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How to Fix U.S. Patents
Frisky070802 writes "IEEE Spectrum has an interesting article on how to fix the U.S. patent system. It starts with an example of how broken the system is, with Smuckers suing a small company for crustless PB&J. It has a great overview of how the system has evolved and how much it favors the big patent holders, and suggests 3 specific fixes: 'create incentives and opportunities for parties to challenge the novelty and nonobviousness of an invention before the PTO grants a patent,' examine the important patents meticulously; don't waste effort on the unimportant ones that can be ousted early, and for examining prior art, use judges and special masters rather than uninformed juries."
And the chances of these kind of reforms going through are... what? From a national economic standpoint, even the US has an incentive to pump out as many patents as possible, no matter how frivolous, in order to extract money from corporations in other countries, since the US is using the WTO to push its "intellectual property" regime onto as many countries as it can.
From the article:
First, create incentives and opportunities for parties to challenge the novelty and nonobviousness of an invention before the PTO grants a patent.
Prior art 'bounty hunters' and adding some common sense to the patent process sound like great ideas. Too bad they'll never be implemented, due to expensive lobbying efforts by those who stand to lose the most (i.e. the megacorps).
~Philly
Instead of bitching about how broken the USPTO is, and how the patents they grant are obvious...
Get a job at the USPTO as a patent master.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Originally patents were invented to aid competition by allowing a small business with an orignal idea to avaoid being sunk by a flood of copy-cat products from an established business. The obvious problems however quickly emerged: large businesses can get patents despite the fact that they don't need them, and the ability to patent an idea instead of an actual product. These two problems have completely overshadowed any benefits of the patent system.
Philosophy.
Patent reform will NEVER occur before Political reform. Political reform will NEVER occur without Citizens strongly voicing protests... and frankly, I don't feel like getting up from my computer.
I believe Patents were created to aid innovation not aid comptetition. They exist to protect the inventor. The idea is that if you create something, and don't have the money to bring it to market, someone with money shouldn't have the right to come along, skate your idea, and elave you uncompensated for your invention.
In fact, it's been proven that patents hinder competition, but they don't hinder innovation.
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Such patent monopolies are important for society, though not in the realm of computers. Pretend company C finds that drug D cures cancer in mice. It then performs many human trials to make sure it is safe and effective in humans as well, all at great expense. It then brings the drug to market.
Without patents, company C will never disclose what is in drug D, hence stopping future research down related veins. (And thus preventing improvements down that avenue.) Furthermore, other companies will find out what drug D is made out of and then sell it generically. Company C is screwed because it had spent all the money doing the research; it can't compete on marketing, etc., against the companies that are free-loading. Future drug companies will do no research.
People say that we should make all research government-funded. Right. Government-regulation has been such a boon, right?
Not all monopolies are bad.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
To prevail in an infringement case, an accused infringer has to present clear and convincing evidence that the patent is invalid.
Simply reversing this standard might be good: someone who wants to obtain a 20-year monopoly should have to present clear and convincing evidence that the idea he is seeking protection for is novel, useful, and can be reproducibly implemented based on the patent application. If he can't make a clear and convincing argument, then the patent should be found invalid by default.
Furthermore, patents should be found valid and invalid not claim-by-claim, but all-or-nothing. That way, applicants for patents have themselves a strong incentive only to claim what is actually novel and useful. Right now, almost every patent has claims in it that are ridiculously broad, that create unwarranted uncertainty and risk for competitors, and that courts need to spend enormous amounts of resources whittling down.
I think those two changes alone would do wonders for the patent system. But the IEEE suggestions are also welcome.
Amen. I am amazed that more people don't see what a problem this is. The problem is at least partly that we think prisons are for people who break the law. The word criminal is too broad. Prison should be for people who are dangerous.
Some may argue about non-violent drug users being dangerous on some level. But honestly: which do you think is more dangerous: a pot smoking hippie or anyone who just came out of maximum security prison? In general, being gang raped and subject to chronic violence tends to make a man more dangerous. Why would we want to apply a "solution" like that to someone who isn't violent in the first place?
I am strongly for the legalization of marijuana. I donate to NORML regularly. I've never smoked pot in my life.
Cheers.
PS - Another point nobody seems to like is that our prisons have become torture chambers. Sure, it's not our guards doing the torturing (usually) but they turn a blind eye. I don't have much sympathy for violent criminals, but again, we're processing these people to likely become more violent. This is stupid.
Bullshit. A worker/friend of ours was once a big time dealer running keys up from Florida to NYC. He made millions, spoiled himself for about 10 years until he was busted. He did his time and now has a good job and a family. He never was violent unless he had to defend himself, he was no Tony Montana. And did he force the dope on anyone? The users are mainly to blame for most drug related violence (I mean hard drug users like coke, crack and heroin users.) So don't group everyone in the drug pyramid from the producers to the users into one big "scum" category.
Oh well you should visit Europe, Amsterdam in particular. You see, there's this little protestant, burgeois, probably a tad cinical country called Netherlands where pot & mushrooms is legal; the dealers are just weird shopkeepers... and the stuff you get is premium quality... and it's all properly taxed. The bad chem stuff you find in raves & discos is illegal but these people are sensible enough to understand that fear of arrest and SWAT assault dissuades people from looking for treatment rather than from getting fsck'd into the substance abuse. So, since there's no SWAT lusting to rape your butt if you get a bad trip, once you're back from the dead a thoughtful shrink helps you out of your problems and keeps an eye on you in case you're still too rabid to come to terms with your shit. You know, one thing that really helps is having that warm feeling that if you stumble and fail you have a community that doesn't want to trample you; actually they want you out of trouble, if not out of goodwill, at least to avoid having a looney shooter on the run. It helps a lot, lot more that a gun in your pocket and paramilitary officers on patrol. Think about it... it's the essential diff between Old Europe and you guys
without offence,
e
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Child rapists are the scum of the Earth, dude.
Drug dealers barely even mention a nod, particular those truly "non-violent" ones.
Ok, it's just a thought but...
1) Since inventors are people, how about restricting the assignee to people only.
2) Make all payments to the assignee and or inventor a matter of public record.
3) Make it illegal to withhold license of patents to individuals or corporations willing to pay more than the current maximum amount stated in public record.
(Wordy example):
So Joe Inventor creates a widget for Company Z. Joe would be the inventor and some other person is (maybe even Joe) will be the assignee. Z Company will license the ability to make widgets by paying $1000 to the assignee. The $1000 is posted as a mater of public record. Now anyone or any company can pay $1001 to the assignee and have a license to produce the widgets.
A market effect of an open auction etc..
All the worlds indeed a
The patent system was concieved to protect unique, innovative, and useful ideas. Now, I may not be one to complain, but I seriously doubt the uniqueness of the spiral stack of post-it notes, which is almost identical in its description to the patent on a straight stack of post-it notes. Also, software patents just suck in general. There should be no such thing as a software patent, merely copyrights on source code. For instance, the original patent on the Windows OS ended several years ago, because patents only last 7 years. At the time that the patent ends, the patent holder is required to release the product to the public for use. I don't know about you, but I payed good money for this crap-o-rific Windows XP. Do you know why? Because Microsoft filed a patent for every single friggin' line of code they've ever written (obviously an exaggeration, but they have taken out multiple patents as ways of extending expired patents). I say we abolish the patent system, abolish all forms of unbacked currency, and go to the liberty dollar.
The last time this came up someone posted an interesting idea. If the USPTO can't reasonably review all the patent applications simply accept them all. But change the expiration to say 2 years with an option to renew the patent for the full 17 year and make the renewal cost a considerable amount of money (eg $40,000). This will give legitimite patents the protection they need to develop their idea enough to know if it's worth more effot. It wouldn't stop people from filing frivolous patents but the submarine patents would probably disappear almost entirely.
...and why do people overdose? There's 2 leading causes besides suicide attempts:
Lack of education about effects of mixing things. - Because we're too busy trying to convince our kids of all the evils that we don't bother teaching real facts. Abstinence-only does not work in sex ed, and it doesn't work in drug ed. People are doing it no matter what, so the best approach is to reduce the harm that may come. And when you lie to people so much about drugs, they stop believing it when you're telling the truth.
Contaminated doses and/or doses in unknown amounts. - When you buy something on the street, you have no idea how much of what is in it unless you take your stuff to a lab before doing it. This causes a very large percent of overdoses. If people inject a solution they KNOW is 10mg/ml, they're not going to accidently inject around 150mg that's required to OD. Not to mention the much lower safety margin and wildly inaccurate dosing of fentanyls that make up for shortages in actual heroin supplies.
and I think it's quite obvious prohibition does a piss poor job of accomplishing real results in harm reduction.
Simple - abandon software patents, and cut down the times for the other patents back to what they were to start with.
The reason to have a patent system is to encourage the inventors to promote and freely disclose their inventions, rather than keeping them to themselves. Not to protect inventors rights, or anything like that.