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EFF, PubPat Each Seeking Some Patent Sanity
AbstracTus writes "According to Wired, The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to get the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine 10 patents that were selected from public submissions. We slashdotters often curse patents that should have been rejected, but are not. Do you think that the EFF can have any influence on the U.S. Patent Office? Are there other actions that are more likely to work?" And sharkb8 writes "The Public Patent Foundation is searching for
people with experience in all technical fields to help examine patents. This is the perfect chance for attorneys, law students, and geeks in general to do some pro bono work. PubPat is the group that recently
challenged one of Microsoft's FAT patents."
The best way to influence the PTO is probably through Congress.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
By technical experts prior to be granted!
The Public Patent Foundation is searching for people with experience in all technical fields to help examine patents.
As a prominent member of the computing community, I feel that I would be an excellent candidate for "patent examiner". My experience with operating systems, particularly, makes me an excellent choice for verifying technical details. Furthermore, I have a broad knowlege of existing patents, and will be able to discover so-called "prior art" easily. Please consider my application.
Sincerely,
Darl McBride
There is definetly a large need to stop the excessive Patents. Microsoft will go as far as to start Patenting Open Source code if no one else has. I have to say the Patent Busting Competition is one of my favorites. I am running a fight semi-assoicated with the EFF at http://www.uberhacker.com, we are trying to stop the CyberCrime treaty which may shutdown sites like Zone-H or Security-Focus
Do you think that the EFF can have any influence on the U.S. Patent Office? Are there other actions that are more likely to work?
You go get the torches and pitchforks, and I'll round up the angry villagers.
I'm hopeful, but I can imagine all kinds of scenarios, such as discreet placement of Microserfs on various committees, boards, etc., to ensure that ludicrous patents stay in place...
but it looks more like a followup to this earlier story.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The problems with the US patent office are two-fold: /.'ers want to see "reject" as the default position).
1. Patent examiners are EXTREMELY over-worked. My future brother-in-law is a patent examiner, and he's often told me of a draconian quota system that rewards being quick and sloppy.
2. The US government is pro-business (as it should be, IMHO). However, this translates into the default standing order at the USPTO being "accept", and not "reject" (whereas most
The USPTO recently underwent some changes (new computer system, IIRC) that should allow patent examiners to be a little bit more effective in the future. But it's obvious to me the USPTO has problems - and they are management issues, not really idiot patent examiners.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Face it, patents are screwy because certain large companies profit from that screwyness. It creates a world in which only the big dogs can play, because only the big dogs have the legal teams to field.
Reform Tort law. The patent system will fix itself.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The new millenium's fastest growing profit machine -
1) buy small company that has a few loosely worded patents
2) begin campaign of lawsuits and harrasment against legitimate businesses that didn't think they needed to patent a process used by everybody
3) Profit!!!
you can't tell which side of the argument I'm on can you..?
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
www.uberhacker.com
Don't forget to add Microsoft's Double Click Patent and Mcafee's patent on Bayesian spam Filtering (filed months after Paul Graham's paper was published). I'm not quite fond of AOL's patent on "evil points" either.
If they hired some nerds that have a CLUE(tm) this wouldn't be needed.
*by reading this you acknowledge all copyrights regarding the placements of letters and numbers in a manner to form meaningful structures for the intent of public communications*
karma, hah...
Great onefor the lawyers: they earn a lump in prosecuting the patents, then leave the s**t hanging around for the chump techies to do free patent busting work.
If this is going to happen, it should be based on an _actively_ votable (i.e. "polling booth") list of patents (or, at least, patent areas) corresponding to important open source projects, e.g. "patents relating to scheduling improvements in operating systems". I think these are more important than "1-cluck shapping".
If your business suffers because of an invalid patent that your competitor holds then why not sue the PTO? That should make them change their default policy from accept to decline.
Seeking qualified patent examiners. Don't you think all the big corps will "donate" people with agendas, and the mess will continue?
Patent the patent system then issue a cease and desist to the USPTO.
No.
Patents for an idea makes sense, in part, when an inventor wanted to protect his or her ability to profit or control the result of their effort. Patents and intellectual property protections were designed to prevent people from using your idea or effort to their betterment at your expense. So far, so good. There's very little to argue with as nothing contained in the previous contains anything unreasonable.
Where the process has become abused is when the Patent Office began taking patent applications that didn't require a manifestation of some sort to "prove" your effort is unique or uniquely yours. There's nothing tangible in many of these contentious patents. They're just "ideas" and "descriptions". There's no "proof" or "gadget" that you can gin up to bolster what you're trying to protect. There's no math or engineering involved, such as programmatic effort or time in a machine shop.
That is where the demarcation should begin. When Xerox sued Apple and lost over the use of graphic icons on a 2D screen and similarly, when Apple sued Microsoft over "look and feel" and lost; That should have established the ground rules and in my opinion, neither Xerox nor Apple had a case. Instead, people have been testing the upper limits of what patents protections ever since based on nothing more than the motto, "You might get lucky.".
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
Pro is to Con like Progress is to Congress.
Unless you're a CEO of a large corporation or otherwise are a Man Of Means, there's no chance in hell to influence congress. And not only do you have to influence congress, but you have to influence a majority, and influence it *more* than your opponents. Which are the big companies holding the patents.
Yes, we have the best government money can buy.
Regards,
--
*Art
None of the items on the "patent hit-list" is what I would consider a high-profile "stupid" patent. These are all patents that are out there being enforced on a daily basis and are causing problems with business
They make no mention of the plethora of inane patents that have been granted (double-click patent, spam filter patent, swinging sideways patent).
The approach they are taking seems less likely to cause a big stir, because they are going to be hard fought with little gains in patent approval procedures
It seems to me that the easier way to get things to change (for the better) would be to gather up a list of 100 patents and systematically prove that every single one of them was extremely foolish to grant. Embarass the USPTO in the media with obvious claims of prior art.
Basically what we are looking for here isn't a few patents to be overturned, which is what the EFF is trying to do (its a nice start, don't get me wrong), but rather we need a change to the system, and unfortunately it appears it can only be done through an act of congress or through repeated abuses of the USPTO in the court system...
Just blow the whole patent office up. Problem solved. Seriously though, it is going to take some drastic measures to get any sort of change to go through. The U.S. Patent Office is full of technophobes and techno-idiots.
Listen to my experimental-industrial-techno!
Because ultimately if it's for prior art, all it means is that someone else should have patented it earlier. It would be far better to get them rejected for being trivial or obvious.
Apart from the obvious reasons to patent things (others might get there first), there's no good reason not to. The fee to apply is very low, and there is no penalty for being denied or overturned. At the same time, the examiners (AFAIHH) get bonuses based on how many patents they pass. The way to go currently, especially if you're a big company, is to try patenting everything you can, you might not get all, but the drop-out doesn't hurt you.
One way to change this would be to institute some penalty for filing dodgy patents. Both for the examiner who passed it and for whoever got it. A fine at least and repayment of any license fees garnered on the patent. Covering of expenses for the challenger, perhaps? A system of extra checking of patents from companies/persons that have had patents overturned previously? Repeat offenders? Three strikes and you're out? The possibilities are endless, but frivolous patenting should be as serious an offense as infringing on a patent.
-Lars
Has anybody ever considered applying for a patent on the fact of granting a patent? ("Pat Ant+ is a revolutionnary technique aimed to grant an inventor a temporary advantage over bla bla bla...")
:-)
I remember some time ago, a anti-patent group of French guys applied (and were granted IIRC) a patent for... the reduction of work duration! (which was particularly funny since at that time the French government was in the process of reducing the legal duration of work -the so-called 35 hours -
Wouldn't it be easier to actually find out what the 10 sane ones are?
I love C++
Frankly, I think granting non tangible IP patents is ridiculous. However, in the real world they aren't going to get rid of them entirely any time soon, not in the US anyway, and this MUST be admitted to I think to move forward in dealing with the problem. Taking them on a case by case by case basis in a retroactive review will be like herding cats. Theoretically possible, pretty dismal results in the real world and mostly a waste of time and resources.
I propose a different approach. Recognize the inherit difference between an intangible IP and a normal tangible product patent, and severely limit the patent exclusivity time limit with any that are IP. Make it a totally separate "class"of patent. Drop it down to two years, then that's it, in the public domain. Make it retroactive as well.
The way to beat patents... is to just ignore them and copy the idea anyway. If everybody ignores them, no-one will bother with them. Oh, wait, the OSS movement is already doing that with patents - and copyrights, and look-and-feel... etc. You can't sue a bunch of anonymous geeks who aren't making any money, now, can you?
If these stupid patents aren't allowed to be created in the first place then groups like the EFF wouldn't have to fight to get them overturned later.
It's not just stupid patents that are bad though. Patent squatting (just sitting on patents) should be 100% illegal, as it just impedes the use of certain ideas by making them more costly than others.
Patents were intended as a means of helping inventors get novel products to market by creating a brief and artificial "honeymoon" period. Patent squatting is a complete corruption of that idea.
If you are not bringing product to market, you have no moral right to sit on an idea in the hope that someone else will do the hard work of developing a raw concept into a working reality. Companies with teams of lawyers that merely patent squat and actually create nothing are simply scum.
Patents should expire by default within 3 years unless you confirm in writing to the patent office that you are actively working on something that uses the patented idea as a central component or feature. And *all* patents should expire within 10 years, regardless, because skewing the market this way should only be a temporary condition.
Increasing the cost of ideas is not in the interest of humanity at all.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I saw that PubPat was looking for technical experts to help evaluate potentially-bogus patents, and got all excited...I've been looking for a new job, and thought, "Hey hey, this would be sweet!" Then I saw that awful buzzkill of a phrase: "Pro Bono." BOOOOOOO! On a side note, I better file my ridiculously vague patent application quick, before any reforms go down. I'm thinking "Conversion of oxygen to carbon dioxide in order to fuel/maintain metabolic processes" or "The exchange of product or service for an amount of currency greater than the original cost of said product or service."
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
So, after having read the article, it looked like the reason behind every one of those selections was because the owner of the patent chose to enforce it. There wasn't one word mentioned on why any of the patents themselves were a bad idea. For example:
1) "The EFF is worried that Acacia, which has already sued several large communications companies, is unfairly targeting small audio- and video-streaming websites."
5) "...said the EFF is afraid Ideaflood may try to go after LiveJournal members."
7) "The EFF is afraid Test Central will use its patent to scare off distance-learning organizations."
8) "But Nintendo is being a big bully."
And so on. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of those patents look dangerous to me, given the overly-vague and broad descriptions, but revoking a patent simply because a company is "a big bully" is ridiculous. What would be the point of having a patent if you couldn't use it? Furthermore, just because a technology is extremely useful (read: Kill App) doesn't mean it belongs in the pubic domain.
Let's consider #3 for a moment, Acceris Communication's voice over IP technology patent. Assuming it's much more specific than the article suggests, why should they not be able to benefit from creating that particular VOIP technology? So what if lots of people use it? Isn't that the whole point? Create a killer app, then sell it for tons of money. Then when the patent expires other people can copy it.
There's no mention of prior art anywhere in the article, which is a whole other argument. I mean, if I suddenly patented the wheel, for example, and started suing everyone who had ever used a certain geometrically shaped object, then I could see you having a case.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Completely flamebait and out topic...
But oh boy! So true...
What patent is that?
Is the PTO's business model the same as that of a diploma mill? Well, is there anything to stop you from applying for a boatload of abusive patents yourself, then launching swarms of lawsuits against all those vile corporations that are stealing your ideas to transport energy through metal wires, represent infomation as '0's and '1's, make money by selling above cost, etc.?
If you can transform the PTO into a national lottery for millions of little people, with the courts clogged with drawing the winners, and big business bankrolling the prizes, then the system might get fixed. Might.
On another front, the U.S. has signed plenty of treaties promising free trade. Can you argue that the PTO's cluelessness is, in effect, just another form of government subsidy for U.S. companies and/or a red-tape barrier to imports - and thus is a violation of a treaty? Can you find a foreign government eager for an excuse to yell "no fair!" and slap a retaliatory tariff on politically sensitive U.S.-made goods? Take a good look at the recent fuss over protecting the U.S. steel industry - Uncle Sam was forced to back down, eat crow, and change his rules.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
As an ex-Examiner and law student, I have some observations on this.
First, Congress and the PTO are somewhat isolated. The way Congress and divisions of the government make law, as a topic, is called administrative law. This works by Congress making general federal statutes (Title 15 in the case of patents) and the right to make regulations to implement the goals of the federal statues fall to the governmental division concerned (with patents, the USPTO).
So, to influence patent policy, the first level is to influence the USPTO Commissioner. He could likely get the regulations governing how patents are actually examined, as well as the infrastructure withing the PTO, changed to improve the system. Most new Commissioners make changes anyway. As the Commissioner is appointed by the President, he ultimately has a lot of control as well. I'm not sure, but I expect that the Senate has to approve any appointment to the USPTO Commissioner, so in that instance, so contacting the President and your Senators at appropriate times may be influential, but this only occurs every so many years.
The higher level is to influence Congress to pass a bill to amend Title 35 (that part of federal statutes which deals with patents). Here you are up against all the big corporations who benefit from the present situation (IBM, MS, etc.). Still, lobbying is a tool and keeping up pressure effectively (i.e. not calling your representative every week, but applying pressure in lobbying-savvy ways, as by the guidance of an experienced Washingtonian lobbyist).
I would think that setting out goals for change, then adequately supporting them with evidence would be a good tool. Remember that the Constitution states that Congress is to "promote" science and the useful arts. The idea is to prove that some aspect of the current policy does not promote the development of technology, but retards it in some way, then Congress might be open to changing the statutes. I believe this happened with the so-called "submarine patents" - the patent applications that were in the PTO for decades and would get issued allowing the inventor to sue users of mature industries and, basically, extort vast amounts of money. (If this topic intrests you, search for the name Lemelson" - he built a multimillion dollar industry off of this tactic). As I recall, though, Congress modified the patent statutes to discourage submarine patents during the phase to harmonize US patent law with European practice, so the retarding nature of submarine patents may not have been such a big motivation for change.
If you really want to change patent law, the more effective way is as follows. Get elected President with a Congress stacked in your favor. Then do the following:
1) Pressure Congress to amend the Patent Act according to your tastes.
2) Use your treaty making ability to enter into treaties as a run around of Congress for any changes thet don't get implemented. This requires Senate approval but avoids the House.
3) Appoint a PTO Commissioner who will implement your changes in a way you like.
So, will the EFF be effective? What else can be done? Doing something (being heard) is better than not doing anything. Can the average /.er do something as well? Of course. The best thing might be to follow patent issues and contact the appropriate party (President, Congress, PTO Commissioner) at the appropriate time (just before action is taken). It would be nice if there was a companion website to /. that would encourage action on issues of importance to /.ers. I.e. allow postings of example letters, addresses for contacting, discussion of the issues. Sometimes this is done in /. itself - people sometimes post example letters or addresses of the concerned politicians. Maybe we can encourage a new
This process will provide the public with the tools necessary to thwart any bad/damaging patents prior to them being approved.
Read 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103, the actual patent laws. They're wording leads the courts to say, "Patenable until proven otherwise." Stop blaming the Examiners (ALL of whom are fellow engineers), the courts are the ones that have raised the burden too high for Examiners to find.
right?
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
$770 to file the patent (assuming it comes in under the 20/4 total/indpendent claims allowed) + fee X + fee Y during prosecution. Application is allowed. Now pay issue fee + maintenance fee 1 + maintenance fee 2, etc.
Second scenario:
$770 to file the patent + fee X + fee Y during prosecution. Application is rejected. No issue fee. No maintenance fee.
See the problem? No real monetary incentive to reject a patent. The PTO isn't harmed by patent litigation, so let the holder/infringers battle it out in court. No skin off the PTO's back.
"one of Microsoft's FAT patents"?
Oh, my. They're patenting software that's bloat?
Defensive measures is one point, but another is simply so that you can get the tax grant for writing your stuff as R&D.
My work told me to put my name down as co-inventor on a patent. I refused - the reason being that the patent was so ridiculously obvious that I didn't want my name associated with anything that tried to lock it up (seriously - anyone sneezing at it would have blown the thing away). My work must have known this, but I suspect they don't care as it makes their R&D spend look better and gives them tax relief.
There's a lot of talk on Slashdot about ridiculous patents being granted for evil uses and how the world is about to sued during enforcement, but I suspect the vast majority of them are, in fact, just straight tax dodges. Doesn't make the patent better, but it might help to understand the motive. You don't think for a minute the people listed as inventors think their stuff is any more original than you do, do you?
Are there other actions that are more likely to work?
I recommend making a huge blockbuster movie that has a stupid patent at heart of a world-wide catastrophe. The world is saved at the very last moment by a brave low-level USPTO examiner (good-looking one, of course, if such exist). This could also work for the story about spam and bounty proposal.
This was Bill in 1991 -- now he's the guy he feared?
Examiners do not get bonuses based on how many patents they issue.
/. readers don't understand is that for an examiner, an RCE is far more valued than an allowance. That is, an examiner gets 2 counts for a response instead of one (1 abandonment, one FOAM count). It is better for the examiner and applicant to have several rce's prior to allowance, as a better patent is issued, and the examiner achieves much higher production.
/. posters don't have the proper legal training to understand what the patent claims actually protect anyways.
Examiners get paid based on how many counts they get. Examiners get counts for the first response to an application (the first action on the merits) and upon disposal, that is when the case is issued, abandoned, or as usually happens, when the applicant files a request for continued examination, which is technically an abandonment, but restarts the whole process.
What most
Bonus wise, examiners get bonuses for exceeding their quota by certain percentages. Having RCE's are a much easier way to achieve this as they are a "free" count.
Examiner's already have cases reviewed by their supervisors, quality review boards, other supervisors. The number of cases reviewed is pay grade dependant, and for primary examiners, the review processes is once every 3 years.
Most
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Unless petitioned otherwise, all US patent applications are published after 18 months of filing. This published database is used by examiners, and within a few years should be larger than the current US granted patent database.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
What one would do, is get a patent for a toothbrush handle with a non obvious improvement, such as a certian new type of grip that is easier to hold, resists stains etc.
Basically, one just needs a more specific patent, than an existing one, thus there is no infringement. Do a search and see how many patents there are out there for mousetraps...
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Quote from the article:
Clear Channel CEO Brian Becker....
"...we will not conduct licensing conversations in public or via the media. Nor will we put artists in the middle of those business negotiations -- or try to hide behind them as we negotiate."
Fo course not; we own everything the artist says or does and we don't need jack from them to do with their creations as we see fit.
Am I the only one that reads it that way? Sounds like Mr. Becker forgot to have PR review his statment!
(Since you probably didn't rtfa, the clear channel patent is over live recording being available right after the concert, and they are attacking artists selling CD's of their the concert you just saw. I suppose the dead and phish have prior art here, as they allowed fans to tape the concert, who then started trading tapes after the show).
Sorry about that.
The problem is not only with bad patents: software patents last for 20 years -- the same length of time that drug patents last for.
This is an economics problem.
... so why not just scrap it!!! :0)>
Who is an expert in materials for tooth brush bristles? How about the machines for making tooth brush bristles? If you're one of few experts in your country are you going to work for the patent office or are you going to make tootbrush bristles (and lots of money)?
[sarcasm on] Anyway, clearly we need such experts at the patent office. So too do we need pen barrel experts, etc. etc. [sarcasm off].
You see then we have to employ many tens of thousands of people to have expertise in all areas of industry. Instead of doing this we employ people in the general field, expecting some patents to slip through and be mopped up by the courts.
A 100% effective examination process would not generate any wealth
Church technicians have been cobbling together systems to record and reproduce live events for several decades. Systems that record digitally and have at least a some editing functionality have been around for at least 5 or more.
The main difference between the commercial systems they describe and the Church systems are that they are trying to make money. Until the advent of cheap digital recorders and mp3's they had the market cornered. Now they need to find some way to commercialize what we used to call bootlegging. Unfortunately, a non-commercial entity has been bootlegging for a long time.
People often say this ... what if I invent a spaceship propulsion system (eg the solar sail). How do I get it to the patent office. How does the examiner verify that it is a "working example"?
... "it must be here somewhere ...".
How about a nano-machine, I can just see the examiner with a plastic baggie and a scanning electron microscope
Or perhaps a deadly biological agent.
Or a killer computer virus (where software patents are allowed).
Or a brain implant.
It'd make life interesting for patent examiners I guess.
Just because it's profitable, even if it's profitable in the non-financial sense then unless it's profitabl enough you rich fat-assed share-holders are goin' to say:
"Be more profitable, I don't sit on my fat-ass all day just so you can benefit society and make a little bit of money exploiting 3rd world children. Make more money for me, more, more - more I tell you." [whipcrack]
Or something along those lines anyway.
I call "Bogus" on PanIP even before the patent review is over because if you really felt your patent is good, you'll go after the big fish. Go after Amazon.com or Buy.com for $50,000,000 instead of tiny companies for $5,000. PanIP probably wasn't expecting the little guys to group together.
The EFF is adding to their history of being a group defense for technological innovation in free speech areas. For example, Chilling Effects helps anyone dealing with a C&D letter. Their DirectTV fight helped protect individuals who couldn't afford to do anything but settle, given DirectTV's threats, even when innocent.
The EFF is small enough (come on everyone, buy coffee instead of TripleTallLattes for 2 weeks and DONATE to the EFF) and doing so much already that they're not going to choose patents just because the patent-holder is suing. They're choosing patents where the EFF thinks prior art exists or the patent isn't novel and the patent is hurting free speech and the right to technological innovation.
Even if there isn't prior art per se, a patent can still be far too obvious yet be granted. On this topic, I like this essay on telling good patents from bad:
If people spent the time reviewing patents pro bono instead of just bitching about it on /., then we'd have the problem solved, wouldn't we?
Does your friend provide a service that 10 people otherwise would not have access to at that price?? I'm assuming because he is an agent he has contacts and favors and what not to get the talent "in the door" which is better than the door getting slammed in their face. If that's the service he provides, then where's the problem??
not linked from story:
http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/
Like most things that take away freedom, the patent system will always be under pressure to encroach more and more which will always lead to problems like this.
When you assert the right to punish people who copy and immitate for any reason, innocent people are going to get hurt no matter how nice you try to be.
Mark parent post as Insightful, not Funny, as that's what's really going on in the whole patent process...
BTW, if you want more info on our Top Ten, look here: http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/
My pet peeve patent is 6,137,498 on PhotoMosaics. The first few claims are neither non-obvious nor novel. People were doing claims 1 and 2 in early 1994, over three years before the file date (the code uses a lookup table to build the output, but the generation of the lookup table uses the technique claimed in 1 and 2). Claims 3 and beyond they can keep, as they're all either naive or over-specified and easily avoidable.
Also, claim 1 is a bit ambiguous. Does "distinct" mean "unique" or "disjoint"? Yes, this matters.
The thing is, when I did the patent write up for our product here at my employer, the patent lawyer came back and said that it was too spesific. He then rewrote it to be "a good patent" taking out all the spesifity.
In the process he, a non programmer, made the document so abstruse that I could have quit the company and started my own, taken the entire body of software and a copy of the hardware plans, implemented the entire thing... without violating the patent as written...
Seriously...
Patent lawyers understand the intellectual land-grab effect and are making sure that patents *ARE NOT* spesific.
This is a deleberate technique, intended to let patents function in the greater realm of legal sap with wich to club asside the unwary.
I was invited NOT to review the next revision after I returned my markup of the document that basically said "this isn't even like the thing I have built."
The system is debased and while it is *SUPPOSED* to be all spesific and all those other things the poster above said, it is not, in fact, that way at all.
It's like comunisim, it would be a great system if it werent for the fact that humans are dishonest egocentric yahoos with no sense of social responsibility beyond their next orgasm. If people were trustworthy, you wouldn't need patents (or laws, or a "system of government") but since they are not, a system that trusts them to be is less than useless, it is anti-helpful.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Gold creates unjust laws. Lead removes them.
According to the blurb, they are connected to the EFF in some way, and the EFF has a long history of supporting spam. (The EFF claims it's "Free Speech" which is BS.)
So far as I'm concerned, these are the bad guys. I'm all in favor of overhauling the patent system, but the fact that the first I heard about PubPat was when they added me to their spam list means that I consider them bad guys, not to be trusted. Honest people don't spam.
While I agree with the criticism of patents that are obvious, trivial, or for which there is prior art, and that the Patent Office is not being sufficiently selective, I wonder if this addresses the real problems One is that software probably shouldn't be patentable at all, as many people have argued. The other is that when an innovation is one that will have a really major and widespread impact, allowing any person or company to have a monopoly on it, at least for very long, will interefere with innovation and give that person or company an excessive advantage. This is true even if the patent is a true innovation, not at all obvious, and even if it is for hardware. An example is the transistor. In that case, the US government was wise enough to recognize what a problem it would be for AT&T to have a monopoly on such a fundamental technology and made a special arrangement that circumvented the patent system. So, I wonder if we need a systematic way of handling cases like this, perhaps an arrangement for buying out the patent and putting it into the public domain by having the government compensate the inventors for their research costs plus some reasonable profit on top?
If people spent the time reviewing patents pro bono
Wouldn't reviewing a patent "pro Bono" involve extending its term?
If the patents are purely for defensive purposes, then why don't the prospective assignees in question just publish the techniques in a journal so that nobody can patent them?
the U.S. has signed plenty of treaties promising free trade. Can you argue that the PTO's cluelessness is, in effect, just another form of government subsidy for U.S. companies and/or a red-tape barrier to imports - and thus is a violation of a treaty?
The United States' so-called "free" trade treaties typically require a patent cooperation treaty and other U.S. friendly monopoly protection treaties as a prerequisite. In fact, the proposed treaty with Australia requires Australia to enact counterparts to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and Title I of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The USPTO granted many of the well-known bad patents before it started publishing patent applications.
Sure, churches have been practicig instant replication of a recording of a live performance for over a decade now, but the novelty in Clear Channel's patent is that Clear Channel's system lets a technician generate the .cue file (that is, the start and end time of each track) during the performance.
Thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and other previous extensions of the term of copyright in literary works, software copyrights last even longer than software patents, so quit yer bitchin'. The article already claimed that the people working on this will be pro-Bono.
For the record, the patent under discussion here is U.S. Patent 6,614,729.
From the EZTracker manual, it appears EZTracker's "Record 2" mode allows the user to segment the recording by pressing a button. This seems to read on at least claim 1 of the patent.
Still, I don't see a copyright notice in the manual or on the web page. The screenshots in the manual look like Windows 2000 default settings (gradient title bar, Tahoma instead of MS Sans Serif) rather than those of Windows 95 or 98. If you can find evidence that EZTracker was published and in use before September 26, 2001, when David and James Griner filed the patent application, then it would look like a job for the EFF Patent Busters.