
2) Small inventors are unlikely to have patent portfolios of thousands of patents, and thus have limited risk.
3) Since there are also associated legal costs (unless it is made *much* easier to produce and send in properly-formatted reexamination requests, and corporate lawyers will be the ones sending in such complaints, it is likely that companies will find it easier to simply send an unofficial "we believe we have prior art, and we intend to request a reexamination of your patent" with a reference to the prior art letter to the patent holder. This gives the patent holder the opportunity to give up his patent rights to the public domain, and does not impose legal fees on the company.
1. Make it easier to get patents. Right now, patents are reviewed and issued as if the US PTO was the final arbiter of all truth in the universe. This is of course absurd. A patent should be nothing more than a claim that an idea was developed at a certain date.
The USPTO isn't always right -- that's why they have the reexamination and litigation approaches to change a USPTO decision.
2. Make it easier to cancel patents. Patent office arbitration and the legal system are fine for determining the legitimacy of a claim.
If you're talking about from the patent claimant, I agree absolutely. Patent cancellation should be free.
When a patent expires, it's stamped "public property."
All patents (current and expired) are held forever in an absurdly large database that helps inventors and investigators determine the value of future patents.
This is already the case. In addition to the modern computerized database, there have been numerous patent library depositories around the country to do patent searches through.
May we never see th
That's a good idea. You should patent it.
FTC cannot change the current patent system. It has to be enacted in the congress. What FTC is doing is cosponsoring a Patent Reform Conference along with National Academy of Sciences.(sponsored to be precise). It is quite possible that the congress can substantially adopt its recommendations. However, FTC cannot directly act on it. BBC report says "Mad cap patents ranging from protecting a method of painting by dipping a baby's bottom into paint or a system for keeping track of people queuing for the bathroom may soon be a thing of the past if the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has its way."
Didn't they already kill a scientist and made several resign over wrong reporting?
When do they learn to report news as it is!
Prior art
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Makes you wonder about why the EU would want a patent system similar to the US...
If he actually existed in the real world.
This rant is right up there with his (actually Peter Finch's Oscar winning performance) 'mad as hell' rant from Network (1976): angry, impassioned, thought-provoking, insightful -- a catalyst for real change in society for the issue addressed by said rant.
danm slashcode fucked up part of it:
*NOTE*: I said "fuck it up", not "did not finish it because of not enough time") then I'm not doing the work I'm paid for. Now...
AC comments get piped to
damn slashcode fucked up part of it:
....
(*NOTE*: I said "fuck it up", not "did not finish it because of not enough time") then I'm not doing the work I'm paid for. Now...
"....Now
AC comments get piped to
Is it an indicator of system problems when a British government-sponsored news organization is providing good coverage of American federal trade overseers examining an IP service organization?
This is STILL a republic, just not so
democratic anymore. You really didn't
expect our wonderful "representatives"
NOT TO consider their true constituency
the mega-corporation businessmen, lawyers,
doctors, and American "royality", did you?
Money is the "mother's milk" of politics,
and the true "republican" constituency
are those who contribute the most money
with the politician's least efforts.
(Oops, excuse me, but that's "Republican"
constituency.)
Most of the really big political agendas
are no longer set by the politicians: --
they are cooked up by the (now predominantly
conservative) think tanks and business
associations, then handed to the politicians
on a silver platter. That is why so much
legislation is passed that no individual
politician has a total understanding of.
A good case in point is the new Medicare
legislation, which favors the drug companies,
their captive distribution systems, and the
various health maintenence organizations.
Most seniors cannot understand the new drug
benefit programs, so there is a very small
percentage enrolled: it is all tied up in
bureaucratic legalese and gobbledigook.
Don't expect the FTC or PTO bureaucracies
to be any different, or better.
What lawyers? Patent examiners don't have to be lawyers; they just have to a) be skilled in some sort of hard science, and b) pass the patent bar (which basically tests one's knowledge of science, as well as a few laws and regulations, but only the ones related to the PTO, and not the law generally).
I know several non-lawyers that passed the patent bar. It's hard no matter what, but it's perfectly doable. Most lawyers, OTOH, could never even qualify to sit for it, not having the requisite background, much less have a chance in hell at passing.
So what lawyers?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Personally I don't care much about small inventors. In many fields (such as the aeroplane/semiconductor industry), individuals and small players have almost never been able to compete with big players such as Intel, yet no one complains, since the law is mostly fair, it is just that small players don't have enough money to start with (actually there are also patents, but a silicon fab would cost a ton for an individual even without all IP-related things). The software industry might or might not be different, but the point holds: if you can outdo big corporations, good luck; if you can't, it is not always because the law is unfair to you.
Also, it is quite possible to profit from a software patent (if it is allowed at all) in a mere 2 years, at least for a big corporation such as MS / IBM, so why should the time be lengthened just because you can't implement and market your idea as quickly? And what's wrong with big corporations profiting from your invention after the patent expire? Everyone profit from public domain knowledge all the time --- those who can make better use of it profits more.
established companies should need to patent anything!!! I mean, seriously weren't patents designed to protect inventors with barely any money, as a way of them at least getting royalties for their creation?!?!
There should be some method that states if you can finance the production of the product/service patented then you can't patent it, as this means you're just trying to stop others making a better product than yours and/or selling it cheaper, which is directly against the free competition that should occur in a healthy economy.
This would end monopolies, and encourage innovation everywhere, as rather than economy running like "the one with the most money gets the most money", its more like "the one with the best ideas gets the most money".
The only place a patent would still be required is to protect small inventors, but the term of the patent should not be a set number of years, but rather when the inventor gets enough money to start producing the product himself, and he should have to issue ten identical licenses, so there is at least competition, and one company doesn't get a chance to exploit him.
I were to apply for a patent detailing how to apply for a patent, and it were granted? Could I sue everyone who applies for a patent using my process?
Could I sue the FTC for using my patented process that they granted me the patent for?
I think my brain is about to explode
FTC to patent Application Process
at a glance?
So many news about trivial patents really gets to you
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
...indeed in the headline. The term was used by a guy at Intel and has a specific meaning somewhat unrelated to the Slashdot/BBS meaning of the term (people goading for a reaction).
Specifically, it refers to a company that buys an erroneously granted paper patent cheaply, often from a failed company. They then proceed to threaten the entire computer industry, or a major player in it. An example is given of a company who bought a patent for $50,000 and then proceeded to sue Intel for $7 billion, claiming that all chips since the original Pentium infringed. The point is that all the troll company has to lose is their cheaply acquired patent, while the targeted company could lost their entire business - as such it is generally cheaper just to settle, which makes it such a lucrative business model.
Sort of like SCO. So while it doesn't fit the defintion of troll as such it coincidentally does fit in with 'don't like, or agree with'.
...indeed in the headline. The term was used by a guy at Intel and has a specific meaning somewhat unrelated to the Slashdot/BBS meaning of the term.
Specifically, it refers to a company that buys an erroneously granted paper patent
cheaply, often from a failed company. They then proceed to threaten the entire computer industry, or a major player in it. An example is given of a company who bought a patent for $50,000 and then proceeded to sue Intel for $7 billion, claiming that all chips since the original Pentium infringed. The point is that all the troll company has to lose is their cheaply acquired patent, while the targeted company could lost their entire business - as such it is generally cheaper just to settle, which makes it such a lucrative business model.
Sort of like SCO - who I guess is someone we 'don't like, or agree with', but for a different reason than the trolls.
The first point is not very easy to tackle, a lot of costs are put in the 'discovery' of every lawsuit. A US (patent attorney) colleague of mine said that that will not go away in the near future.
By means of example: a patent lawsuit in the Netherlands will cost you kEUR 20-50. At most. Germany, where you may have a little more quality, think about a factor 2-4 higher.
The second point should be easy to implement. Just copy the European Patent Convention, German Patent Law, Japanese patent law (based on the German patent law) or something alike. This system means you can kill the patent after granting with prior art. In an inter partes proceeding, which means you, as a person, will be a pary in the proceedings.
The National Academy of Sciences is calling for more funding for the patent office where 3,000 examiners handle 350,000 applications a year with an average of 17 to 25 hours to check on the validity of a patent application.
3,000 examiners handle 350,000 applications a year. That means 117 applications per year each. If we presume a pretty holiday-free 250 working days in the year, that means 2 patents per day. At 17 to 25 hours to check the validity, that leaves them working 34-50 hours per day...
No holidays and working a 34-50 hour day. That's long hours, even by American standards.
I work for one of the biggest Intelectual property publisher ( patent infromation basically) and in the last 3 years i have seen patents for pretty wacky stuff. Different countries have different rules ( the canadians grant truly wacky stuff) and different attitudes to patents ( the Japanease patent anything thier R&D comes up with ). The main critera is it has to be a novel invention. Now if its earth shattering stuff thats pretty obvious but most inventions are gradual improvments on existing inventions and this is where the arguements start. After the lawyers have filled the patent with as much garbage as possible it becomes very hard to tell a marginal innovation from an existing patent.
The patent examiners do their best but once its been granted its up to the patent owner to defend it, so you have to find anyone who is on your turf then sue them.... remember these are technical documents that have been rewritten by non technical lawyers to be as hard to understand and as broad coverage as possible. Then you have to convince a judge and jury who are also not specialists in this field that you have a claim for damages. Result ? you end up spending millions of dollars and years in court instead of working on new inventions.
Who wins ? the lawyers of course
Who looses ? everyone due to the delay in R&D , The waste of the inventers time and more often of not the bankrupting of the inventor.
Solution - Shoot all lawyers !!!!
--people might want to think about their petty differences as the economy continues to implode, and as we continue this mass migration to fascism and doublespeak. I don't think the universe will implode any time soon, but we are hovering on the brink of another crash that will make 1929-34 look like dropping a penny on the sidewalk and watching it roll into the gutter. And waiting until AFTER a crash, or an even more strained middle class due to the "globalisation" scam, will make it that much harder. Right now, people still have *some* money and some reserves, after that gets poofed, they will be hard pressed to reverse it.
I agree with you it's not likely to happen either, that's why I do a lot of personal survivalist/preparedness efforts right now. I don't trust big business or "the government" to have my best interests in mind,because they absolutely do NOT, but I trust most of my fellow citizens even less, because they have the ostrich head in the sand meme down as a conscious lifestyle choice, half from being brainwashed since birth, the other half is that becoming aware and working towards relaistic goals with government/work etc is just "too hard, what can you do, I'm only one person" whine etc.. They not only won't wake up, they won't even admit they been asleep at the swirch for years. Scary.
I'm old enough to have talked to a lot of people who lived through the first great depression, the gist of it was, hardly anyone "believed" it was coming, because of the government and business leaders overlapping lies. They had "faith" a "belief" that really huge business/corporate/government controllers were their friend or something, they had an illogical trust that approached a cult like "belief". that's as close as I can describe all those conversatiobns I had in the past, to nartrow it down. a "belief system" that things would always be great, all you needed to do was buy stocks and get rich or something, and government would always look out for you. It was nuts, you can see that now looking back, but people will NOT see it now looking at the present and forward. Nuts. The "great" depression was a huge congame to transfer actual produced wealth upstream to the loftiest of heights, to steal it basically, and it was successful beyond their wildest dreams. All the clues were there, and they are here now, too, just people did NOT want to see them back then.
IT runs the world now, there's a one time unique opportunity to make a difference,*right now*, but not doing it is the norm. It's more important to be entertained, engage in spectator sports, play games, etc. Not my lookout, I'm just a town crier, that's about it. If I really and truly believed things were just great, everything rosy, well, I'd say that, I'd post accordingly. It's not, it sucks right now, these are hugely dangerous times, both socially and economically, and most people are just stumbling towards it, because the alternative means they got to really think and work, and differently then what they have been doing. Change is just *too hard* for most people. And seeing the necessity for change is even harder, people reach a belief system level and STAY THERE, exactly at their comfort zone. It becomes impossible for them to even acknowledge any level higher in awareness, they suffer cognizant dissonance at that point, so that's where they stay stuck. It takes huge effort to overcome it. I admit it's whacked me hard, several times, in the past, one of the reasons I am so forceful on these subjects I write on, I just plain don't like to see people hurt/ripped off/ lied to. It makes me *most annoyed*.
its 17-25 hours for the first round of examination.
asuming that the patent application is not allowed before a final rejection is issued, the applicant may file a request for continued examination.
This starts the clock all over again, as the applicant must ammend their claims or provide additional arguements for the examiner to consider. The examiner then has another 17-25hours etc to apply a new non final rejection, followed by a final rejection or allowance.
This repeats many many times. The total examination time over several years might be more like 100 hours.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
.. the patent office professionals association,just it doesn't coordinate with anyone else very well, and special civil service laws apply to them. They also implicity seem to trust either Ds or Rs to rule over them, despite the evidence that the combination of D and R rule is the primary reason for having such a screwed up government and economy. Both those parties got completely corrupted generations ago,they are both run at the tippy top by global international corporations, yet there's little effort towards breaking thaeir stranglehold over society.