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The Good Old Patent Law - Revisited
trifakir writes "Scientific American talks about the imperfections of the current patent law, subject to the book of two authors from the Harvard Business School. It seems that even business people start seeing the insanity of the current patent system. This time it seems that they are not only criticizing, but suggesting some procedural amendments (e.g. patent conflicts resolved by a judge and not by a jury). Do you think that any of these has chances being heard by the big wigs?"
Yes, one solution would be to place heavy costs onto the uspto for every patent which is shot out in court. Another better system would be to revisit patents once in a while in an open non commercial discussion (cough internet forums) so that bogus patents can be shot out in time without causing costs left and right. Third a patent should be connected to an actual product which already has been sold seriously. This would push non producing patent grabbers who only produce court cases, out of the system. Fourth, patent times should be altered to different running times in different field. 20 years makes sense in the medical field, in software nothing makes sense more than five years. Fifth, why patents in software at all? The field has prospered much more than other technical fields, without having them. And now patents are all over the place, the whole field is in a commercial crisis.
This is just an overview of some ideas that have been pinging around slashdot and several other communities for a while. Namely, that because of some small changes that seemed to be for the better, patents are now under the jurisdiction of a court that loves them and the patent office is encouraged to rush patents through without thinking because they get their funding that way rather than from taxpayers.
The failings of this seem obvious after our discussions here, and I think that because the patent office is not supposed to be some pro business advocate but rather, a group of people set up to facilitate innovation into uncharted technologies(hence not obvious and no prior art) now just stifles innovation as obvious extensions of old ideas are inhibbiting their usage in useful R&D.
I think the review shows authors that really stand for a sane position, one that doesn`t completely remove the patent system but rather turns it back into what it was originally intended to be(not giving patents to companies for marketing the PB&J sandwich without crust, yes, its a patent according to the article). When this book comes out, I will be on the lookout because it seems these people have some ideas that need to get some attention and they have the clout to go somewhere with these ideas. Our representatives are only as sleavy as we permit them to be so we have to read up so we have some real knowledge and show our support for a complete overhall of the patent system and a review of many patents granted in the last 10 years(especially technology patents). Kudos to these authors for bringing this debate into what might become the main stream.
I fully agree with most points, but definitely not the third one: "a patent should be connected to an actual product which already has been sold seriously"..
Patents are supposed to protect and stimulate inventions for those that do the research, requiring an actual product that is being sold makes this very hard for individual researchers, and very easy for the big companies.
Recently I attended a corporate IP (intellectual property) seminar. I work for a large, Fortune500 company. After 8 hours of 5 lawyers droning I came away with this. The starting cost of protecting a patent worldwide is $450,000 USD, to effectively attack an already awarded patent starts at $450,000 USD. Many companies looking to bust a patent are searching the old Soviet Union's past research journal archives for prior art. They are not computerized and evidently they have proven to be a rich source. They also discussed how some companies patent similar ideas in order to cause enough doubt in the plantiff's lawyers on a clear court victory, so the plantiffs lawyers will look for a cheap license arrangement.
I'm not an IP lawyer but my friend is (!)
Apparently the UK uses experienced judges rather than juries. The judges commonly have degrees in science subjects as well as law. The end result is that courts are prone to seeing everything as trivial and are therefore patent-unfriendly. It really has to be a clever invention to survive. The way it should be IMHO.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov