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The Difficulties of Patent Busting
wheresjim writes "An article on CNN.com entitled 'Tough road for patent-busters' describes the hard road one has to follow to get a questionable patent revoked. According to the article, of the approx 7,000,000 existing patents, only 614 have been revoked, and only 3927 have had their claims narrowed."
patent the process of getting a patent revoked.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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It's a shame how Einstein had to go into physics; we really needed him at the patent office. What a waste.
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Why not link to the EFF's patent busting project to get some decent quotes from Jason Schultz? The ones on CNN were very weak and seemed to imply we are just whining about people having important patents... not that they have invalid patents which should never have been granted.
I'm finding it increasingly hard to take intelectual property seriously. Patents (while I understand why we have them) are turning out to be a huge, sad joke. They have become weapons for business
The problem is the patent office doesn't have enough bandwidth to deal with current patents, much less overturn existing ones. There's a quote in the article by a member of the patent office saying that the goal is accuracy balanced very heavily against speed. All of the reviewers have quotas they have to meet, and it takes a lot longer to review a hairy software patent than a physical invention with drawings, but they aren't given the time. There wasn't even a mechanism for overturning patents until 1982, so its not suprising that they aren't good at it yet.
But most patents go through several rounds of non-final rejections by the review board for overly broad claims. By the time they're issued, there's a resonable chance for most of them (please note the qualifiers) that the claims are valid.
When trying to invalidate a patent, there's several good ways:
Patents are actually often very specific, and a company that wishes to sue another for patent infringemnet will find out too late that theirs is so, and the defendent is in fact not infringing on their too-specific patent.
Cheers, Matt
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
This is a serious question, not meant to flame. Has any one actually recently used a software patent offensively? I know most firms get them for defensive purposes only, not to go sueing other companies. Has there actually been lawsuits to test the validity of a patent on an algorithm?
How can we expect other countries to respect our patents if we continue allow such patents to continue to be filed?
Patents were supposed to Enhance Inovation, not Stifle it. The whole process needs to be reviewed and probably reworked, it just cannot seem to deal properly with modern technology.
The article doesn't include the Markman hearing results that were filed on tuesday. After the filing ACTG lost 40% of its value. Judge Ware ruled against Acacia several times and even invited the defense to file for summary judgement on a significant number of claims. It is not the end, but let's hope this is the first step. More info on Acacia at - http://www.fightthepatent.com
"The percentage of patents that generate net positive revenue, either through licensing or direct sales of products is miniscule." But how many people never bother create their idea simply because they're afraid of the inevitable lawsuit? Revenue is generated because competition fails to materialize.
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Only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked
Only about 3,750,000 actually could have been reviewed. This is the number of patents since 1964 (1981 was first year they could be reviewed and so anything before 64 would have expired).
Also, how many actual disputes are there?
There are many really crazy patents so these never get challenged.
There are patents that are too ahead of their time so they expire before anybody needs them.
Then you have the "my patent stack is bigger than yours" where its easier to threaten counterclaim than to invalidate a patent
Even when prior art is presented, re-exams are rare. The patent office held only 6,136 between the time the agency was authorized to do so in July 1981 and the end of March 2004,
The important question is how many times prior art has been presented vs how many times was there an overturn. I think that would give us a better indication of how well the review process works. If people/companies think its too expensive to find prior art, thats a business decision not a problem with the patent system.
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They can't have it both ways
That is a very good point.
Unfortunately, the conflict of interest created by their earning money from each patent ensures that they are not institutionally able to act ethically in this, and so they do indeed have it both ways.
The fault lies in their very foundations as a money-making organization. The fact that their actions are massively stifling innovation instead of promoting it would not be escaping their attention if this were not the case. As things stand though, they cannot possibly afford to listen to the worried whispers of their collective conscience.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra