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Patent Databases Complicate Life For Inventors
karvind writes "New Scientists is running a story about how the move to electronic record-keeping is making it harder to check if a device has already been invented. From the article: '.. even though most online patent archives are incomplete, parts of the paper-based collections that preceded them are being destroyed.' We ran a story earlier on how to fix U.S. patents. Maybe I can patent the wheel again."
Your first post violated 3 of my patents, prepare to get reamed.
We always have to talk about patents don't we? Someone will probably come up with an easy way to check patents...(easier..) Patents were a problem from the beginning.
www.wikilessons.org - the online how-to (just starting, help us out)
If the online databases are incomplete, why are the paper-based archives being destroyed? Mismanagement? The article doesn't get into the details, so I'm left to ponder the stupidity of it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Does this mean that there will be a lot more funny patent rights law suits I can read about??? I generally found them quite interesting and really funny. Also, does that mean I can try to patent the "eletronic patending system" by calling it the "patend facilitation device" ??? lol
Maybe they should burn the Declaration of Independence while they're at it, after all, I saw a copy online somewhere.
It is like a library. If one day we decide to move all our books to electronic formats, who is to say a tyrant one day can't remove or change items, slowly, so that nobody notices. Maybe I am 1984-ish paranoid, but I want it on paper.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"May be I can patent the wheel again."
May be you can al so pa tent inno vative spell ing meth od, who knows?
"Unless the authorities plug these gaps, the patenting process will descend into farce." "given the ongoing problems with lack of searches for non-patent prior art, this will contribute to a further drop in quality of granted patents" geez. Can't wait until we're yearning for the good ole days of the 2004-2005 patent season.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Online databases also make it much easier to find prior art. These days, patent examiners search worldwide patent databases, and also use Google. (I have filed patents, and have had prior-art cited against me that could only have been found by a Google search). So electronic databases usually make things better. Silly things still get through, of course, but imagine how much crap would get through without these massive patent databases.
if a massive sun ejection of magnetic field bathed the earth with a high magnetic dose, we would be ok but would we lose all of mankinds knowledge ?
digital data storage so far has proved itself to be unreliable (cd rot,hard drives failing after 1-3yr etc etc)
yet we want to depend even more on it ?
you have to laugh at the stupidity and short sightedness of humans at times, can you imagine if Da Vinci or Einstein or even the Wright brothers had encrypted their stuff with 4096bit 1 time pad or quantum encryption
or do we always have to put our hands in the fire to find out its hot ?
erase the online storage
Those patent which have some idea can prove with a device, or physical object that they do, those who cannot provide such thing shouldn't be there in the first place.
I wish it would be this easy...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
If the issue is money, why aren't we eBaying old patent paperwork instead of pulping it?
If the International Star Registry can get $49.99 for "Naming A Star" ... how very likely is it that the Patent Office could get as much that for GENUINE old patent paper? Surely some of the more interesting patents would get big bucks and/or donated to museums.
While this is not as good as professional preservation of historical documents, since preservation is not in the cards, at least eBaying would preserve most of the originals, admittedly in a hap-hazard fashion.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Hard disks. Lots of hard disks.
Want to solve the patent problem right away? Everyone converge on the Patent and Trademark office. Bring magnets.
Big magnets.
Surely no-one here on Slashes' Dot would make such a mistake.
as if inventors spent most of their time looking at patents.
Patents are legal documents that are intentionally obfuscated and are a lousy source of primary research.
This is like saying that artists lives are being complicated by the digitization of auction results at Christies. I'm not sure you would honestly call the people concerned with that data artists.
Likewise for inventors.
I look at patents regularly so I'm not saying they're totally useless, but they're damn close in most cases because the whole art of drafting a patent is to stay as ambiguous as possible and reveal as little about your "invention" as you can. That's a fact that just gets worse year after year.
Patents are about marketing. Almost all basic research is done in universities. Corporations have shit to do with basic research and that, by definition, is where real invention takes place.
I think is is in violation of a patent I filed regarding "An electronic method to store and search documents detailing grants made by a government that confer upon the creators of inventions the sole right to make, use, and sell those inventions for a set period of time"
It is like a library. If one day we decide to move all our books to electronic formats, who is to say a tyrant one day can't remove or change items, slowly, so that nobody notices. Maybe I am 1984-ish paranoid, but I want it on paper.
The easy solution to the problem, of course, is a secure crypto signature. If you want to verify, compare signatures with the authors copy, or maintain many registries outside of central control.
..don't panic
Considering some of the patents they let through, if I was an inventor the moment I came up with any idea remotely good I would patent it immediately and see what happens..
Think they'll actually read it/research it back?
Remember guys.. 1-click shopping... i patented 'a method for the self-induction of pleasure' and am about to make bank..
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
It is good.
There is a function where you can collect lists of patents, and do Set Unions, Intersections, Subtractions and the like.
My latest patent application is in the fields of crowd control, crowd safety. That was 3000 items that matched those terms. I could go through and sort out the misses.
You could have a little thumbnail, as this was invaluable, as you can tell from the diagram often that it is a dissimilar device, or that the patent referrs to some way of joining/constructing such a thing.
Web based Delphion is not perfect though. Nor any large web list checking application without powerful list management functions.
I would dearly have liked a capability to colour the table cells that you had visited. Viewing 25 by 25 of the resultset was too confusing. But if you chose to display 500 at a time, then you tend to also loose track.
But now salvation is at hand. Using Firefox, Greasemonkey and some hand written tailored javascript allows me to do exactly this.
I meant to add as well, if the lifetime of a patent is 25 years tops, surely they only really have to be kept for that long? Then prior art and commercialised products could cover the basis for it having been in the Public Domain previously.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
The online databases aren't causing any problems whatsoever. The problem is the idiots who are destroying records before they've been added to the online databases.
Patent, what patent? The computer tells us that you don't have a patent. I even think your company does not exist anywhere in the patent office, could you please tell me your companyname?
"Microsoft"
Clicke-ty-click. Nope, sorry, not one patent.
Remember, some geek has to maintain that database, all we need is to get a BOFH in there.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Cuneiform records are not all the records of the sumerian civilization. Just the remains of the records they made before they went digital.
So, by negating the terms in the sentence, may I conclude that paper-based collections of patents make life easy for inventors then?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The problem with patents is that it's impossible to know if you are violating one. With paper copies, it's impossible to look through them all to make sure your technology is not patent infringing. Even electronic means which are much easier to search cannot garauntee that you are not infringing. What really makes me mad, is when companies sue other companies for violating patents, years after they have come out with a product. They really should have a limited time to sue a company. This way they can't be choosy, by only choosing products they can get lots of money from.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Interesting, but:
How do they know the date of what they find?
How do they know some part of the page hasn't be supplemented later?
If that date doesn't precede yours, the publication shouldn't be detrimental.
Bert
That's "fhqwhgads". Say it with a flourish!
Dear Patent Lawyer,
Could you please explain why you think that extending the patent system to cover software is not harmful both to society and to freedom of expression given the case of an open-source software developer who, as a result of
is threatened with a patent lawsuit by a corporation demanding he/she removes the allegedly infringing software from the project's website, leaving the impoverished developer with no real choice but to comply with the demand and close the project?
One recent unresolved case, which is not unique, is that of the German mathematician and open-source software developer Helmut Dersch who had no financial choice but to remove his software from his project website. He had no money to pay for a patent application at the time of his own inventions, which pre-date the patent application of the IPX company , to to pay for a lawyer to challenge the company which threatened him with the prospect of a lawsuit.
Here [ffii.org] is a summary of the case history.
I hope you will take the time to reply at moderate length for the sake of explaining to the open-source developer comm unity why software patents are not a threat to completely unfunded open-source projects.
Thank you for reading this. If you are a patent lawyer, please mention that fact in your reply here.
Last posted here [slashdot.org] without a reply from any patent lawyers reading slashdot.
Please copy and re-post this message in all available forums until at least one patent lawyer has the courtesy to write a thorough reply.
Many paper docs are destroyed after being placed on microfilm. How safe is microfilm ?. Rag paper last about 300 years, I do not believe the USTPO requires rag paper. The problem of aged condition and ink fading, many US founding documents have had to be restored because of ink fading and poor condition. The time of the digital *microfilm* is here, as we see with movies and music on CD and DVD. Many Gov and corporations make use of the digital media over paper for backup and inter-distribution of information. The USTPO would be fools to allow any mix up as lost proof, how do the corporations and other patent owners feel about having their proof destroyed. Its not really going to happen, that such information is going to be burned and lost. without it, the patent owners will have a war with each other, and all of them with the USTPO if any patent information is lost. Records are important, and public documents are the law. Please let us not go FUD on this.
does the uspto have a patent on issuing patents??? this patent business could be big... better patent this!!!!!111!!
Get your torrents...
for violations in electronic copies too. The patent is written for patent lawyers by patent lawyers. Now you don't have any actual product to look at and say "Ah, THAT'S what they meant", it is all guesswork.
Without such proof, what is to prevent a person or corporation from trying to patent something that has been patented long in the past?
They cannot destroy the past, history does not just live on paper at the USTPO ?. If something is past its patent time limit, and even though its on paper yet at the USTPO, could not someone find it and re-patent it anyway ?, the answer is yes.
The story is then, having it on paper is not protection alone. The process by which new ideas become new patents, is that old patented ideas are free to use again. Without such a process, *we* all would be using gas lights today.
Its two sides of the same coin; if old patented ideas become GPL projects, or, they become new patents, one side wins the other is out in the cold, it just depends what side of the coin you are on.
Of course, Dean's Democrat opponents used the scream for all it was worth, taking it out of context, etc. etc. etc. Similar to the tacticts GwB used against Kerry. So both Dems and Reps are assholes who will do anything to win.
Clever signature text goes here.
When people say America has a young history it doesn't mean that the American government is young or fresh compared to other nations. As a matter of fact, the US government is rather old by modern international standards. So, the assumption that there is little baggage in the US is really far from the case.
American culture seems quite young compared to many other countries, but you can't assume that same is true about the government. Globally, it is fairly rare for a continuous form of government to last over two hundred years. And the reason is that much baggage is accumulated in that time.
Compare the US's 200+ years to that of Russia which had its last major revolution in 1919. China's government is much younger as is that of India. even France. If you know anything about European history you'll also understand that Germany is also a relatively recent invention.
Ancient civilizations have boasted technological advancements way ahead of current times. Sciptures talk of vayuyan (airplane) and brahmastra (universal weapon, akin to nuclear weapon). Maybe we had all this and the knowledge was wiped due to something similar to an electromagnetic wave wiping out the patent office ...
Hmmm I should stop drinking KoolAid!
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