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IBM Calls for Patent Reform
daria42 writes "IBM has called for tighter regulation of patents and a review of intellectual property ownership issues in collaborative software development. The company is one of the largest patent-holders in the United States. IBM executive Jim Stallings said examining patents for prior art should not only be the job of the patent office but that the wider community should be involved. Stallings also called on the industry to stop what he calls "bad behaviour" by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents."
... is that "they" have quite a wide scope of view.
Presumably a prerequisite for "culture" in general.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
It seems IBM's argument is that there are way too many patent applications being submitted to accurate evaluate them. Their solution:
IBM's antidote to the problem is to increase the scope of the investigation into 'prior art' associated with software patents. Stallings believes that sort of undertaking is something the academic community, volunteers and others are willing to help in.
Something obviously must be done to fix this problem but I'm not sure how the proposed system would work. As soon as "volunteers" have the ability to submit prior art challenges to patent applications, you'll likely see as many or more prior art challenges than patent applications. Who's going to evaluate the prior art challenges AND the patent applications then?
I'm a big tall mofo.
By making their patent on patent reform available for a small fee.
And what about going back to the good ol' days when you had to provide a basic working implementation of your potentially patented thingie, instead of just having an idea of what may work in the future?
Hello, kettle. This is pot. You're black.
"There are others who believe that no software patents are valid," he added. We certainly don't believe in that, because we have many thousands of software patents and customers trust us to be the true owners of those, so we believe it is somewhere in the middle that is appropriate for laws to govern behaviour around patents."
It's nice to see a large company choosing the middle path. Patents aren't entirely a bad thing (although I would rather do away with them altogether than keep the current system) and as with most arguments there are certainly two or more legitimate sides to this. One thing is for sure, we definitely need better review of patents and it certainly seems to me that they are right about the community being willing to help find prior art.
On February 24, 2005 I tried to pose some questions to USPTO On-Line chat for Independent Inventors today, however the digichat java applet does not appear work with any combination of Linux Galeon/Mozilla/Firefox jdk1.5.0/j2re1.4.2_07 or MacOSX Firefox/Safari. Here is what I tried to ask:
I understand that the discovery of prior art and the evaluation of the obviousness of an invention are difficult tasks for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent application examiners to perform. The percentage of patents being overturned under the scrutiny of the courts leads me to believe that the process is not quite as accurate as could be desired. In a few recent cases the existence of publicly accessible digital content has played a part in disclosing prior art. The public, technical and scientific communities use of Internet has to a large extent replaced printed media such as journals for the public disclosure of new ideas. To what extent does the current USPTO patent application examination process take into account public accessible website content? Do the patent examiners currently use Internet search engines such as Google ( http://www.google.com ) to locate instances of prior art? Is the changeable and unverifiable nature of some digital content a barrier to its being cited as prior art in the patent application examination process?
The USPTO patent application examiners task could be made more reliable if the examiners could consult one or more public online registries that document cases of prior art and public discoveries. The online registries could provide a means for the public to retroactively point to cases of preexisting prior art for pending patent applications and a means to proactively document publicly known ideas and concepts. Although websites and digitally stored content in general is changeable, individual entries and changes in an online registry could be legally authenticated by means of digital timestamping ( http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=234 7 ). An online
registry could be hosted by the USPTO as an adjunct to the existing
online public patent and patent pending databases. The USPTO could also
publicly recognize other individual registries hosted by third parties
such as a commercial entity or a non-profit community similar to
Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org/ ). An individual adding an entry
to such a publicly online registry does not involve granting that
individual any form of monopoly, therefore the action need not have any
artificial barrier involving fees or payments. Would the existence of
digitally timestamped public content overcome any objections by the
USPTO to its citing as prior art? Has the USPTO any plans to add some
form of publicly accessible feedback mechanism to the patent
application process?
It has been nine years since the USPTO updated the Guidelines for Computer-Related Inventions ( http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/soft ware/analysis/computer.html
). Since that time has the USPTO undertaken, commissioned or evaluated
any studies on the effects that granting software related patents has
had on the progress of science, useful arts and the software industry
in general? If no such study has been performed or evaluated, why not?
Can the USPTO point to any instances where the granting of software
related patents has been an actual benefit to the progress of science,
useful arts and the software industry in general? In a similar vein,
can the USPTO point to any instances where the granting of business
method related patents has been an actual benefit to the progress of
science, useful arts and industry in general?
I thought IBM had more patents than any other entity. What does it say when the wlfe complains the hen house is too wide open?
No matter where you go , there you are.
I work for IBM.
Mod me up!
Dear Patent Lawyers,
Could you please justify by reply in moderate detail the supposed net benefit to society (rather than just to corporations) of software patents explaining 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 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 community 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 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.
IBM is really doing the industry a good job by actually sticking their own neck in regards to leadership, checks and ballances.
So, when can we expect an IBM flavor of Linux? IBM knows how to market software and has had experience with OS2 Warp. Now they just need their own destro to go along with their support of open source software.
Life is not for the lazy.
Yesterday's New York Times had a related article (do not pass Go, sell your soul). One of the points was that IBM is sharing some of its patents so that others may build on them. Collaboration is more economically efficient (ie. profitable) in the global business-space.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Prior art challenges can go back to the applicant who can then put together a rebuttal. They want the patent, let them do the work. Also, more money will go to the patent lawyers, so this proposal is sure to be adopted!
The company that patented "first come first serve" wants to reform the patent system?! What, did they finally run out of blatantly obvious ideas? Or is Microsoft gaining ground in patenting such ideas, which scares IBM somehow? Or is it the Japanese who are catching up?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If the United States Patent Office is going to run itself like a business then I say that IBM, holding the most patents, should get the most votes. They've got the hardware to file the whole damn thing too.
1. IBM now owns the patent office.
2. IBM open-sources entire patent catalog.
3. ?????
4. Profit!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Here's the problem. In order to patent something, it must be either something completely new, or a novel enhancement on something that already exists. The problem that exists, is that companies can simply take something that already exists, and add "On The Internet" to it. We as tech savvy people see this as a big copp out, and think these patents of bogus. Well, it becomes really hard to figure out when doing X on the internet really is novel, while doing Y on the internet is not. If taking one thing and adding "On The Internet" is a valid patent, then taking any thing and adding "On The Internet" should work.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Part of the brokenness stems from the fact that concerned parties (e.g. Open Source developers) may not have vested interests or be aware until after the patent has been granted and the owning company goes after those developers.
Shouldn't the patent office be involve and look at claims of prior art from defendants in patent cases, especially when the claims haven't been tested before?
What IBM's proposing is more akin to a polling architecture and I think it sounds rather inefficient.
Best of all, throw software patents away.
It's good to see how the taste of their own medicine in cases such as the SCO litigation finally seems to lead IBM back to their initial stance of speaking out against software patents - from one of the world's largest patent holders, the obligation to "use or lose IP" as in trademark law is quite a remarkable one.
I myself keep a file of patents I think are interesting for one reason or another. Usually it's patents I think are on prior art. There a couple of issues here. One is that it's extremely difficult to read a patent. They're not the most clear technical explanations sometimes. This makes it a problem in proving that it is actually prior art and not just some minor enhancement or some special case. But that same vagueness lets patent owners sue anybody and everybody for patent infringement. Sure, you could eventually prevail but not everybody has the resources to defend themselves. I think we need to shift the burden of proof somewhat. Perhaps create a patent status that allows a challenges to be filed. The patent would remain valid but extra steps would have to be taken before anyone tried to enforce the patent. This could be abused by patent challengers but you could take care of it by requiring a bond of of sorts. Individuals can't afford this but the the EFF or IBM could.
Whereas the patent portfolio for Amazon is filled with things like "one click shopping" or whatever, IBM has always done *EXTENSIVE* research. They make chips, and have a gambit of patents associated with them. They even work on things like teleportation for crying out loud. Yes - like "beam me up, Scott" type teleportation.
No - IBM isn't Dell, a company that has never come up with anything new and does little else other than figure out the cheapest way to produce something. IBM isn't even a Microsoft, a company based entirely off taking someone else's ideas and implimenting them in proprietary ways (a compnay whose only real contribution is getting platforms and applications to work together well). Instead, IBM is very very heavily research-based. IMO, it's perfectly valid for IBM to have a vast # of patents, considering how much research it does. Dollar per research dollar, I'm willing to be it doesn't have all that many more per year than anyone else - they just put more dollars into it.
With that in mind - suggesting they're the pot calling the kettle black is a bit of a stretch. They've got a lot of patent experience sure (there's a nice soft word for it, eh?) but back to that dollar per research dollar thing...
If Cornell and Harvard got together and tried to get higher education to be more affordable for all Americans, would their intent be questioned simply because they're a couple of the more expensive schools? I pay $30k a year for my wife to go to vet school at Cornell. It's very painful. Cornell knows it, and is sympathetic to a degree...I know they would have loved to have seen Clinton's promised education costs reforms.
Same bit. IBM does a lot of research, gets a lot of patents. Simply because they have a lot of patents doesn't invalidate their opinion that there is abuse of the patent system.
First I worked for IBM for 5 years before I offshored myself to europe... Yes I did it to myself.. Southern EU
I know that IBM is on the right track. I know and have seen what bad software/ hardware patents can do. It stifles ideas and makes many inovatutions second-guessed and sometimes not implemented at all. If the patent office opens up and looks broader at the possibility of work done then we can be more competive and forwarded thinking/moving in general. Seeking patents for work that is not right, but done all the time. I give IBM support in this by saying; this is what is needed to be done before it is too late.
I have a little trouble with IBM's stand on this in terms of motivation. What business edge would this give to them?
Their not-so-low profile thier sponsorship of open source stuff, releasing all of their patents to OSS projects and their professed patent protection (that was IBM right?) leads me to think they are attempting to woo certain crowds. These same crowds who are a bit fearful of patent issues with OSS perhaps?
Maybe they are truly pushing for an OSS marketplace... for IBM, it would tend to make a great deal of sense since they are primarily a service oriented business now. They still have products to sell, but mostly, it's the service agreements that make their bread and butter. If they get everyone thinking that way, it would put a serious hurt on people who sell software as a product.
Generally, I am inclined to agree with this perspective on things -- what slashdotter wouldn't I suppose? But if they are willing to divest themselves of thier patent practices, I wonder what else they have in mind to follow-up on this? After all, it is "patent trading" that often keeps big businesses from tearing at each others throats with patent litigation every 5 minutes. It has been generally accepted practice not to question or try each others' patents as they will be exposed to the light and probably die from exposure. This serves only to keep the little guy from growing though...
well anyway... any guesses what IBM will follow with next?
The company that patented "first come first serve" wants to reform the patent system?! What, did they finally run out of blatantly obvious ideas?
...and maybe they realized "Gee, this is a really fucked up system when we have to run around patenting every variation of the obvious so noone else will and sue us over it? IBM hss countless patents, but they have been using them to protect their own innovations. IBM isn't afraid of other big companies since they can probably find a bunch of patents they mutually infringe on. I rhink they're seeing a system which is so out of hand, that all companies that work with innovation are suffering. Including, but not limited to themselves.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
IBM was stifleing competition and innovation before Bill Gates was even born. They had a stranglehold on the mainframe market and instead of pushing forward they held back key improvements and locked down contracts with service contracts that punished someone for buying a competitor. All this resulted in Amdahl leaveing and forming a competitor to force innovation from IBM through competition.
The company is one of the largest patent-holders in the United States.
Stallings also called on the industry to stop what he calls "bad behaviour" by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents.
So, Mr. Stallings, what is IBM doing? I remember the infamous IBM progress bar patent. This claim is not any better than Acacia's claims, or Forgent claims.
If you want to complain about the absurd patent system, you're welcome. But for it to be *credible*, better get rid of some trivial patents. IBM should have tons of these.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Examples would be "cold nuclear fusion device in conjection with various shaped enclosures", or "antigravity device in conjunction with a vehicular assembly for transportation purposes". You wouldn't have to have invented cold nuclear fusion or anti-gravity to have a piece of the licensing pie.
Yeah, there really needs to be a public comment period for patents before they are granted, but I think that the patent office is more interested in collecting fees than being correct.
Now, I agree with IBM, patent-hoarders that don't have products and just rape people who need patent licensing suck. But I think that's not evidence of the badness of patent-hoarders; it's evidence of the badness of patents. IBM can rape you just as bad if you don't have any patents to license back to them. Patents are a profit center, though, so you won't hear IBM advocating toasting them entirely. Instead, IBM is going to a crazy space where their intellectual property isn't even exactly property anymore--you presumably can't sell it to just anybody (e.g. a hoarder, or at least, you won't sell it to them since it's worthless to them).
IMO, the biggest problem, as always, is the focus on prior art instead of insisting on a fairly high obviousness barrier (or a low barrier for accepting re-invention as not being covered by a patent).
Reforming the patent system should be something that requires less work from everyone involved. My solution is to limit the number of patents a company or individual may own. Set it to something low -- say 5 patents -- and anyone who has more than that must pick the 5 they want to keep and give up the rest. When a patent is given up, it becomes public domain and cannot be patented again. If a company wants to patent something new, but is already maxed out on their patents, they must choose one of their existing patents to give up before patenting the new idea. This would force companies to only patent their best ideas, and would prevent them from hoarding patents.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
IBM spends billions on R&D every year. They are one of the companies that actually invents the things it patents. Gerstner finished what Akers started - heavy investment in R&D. Only Gerstner was able to turn that into a royalties payoff. Now just about every chip manufactured today employs IBM-invented technologies. So, they're in a much better position to follow Gerstner's mantra - "it doesn't matter who's box the customer uses, as long as IBM gets paid."
Patent abuse tends to dilute IBM's position as a R&D-to-royalties focused technology company. They are simply protecting their position. I suspect other R&D-heavies (HP, GE, etc.) will back this, if they're smart.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Subject: A service for which a P.O. can milk both patent holder and alleged patent infringer.
A method by which a alleged patent infringer can apply to the Patent Office for patent invalidation, pursuant to disbursement of a modest application fee for said invalidation application.
Why only sell weapons to one side when you can sell to both?
Frankly I wouldn't be suprised if that alone wouldn't regect 70% of applications.
Think Deeply.
Well the patent system does need a change.
I was wondering what do you think about such change:
Only an limited number of patents to be granted every year. Let's say 500 patents.
This way only really important inventions (not innovations) will be honored with `limited goverment granted monopoly`. The patent office will throw faster the obvious and broad patents, and will have more time to focus on the really good candidates.
As a side effect the less probability of granting patent will discourage the firms to fill as many patents as possible.
The really good thing is that there will be an limited number of patents that could be checked more easy (e.g. only 10'000 valid patents at any time)
The only question is what to do with already granted patents. I think that limiting their life would be good idea. For example cutting to half the rest of their life would be an good option. So if patent is just issued it will have 10 years, but if it would have 4 more years left, it will last only for 2.
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram of Chewie) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! (jury looks shocked)
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? (calmly) Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
If you've read patents, you know how vague and dry they usually are. If you think you're going to get volunteers and the academic community to do prior art research for you in a structured way, on all patent applications, you're nuts.
I can understand IBM's interest in patent reform. Maintaining a patent portfolio like theirs is not cheap, and they're a giant litigation target. Given their R&D, they're likely going to remain the 800-pound gorilla in patents no matter what the rules are.
A much better solution would be to place more of the burden of the patent process on the applicant, in a way that's easily verifiable. If an applicant was forced to more thoroughly justify why their work is exceptional, with a bias towards granting a patent as specific to the reference implementation as possible, we'd see fewer applications, which would give more review time to the examiners, and less patent collision, where multiple vague patents cover the same thing.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
People are responding to this with examples of IBM's own patentorial misdemeanors, pointing to the fact that they themselves hold numerous trivial patents. I feel that even though this may be the case, it doesn't necessarily invalidate their position on software patents as proclaimed here. To survive under the current patent system IBM has ofcourse seen it necessary to play dirty themselves, and there is a possibility that they do not like it, even though they are a part of it. Yielding the market to companies of possibly lower moral fiber would i no circumstances help on the matter. Cax
Without patents, a little guy can invent something, and then a big guy can come along and copy it. Not having paid for the research into it, they can probably sell it for less too. Result - Little guy goes out of business and big guys keep selling product for $$$.
Patents can protect the small guys from the big guys.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Or it could be that IBM is already in the system and doesn't want newcomers to have the same easy path that IBM was given. Sounds more like a monopolist trying to tighten their grasp.
Software patents should be limited to 3-5 years. Or have some kind of limitation on fees charged after 5 years. I think that there have been a handful of patents that have actually stunted some fields; compression comes to mind, there are an insane number of vague patents, it has actually driven top researches from the field (Ross Williams left because Robert Jung patented his work. He's kind of come back though) I don't think other fields, like industrial engineering, have the same patent issues. Where would we be if RSA was patented in 1995? Would we have SSL? Would people actually be implementing and using it? because there would be 2 toolkits that cost a few grand a pop to implement SSL based applications. What if it hadn't been patented, would SMIME or PEM have taken off? We might not have spam now if 90% of emails were signed or encrypted. What if the spreadsheet was patented, just the vague concept of storing data and equations in cells, we might not have PCs if that had been the case. I'm not even thinking about all of the graphics patents, the patents for UI components, the patents for various algorithms that are infringed upon all of the time because they are so basic or there isn't any other way to do some things that makes any sense.
I recently bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner and it had this little 'history' booklet attached to the unit. The last page of the booklet is titled 'The Patent Nightmare'
Apparantly people who make Real Things(tm) have problems with patents too!
"Could you please justify by reply in moderate detail the supposed net benefit to society..."
That's far enough - there's no need to even mention open source or free software projects: the onus is on those who are proponents of software patents (or any other kind of patent) to show that they promote progress in the sciences and useful arts. It must be demonstrated by them that the overall effect is beneficial in each area of technology and in each industry to which the patent system is applied.
Patent attorneys and others will always try to hoodwink us into believing all kinds of nonsense about the patent system. They use words and expressions like "protection", "intellectual property" and "theft" to mislead people into believing that a patent represents some kind of tangible entity over which people have natural rights. But we should never forget what a patent really is: a government granted 20 year monopoly right to exclude everyone else other than the patentee from freely using some idea, whether they came up with it independently or not. Unlike a copyright, it is a kind of officially sanctioned and enforced removal of rights from everyone else and in the case of software patents it is a serious infringement of the tangible property rights of millions of computer owners.
Extraordinary interventions in the free market, that even entail curtailment of natural rights and liberties, demand extraordinary justification.
I'd like to add one more point:
If later research proves that the proposed implementation does not work, the patent should be rejected retroactively.
C - the footgun of programming languages
IBM really does know how to make friends in the FOSS community.
:)
Well done guys.
I have to come to the defense of the Patent Office on one public case last week. The morons at Smuckers tried to patent the "process" of sealing the edges of its Crustables "crustless" PB&J sandwich. The patent office told them to go take a hike, as the process has existed for years (ravioli, pie crusts, etc). They appealed to a US district court and the case was tossed. Score one for common sense.
However, it's pretty clear that things have gotten out of hand. Too many people were/are making too much money on bogus patents and now that you have more lawyers involved, we're seeing what happens. As with most thing, they (lawyers, sharks, ambulanc chasers) destroy it.
how about large fines (1% of a companies anual turnover?) for any patents not granted for any reason?
This would make them work hard to look for prior art. 1% isnt alot, but file 20 bogus patents a year and thats a hell of a lot of money.
IANALOAK (of any kind), but the scenario you described is an abuse of the patent/judicial system, not the scenario it is designed to protect. (Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.) Eliminating the fees may help people such as you describe. Another improvement would be to change the judicial system to minimize the costs of defending yourself in lawsuits. (Cost is an impediment to the poor-- those the system should be defending.) Additionally, any proof of prior art should be a slam-dunk in court, with automatic remission of costs, plus a penalty for frivilous lawsuit.
Said impoverished developer could have benefitted from a well-implemented patent system. By patenting his innovations, he could do like MySQL, giving away a FOSS version under a GPL, with dual licensing for commercial application.
In fact, patents (if done right) should be a benefit to any developer. They should stimulate people to work hard at developing new ideas, so when they share them, there can be some personal reward (or at least a payback to cover the investment of time and effort).
In summation, the problem isn't with the patent concept itself, but with its implementation-- benefitting the powerful to the expense of the individual. I agree with you that the way the system currently works, it is detrimental to society as a whole as well as individuals and even corporations generally. Small changes could make a huge difference, IMHO.
I think if you put the burden on the filer instead of the USPO then you will see companies spring up that research it. The only problem with this approach is that you are still putting faith in the people that are trying to screw you in the end... so the USPO still has to do the search. You'd have to create a third party company that is nuetral and certified by the USPO. I'd much rather someone make money doing the research rather than my tax dollars getting spent having the burden of the research being on the government.
Monkeys didn't need a patent system to come out of the trees.
"That's far enough - there's no need to even mention open source or free software projects"
I think it is necessary because patent lawyers are demanding these patentability changes which are undeniably of great consequence to society, yet they don't want to make a genuinely balanced appraisal of the pros and cons to society of the crucial part of that change, namely making software patentable. They only ever bother to mention positive effects, and avoid any public consideration of negative effects. That's not a balanced debate. That's why I want to focus attention on the area which could be most negatively affected by software patents: open-source software projects.
To the many patent lawyers I know read slashdot articles on patents: Please have the courage of your convictions and write a thoughtful reply here to my earlier post, anonymously if desired.
Original AC
What IBM has realised is that they can change the rules of commerce in their industry and they are in a position to capitalise on that change. It just so happens that "we" (FLOSS) are going to "win" when this happens, so it's all good to the Slashdot crowd. IF IBM saw more dollars using an alternat strategy, they would use it instead. Which is not a bad thing neccesarily, there is nothing wrong with making money. There is something wrong with screwing people, and that is what the current software market is doing. IBM is going to take advantage of a sea change in they way people think about, purchase and interact with technology. All because the Free Software "movement" preserved what is ultimatly being shown to be the best way to develop software.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Why should it be the responsibility of the patent office or ourselves to prove prior art, when it is the companies themselves who should be responsible for doing due diligence? Why sohuld they offload their costs onto us? Yes, patent reform is necessary, but the onus should be placed squarely on the patent applicants and not us.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Who just patented a way to direct images etc.. directly into the brain.
A Sony Electronics spokeswoman told the magazine that no experiments had been conducted, and that the patent "was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us."
Wow! And they thought of that ll on their own!. Without watching the matrix or any other sci-fi movie ever! What inspiration!
Here's a viewpoint on why constructing and maintaining a prior art database makes patent applications even cheaper and easier for people like IBM:
http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/gacri/index.en.html/
The open-source and academic community should be writing code and generating new ideas -- producing actual tangible stuff that counts as human progress -- rather than helping the patent offices and IP lawyers to ply their perverse trade.
I'd add that patents on ideas that are highly likely to be reinvented by other teams are also highly likely to be unoriginal - with or without prior art.
Patents on such ideas do not just curtail the economically-sound interchange of such ideas in the future, they actively remove people's rights to the fruit of their own labour, the copyrighted works they produce independently.
A broad software patent can, at a stroke, turn a life's work into something with no value. Unlike patents on physical inventions, this is not unlikely... in fact it's going to become more and more common to hear about such stories.
The patent offices are, basically, in a corrupt symbiosis with patent lawyers, stealing ideas from the "commons", and turning the real inventors into peons. It's a classic abuse of the "tragedy of the commons", in which corrupt officials argue that the commons need "their protection" when in fact there is a well-functioning economy already in place.
It's much expropriating property - someone's house, or a park, or public lands - for business reasons.
Parkinson's law: officialdom will always expand to consume its budget. In the case of the patent offices, the budget is limitless.
The patent offices, and the patent lawyers, are IMHO the real villains of the affair. I am quite surprised that no-one has yet launched a lawsuit against the USPTO for larceny.
I don't think you will get many useful replies from the patent lawyers who read this.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
While some open-source developers might want to follow your suggested approach of patenting their own inventions for future profit, do you want to stop developers without a profit motive having the option of giving away their inventions for the benefit of society?
- Filing a patent application is unlikely ever to be free of cost (considering only plausible changes to the patent system). Many open-source developers work on their projects as a hobby, without any project income, without any business purpose, and would have no money to pay for filing patent applications.
-
Many open-source developers work on their projects as a hobby , i.e. for fun. For such developers, filling in a patent application form is not fun. It would be a huge administrative overhead, taking a large amount of the developers' very limited spare time at weekends and evenings away from their hobby.
For these reasons, if you were to make filing patent applications effectively a requirement of participation in open-source projects, it would kill off many of those projects.Open-source developers who honestly give away their inventions freely for the benefit of society should not be required to pay anybody to protect their donations from attack by corporations who generally do not give away their inventions freely for the benefit of society.
IBM does legitimate research in all kinds of scientific fields--physics, materials, fluid dynamics, whatever.
At least 95% of IBM's record number of patents are *actual, useful* inventions. Compare-and-contrast with Microsoft.
Said developers should publish their innovations in a public forum that can have its date verified. Prior art (patented or not) should slam dunk any patent claim.
It should be the responsibility of the USPTO because one of the weaknesses of the infamous Rule 56 which requires the applicant to submit any information subject to the patentability of his/her invention of which he/she has knowledge. Some information is here:
o ft ware/sanjose/sj_sterne.html
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/s
The problem is that Rule 56 is somewhat vague. Who is to say if they had knowledge of ALL prior art?
I agree that the citizens of the US shouldn't have to pay for this, but the problem is that not allowing this to happen for everyone raises the cost of getting a patent to outside of the realm where it is feasible for a small business to acquire them. It's a matter of figuring out how to pay for all of the extra work it will take to find appropriate prior art.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Well, well: looks as if IBM is throwing rocks from within the glass house:
.
There are I guess only two countries worldwide, where a patent can be obtained for something that has been published prior in another country.
One of them is the U.S.
Occurrence: RSA patent
The RSA patent content had been published in the scientific community, I think it was in Israel.
It was possible, after publication as a scientific paper, to obtain a patent in the U.S. for the RSA methodology.
The first step to protect prior art would thus be to immediately change the patent laws, right?
Another very useful thing is communication. I remember an occurrence when, in the 90s, someone tried to patent on big/small endian and network endian.
I myself had 'prior art' in formulating network endian to mediate between disparate boxes, when TCP/IP was not around, and I had to write my network protocols and drivers myself.
And the routines everyone uses look the same: once optimized the result is just obvious.
Communication is everything. I could enter the prior art (one of many others) claim, that network endian was not patentable. And this only because someone posted it on a mailing list I happened to read at the time.
Communication, and changing patent laws to achieve an internationally even playing field.
I would not call for additional legislation...who knows who's interests will be served once it is written up and tagged with all kinds of piggyback stuff.
damicha
Nevertheless, no one argues for "not throwing out the baby with the bathwater" and to introduce such a system, while at the same encouraging people to fight for preventing abuse of such a system. Even though a particular system could have some positive effects in an ideal world, that does not mean that abandoning it in the real (and not ideal) world is a bad decision.
All studies show that the driving force for innovation in the software field is competition (e.g. the FTC study). There is no need to introduce the inherently costly patent system in this sector to encourage innovation. On the contrary, the patent system has resulted in a transfer of R&D money to patenting, because software patents are virtually only used for strategic purposes: to lock out the competition (so there is less competition and there are thus less incentives to innovate). That is one of the properties of the patent system, and it's seen as a good trade-off in sectors where you can't do anything without a couple of millions backing you up (like in medicin, although even there people are now putting up question marks), and where innovation is mainly revolutionary/discrete as opposed to evolutionary/sequential.It's not just implementation, there are lots of indications that the principle of the patent system is simply unsuited for a field like software. More here.
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IAAPL. You should be arguing that patents in general do more harm than good.
Why should software authors have to worry less about patents than independent mechanical designers, chemists, or electrical engineers?
What's the difference between your hypothetical and a guy who designs a new engine on paper, proposes a new synthesis on paper, or sketches a new circuit on paper, and posts it on the web, whereupon some third party company picks it up and mass produces it, and the guy is threatened for inducing patent infringement (yes, there is such a thing)?
There is not much difference. I have heard the arguments that say software is special for various reasons, but you have to have already drunk the koolaid to buy them.
Remember, if you want to take the position that patents in general are bad, that's a very legitimate position.
But there is very little that is special about software patents. All inventions are mere conceptions, and it's all done on paper (except for drugs, which have their own ethics/cost/benefit problems).
Just FYI, in the U.S., there is a special "personal use" escape clause for "business methods" (which would be most algorithm/data structure type things). It is insanely worded and also limited. 35 U.S.C. 273. You probably want to know how that works. The same kind of "prior user" defense exists in more rational form in many countries.
I'm sorry. I can accept that patents in general may harm the penniless dreamer. But software is not special, and there is no credible reason to exclude it. The (unproven) net benefit is the same as it is with all other technologies(a disclosure for exclusivity bargain).
Freedom of expression - a red herring. Free speech is a very good reason to restrict copyright, especially for artistic works. However, software was treated as "expression" as a convenient legal fiction to shoehorn it into the existing copyright laws. But really, that makes no sense. You can't argue simultaneously that an algorithm is both a discovered law of nature and unique personal expression.
In summary, patents *are* a threat, but a 200-year old one that every other kind of technology has had to deal with. The reason to change is that the disclosure isn't doing anyone any good, so we (society) are giving something (a patent) for nothing (a worthless disclosure). That is not unique to software.
They do publish [your emphasis] their innovations -- they do it on open-source project websites. That's why it's called "open-source" development.
Although many open-source projects do use source-code management systems which systematically log date-stamps for software changes and provide various forms of date-based record-keeping, the date-stamping may not be notarized. If you were to require proper notarization of these date-stamps it would cost money, which many open-source developers simply do not have (afterall, for them it's only a hobby). Imposing time and/or money costs on open-source developers is going to kill off many of these open-source projects.
Philanthropic open-source developers who publish their inventions on their websites, should not be required to do anything more than that because they are already freely giving away something of real value -- their inventions -- for the benefit of society.
The filing looks like they had an on-line brainstorming session about all of the historical data that could be discovered about a Web document. Someone then wrote this up with some waffly tech language and came up with a few formula and then filed as a huge patent that appears more to be staking out a massive claim on the search engine algorithm space. I guess that this patent is about having bargaining chips with MSN Search and Yahoo! when the great search engine shakeout comes. I don't blaim Google for using the system as it stands; now they have shareholders they have fidicual duty to be evil
There are some interesting ideas in the Google Patent and a much narrower filing with some specifics might merit a patent but talk like: a link has a creation and eventual destruction date, the rate of link creation to a document may be an indicator of the document's freshness, doesn't strike me as an invention more handwaving.
Given that the patent office is not up to the task at least restrict the lifetime of software patents to around 4 years.
Why should patents be transferable? The only real reason for buying patents is to build legal ammunition to take down rivals; ie. to suppress competition.
If the original inventor can't be bothered to enforce his own invention, it should become public domain.
Plus, this would kill off those companies whose sole business plan is to buy patents and sue people; nobody would miss those companies.
_ The bureaucracy is expanding to meet
the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
The intention is pretty much irrelevant if it just doesn't work in practice.
I disagree, if with some changes it can be made to work in practice. I argue for making those changes, because some (most?) of us will not seek to innovate unless there is a potential payoff.
But is it really worth all the trouble?
Yes.
no one argues for "not throwing out the baby with the bathwater" and to introduce such a system, while at the same encouraging people to fight for preventing abuse of such a system.
I do argue precisely this. The baby is the idea that patenting innovations can stimulate further innovation. The bathwater is the poor implementation. Additionally, we aren't introducing a system, (in USA) we've had it for 200+ years.
You are pointing out many flaws in the system. I see none that cannot be corrected without tossing the entire system.
One wonders if the SCO lawsuit was a stimulus for IBM's call for patent reform...
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Publishing the details of your innovation on an independent 3rd party site, should be sufficient to prove the date of publication. I don't see why any substantial cost has to be involved. For example, the forums on Sourceforge should be adequate.
Go all the way, you have some serious clout and lobbying resources. See if you can get a bipartisan bill introduced to BAN software patents completely, before it's too late. You can still patent tangible hardware, that's enough, you got great R&D. That is the ONLY long term fix and you at least suspect it if not know it. Go ahead, you dipped your toe in the water, it feels good, jump in all the way, you'll like it!
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i work as an examiner, and I can tell you that we most definatly use google.com and web.archive.org
I would love to have a locally indexed copy of web.archive.org since it is so slow, however hotbot.com's date search is very useful.
we also have access to IEEE's database, dialog, IBM, derwent, JPO and EPO in additon to the published applications database and the existing patent database.
Also just to let you know, the USPTO was forced to issue softwarepatents based on the StateStreet bank decision, it wasn't because they just "felt like it."
Since the late 1960s the management culture at the PTO has shifted from a strong "nothing is patentable unless you really, really make a good argument and present narrow claims" to a "keep application pendency down by getting allowances/abandonments asap" approach. Since the applicant can argue rejections, which take time and energy to rebut in a new rejection, it is easier to just say "I agree" and allow the application. This is enforced by a quota system which, simplified, amounts to counting disposals (allowance by the examiner, abandonment by the applicant, or writing an examiner's answer to an appeal to the Board of Appeals filed by the applicant). When you throw in other performance elements such as responding within set time limits to applicant's responses, starting work on the oldest application in an examiner's docket, the actual "quality" performance elements (finding the best prior art and applying in logical, well reasoned rejections) are actually a relative minority of an examiner's performance rating (looking at page 35 of the following Inspector General's Report, the first three elements are "quality elements, amounting to 40%; the remaining 60% are production time elements, service to the public, etc. This report, incidentally, is even more PHB oriented than the incredible level that PTO management already is)
Added to this mix is that fact that, although the time allotted to examine each application is roughly unchanged over the last few decades it has gotten tougher to do a quality examination than it was years ago. This has been caused by several factors, but the main ones are:
less ability to "write off" time spent on important examining related activities, such as maintaining search files (classifying foreign patents and the mass of non-patent documents into the Patent Classification scheme, which amounts to a way of "tagging" such documents, a valuable supplement to full text searching, and historically, the primary means to search)
ever increasing requirements to justify making rejections; they have to discuss in bloody detail how each element of the claim is shown by the prior art, used in the same way, and, for obvious rejections, why it is proper to used disclosures from two or more references, the "motivation" to do so having to be derived by statements actually in the references, and not just by the examiner's deductive reasoning. Indeed, a rejection can be judged to be improper for not being properly supported by the cited prior art, counting as an error against the examiner.
lots of other, constant distractions, procedures, and requirements encountered on a daily basis that have only multiplied over the years.
When management is confronted with the complaints from influential "patent system users" such as IBM here, their typical response is to institute "quality review" programs where people who can't be as expert as the typical examiner who regularly works in the art of the application being reviewed is making judgements on issues like search quality, relevance of prior art to the claims, etc. The reviewers can do additional searches, basically spending more search time on the application, but with the consequence that the examiner will be charged with an error and suffer a decreased performance rating, rather than having more time to search the application and find the relevant art in the first case. What PTO management tries to do is like what PHBs in programming shops try to do by demanding more bug free code by increasing the QA department and then firing programmers who wrote the buggy code without changing the ever shorter deadlines. And, remember, that patent examination is not project work, but production work, that just on and an with no breaks until retirement, resignation, firing, or death.
I am semi involved in one small part of IBM's massive patent system. They are getting software patents for any solution to any problem they find. It is totally rediculous. They are churning out patents on crap. For every program you write, if you were to abstract the flow out and submit a patent on it, that is what IBM is doing. I believe they are going to help lead to the downfall of the patent system as it currently exists, at least I hope so.
Looking at this in the context of SCO v. IBM, their larger strategy is to shift the advantage away from the plaintiff/patent applicant/aggressor: play defense, stay on top. Here, the patent applicant defnitely has the advantage, since the patent is granted without thorough review. They're lobbying to make it harder to get a patent in general, to the larger effect of weeding out frivolous patents. In SCO, I can only hope, they will make it so that things like "facts" and "evidence" are required of the plaintiff.
Therefore, you have no reason to suspect them of bait n' switch with the OS community. They're just playing defense in order to maintain their corporate hugeness. In this case, the effect is moot with respect to open source proles, because ideally a good patent will still go through. In copyright law, it might become harder to establish that somebody has in fact stolen your code. While I really want SCO v. IBM to be decided in IBM's favor, and therefore Linux's, see PearOS/CherryOS for why this could be bad.
...therefore I will post this anonymously.
It is harder to get a patent through the IBM internal review process (which you have to complete before Legal will consider filing it) than it is to get the USPTO to take it. A team of other IBMers (usually inventors themselves) ensure that it is innovative and possible. The revenue possibilities are also considered.
I've put 11 ideas through the process, all of which I am reasonably sure would have been granted by the USPTO, and only 1 of those has been applied for. Three were thought worth protecting but not patenting -- they are published on the ip.com prior art database to prevent anyone else patenting them.
If all corporations handled patents as responsibly as IBM we wouldn't have a problem.
"Publishing the details of your innovation on an independent 3rd party site [...] For example, the forums on Sourceforge should be adequate."
My point was that's what many open-source developers already do. It's not a notarized service though. More importantly, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in practice because most open-source developers cannot afford to employ any sort of lawyer to defend themselves against the mere threaten lawsuit. Knowing you have prior art published on their open-source project website does not imply being able to afford to defend your inventions in a patent court. Please read the case of Helmut Dersch mentioned at the top of this thread for further details.
Copyright as the sole payoff is not enough. If my idea is novel enough that nobody else is likely to think of it, but is relatively easy to implement, then copyright gives me very little protection. Thus, no payoff.
There are no empirical indications that patents overall increase innovation in the software field, and many to the contrary.
You yourself have stated that patents have only applied to SW for 7 years. And, we all agree that the current implementation of patents on SW is flawed. So, how could there be any positive empirical indications?
Many economists disagree with you (in fact, I don't know of a single economists which is convinced that patents are inherently good for software innovation, and that only the implementation causes problems).
I don't know any economists. Perhaps there are "many" that disagree with me. (How many economists do you know?) What I know is human nature-- people don't do things generally unless there is some kind of potential reward. This includes the kind of rewards such as a good feeling that you've helped somebody, and money. The idea that I could get a temporary monopoly on implementations of my innovative idea will spur me to publish my ideas, so others can take advantage of them. Without that, I'd just keep it to myself. Additionally, it may spur me to pursue intriguing ideas, investing time and money to see if they work out. Without the payoff, I am not interested.
Who needs lawyers? If the system were changed such that prior art was a slam dunk, and independent 3rd party sites such as Sourceforge forums constituted a publishing date, then people like Helmut would have nothing to fear. I also think there should be some penalty (based on the ratio of the net worth of the claimants) for abusing the judicial system by filing frivolous lawsuits, when you know prior art existed. This should also be a slam dunk.
Any why the emphasis on "notarized." If you publish to an independent site over which you have no ability to modify old content, then the burden of proof should fall to the plaintiff to demonstrate you manipulated the evidence. In addition, once those sites get crawled and cached, the evidence becomes overwhelming.
As a small time software guy, the chance that you'll win in the patent lottery is a lot smaller than that you'll win. And the problem is that it's not a free choice you have: if there are software patents, you have to play the game, you can't opt out. And again, this has nothing to do with patent quality, but with the fact that every computer program is built on many ideas and the fact that pretty much all innovation in software is sequential (along with the fact that large companies have more money to obtain more patents, of course).
As Shapiro said in 2001:
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Those idiots don't get it.
IBM probably has 1000x more patents than a typical small company (25000+ total?). They register 3000+ patents a year. What are the odds the small company infringes on/needs IBM's patents to just do what it does - especially if software patents are included? 100%?
You little guy can invent something, but IBM can come along and force you to cross license it. And you better smile and pretend you like it.
The fact that IBM says this sucks is something worth noting. They are currently the leader in the number of patents. I don't see them losing their lead anytime soon, unless the patent system changes. Because their scientists/researchers don't have to worry about legal issues, they just go do their stuff.
Whereas small companies can and do get slowed down by such issues - even if they do take the "better not to know" tactic - they have very little "shielding" unlike IBM - look at SCO vs IBM - it has had minimal impact on IBM's technical people. I wonder even if IBM's legal people are having _fun_ with that case.
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The idea of patents was developed in a simpler time when the rate of progress was slower and new ideas only expanded upon, at most, a handful of existing patents that were still in effect.
Today, the rate of change is so fast and most products are so complex that any new idea builds upon dozens or hundreds of active patents. That is why you see chains of patent violation claims like Tivo suing Echostar at the same time that Forgent is suing Tivo. Almost no product is standalone any more. Patents have mutated from protecting a single idea into being part of a company's "nuclear arsenal". You sue us for violating patents a,b, and c and we'll sue you for violating x,y, and z. IBM may have a lot of patents and derive a good amount of income from them, but I think they are fairly restrained compared to many other companies. If IBM was really nasty about enforcing all their patents aggressively, they could make life miserable for a large percentage of all companies in existance.
Smaller companies that actually try to produce a product are at the biggest disadvantage under this system. Chances are they're violating one or more patents by larger companies or they come close enough that they could be forced to prove they're not. It's the little companies that have patented some idea and don't actually produce products based on it that are profiting. They can just sit back and sue anybody who comes close to violating their unused patent.
From an admittedly lay perspective, it appears to me that 1) the duration of patents needs to be shortened, 2) that the owner of a patent should be required to actively attempt to implement or profit from it from the beginning. This crap where companies nobody ever heard of decide 10 years later to shake down everybody using JPEG or GIF for royalties must stop!, 3) full disclosure of patents must be legally required if a company is going to participate in any standards setting group. Example for this is Rambus participating in developing the SDRAM standard and then, after it became a huge success, announcing they owned a patent that covered part of the standard., and 4) like everyone else is saying - patents for ideas that are either obvious or prior art should be harder to get and easier to invalidate.
The development of pure-IP plays is scaring IBM.
The problem is thus: You have a company that builds nothing, nor does it even research anything. All it does it buy patents on the open market, with an eye not for usefulness or ingenuity but applicability to other people's inventions.
Then they go around and say something very simple: Pay us, or lose your technology.
IBM's been able to fend off such threats for years with nothing but the size of its own portfolio. But Patent Mutually Assured Destruction implies both parties are dependent on actually using the technology embedded within the patents. Like a drug dealer who himself stays clean, pure IP plays avoid the technology and thus suffer no leverage from IBM.
If you don't think real money is involved -- Sony just got the right to sell Playstation taken away (suspended pending appeal), and RIM (of Blackberry) just paid a half-billion to get the right to keep their product on the market. In RIM's case, the patent was on wireless e-mail.
Business thrives on predictability. Patents have become an untenable threat to the markets ability to provide such predictability, and as such even the $1B IBM makes every year pales against the $81B of yearly revenue this patent uncertainty puts at risk.
--Dan
Sonjay (some one named jay) is a geek and develops something relatively cool and innovative. Sonjay is not interested in the marketing side because he is a geek and can barely hold a conversation without talking about protocols and ciphers.
Sonjay takes his app to fill_in_blank LC (large company) to see if they will market. LC will not sign an NDA because it causes too much potential liability. To protect his invention, Sonjay files a patent. After 4 years in prosecution, he finally gets his patent and then goes back to LC. LC looks at it, says great, gets their engineers involved who say, hey we can improve on this by rewriting it. LC says thanks to Sonjay, and he goes back to his mother's basement sad, not a penny richer, and goes back to coding.
For Sonjay to pursue LC for patent infringement, he needs very deep pockets (about $4M). Lawyers will take it on contingent, but Sonjay has to be able to pay expenses (figure at least $1 to $2 M). Instead, Sonjay turns to WeEnforceYourIP.com who agree to represent Sonjay, but require Sonjay to allow them right to make all business decisions.
WEYIP does not want Sonjay in the retail business. Otherwise, when WEYIP enforces a patent against two somebodies (named Sally and Me), then either Sally or I can try to get Sonday for infringing our own patents and that leads to a cross-patent licensing venue... that does not benefit WEYIP who spent $500k so far against Sally and Me. For simplicity, WEYIP likes it when Sonjay is not in the retail business and otherwise has no revenue from products.
WEYIP asserts the patent against small to mid side companies SMSC because they generally will pay instead of fighting. When enough SMSC have paid, WEYIP has enough money to pursue LC and then may, or may not win, but if they do, they expect to win big.
Ahhh.... the gamemanship of IP.
IBM will always have much more patents then you and won't have any problem shaking you down as soon as you ship even one program, since your program will infringe on a lot more patents than theirs.
Not if the USPTO does their job by enforcing the obviousness criteria and tracking down prior art, as they are required to do.
it turns out patents are not used there to protect investments, but only for strategic purposes.
This is patently false. My previous employer had a couple patents that were specifically used to protect their investments in software research.
if there are software patents, you have to play the game, you can't opt out
Wrong. I can use the system honestly. And, I can push for improvements to the system (as IBM is doing today) to correct abuses we've been seeing.
I also disagree with Shapiro, in that if you take the protections away, I will stop bringing my blocks to the pyramid (ie. keep my most innovative ideas secret-- do custom software with restrictive licenses). Microsoft can throw 50 programmers at reimplementing whatever I do, bundle it with Longhorn, and call it innovation, and I'm screwed. However, even the evil empire does on occasion buy IP from other innovators. Shapiro's argument primarily is built on the supposition that the USPTO will not or cannot enforce the obviousness criteria. I think they can.
- Programmers would actually use the patent database to look up information (I guess this is another thing you want to fix)
- The chance of independent discovery of what you develop is extremely low (as well as the chance of independent discovery of alternative equally good or better methods)
And most of the time they send a nastygram or 50 lawyers. And by the time Longhorn ships, you've had plenty of time to gain back your investments. Copyright indeed gives you a shorter exclusion term in practice (on the "idea"), but that's a feature, not a bug. It gives society the best deal. No, Shapiro's argument is primarily built upon the fact (not supposition) that most innovation in the software sector is sequential/cumulative.Donate free food here
A good place for current up-to-date info on patent news is: http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/
TIME is the Aether...
In exchange for paying the patent tax, industry gets a license to all relevant industry patents. The tax collected is then apportioned to patent holders based on patent usage and perceived patent contributions to the industry's product. Everybody wins except companies with big patent portfolios.
For those that this IBM does a lot of prior art research. Here's a couple of patents granted to IBM for which they cited ZERO references.
6823358 Enabling multiple client access to a process-based system or program from a single java virtual machine
6823452 Providing end-to-end user authentication for host access using digital certificates
6829597 Method, apparatus and computer program product for processing cashless payments
All references cited in the issued patent were cited by the examiner.
If all companies appeared on the scene as mature seasoned veterans, we would have so much less chaos.
IMHO, the patent office should be the seasoned vet with a robust system that allows for discovery and comment. The system should allow for bumbling new companies with few resources for discovery process an little experience with the system.
I do wonder about how many patents really have been filed for test purposes, or simply so that a company shows up in the patent roles.
Wait? IAAPL stands for "I am a patent lawyer" right? Are you for real? I thought I would see the doomsday before I saw a lawyer admit that patents are crap. Who are you?
Ok, well I am one of those people who do believe that ALL patents are crap, and they should be treated like the crap that they are. (I'm the guy that wrote the bitter protest against patents, and the bitter protest against copyrights that you can find in any search engine) In fact, some patents like AIDS drug patents are outright about murdering poor people in the name of nifty sounding theories.
But at the same time - I have limited resources and I want to focus those resources on the battles that I can win. Right now, the battle I can win is the battle that has to do with anything that has the effect of restricting the free flow of information. That battle has to take place now and finish soon because society simply can not effectively enter into the information age without it. The pressures are going to become insane, and I can use that to my leverage to get results.
In the future I believe that fabrication, and assembly, and nano technology, and inkjet printers for mechanical objects, will become a reality - and at that time patents on things that have physical presence will be as easy to copy as information is and will be ripe for the kill. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely love to do something now to take a stab at the heart of ALL patents. And it is not lost on me that the more we attack all patents in general now the more that will make things easier on ourselves later. And I still think they should be saying something like "all patents are crap, but software patnets need to go now" instead of "patents are good, but we need this incy wincy exception" - but what can I say - someone else is behind the curtin pushing the buttons.
One more thing to think about. Copyright's and software patents are about information controll, which is battle that can not be and likely will not be fought with physical violence. But other patents are about physical controll, and don't be supprised if both sides pro and con will require physically coercive strategies. Each battle IMHO requires a different strategy.
I'm noticing an unsurprising trend* here - massive companies like Microsoft and IBM file for ridiculus patents - lots of them. Then, several months later, they call for patent reform.
I see this as large companies trying to shut out other players from the silly patent game once *they* have already secured their key silly patents. I think patent reform should start by examining show stupid some _existing_ patents are, and revoking the over-the-top ones.
* Tinfoil hat recommended, batteries sold separately
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"Extraordinary interventions in the free market, that even entail curtailment of natural rights and liberties, demand extraordinary justification."
I think you have to take into account that countries that have a formal way of rewarding people who have good ideas seem to have the upper hand over the course of history, all other things being equal. A patent system or something like it seems to be one of the factors that boost technological progress over time.
Especially so in light of what the evidence that has accumulated since 1958 in the US and elsewhere is now telling us about the effects of the patent system and the effects of recent profound changes; not only to the patent system itself but also in the technologies it is applied to, to whom it is applied and how it is used.
Until you get sued, you may not understand why you would need a lawyer. When you see how lawyers work, you may also wish you had notarized records.
I would agree that the patent system may well need reform but surely you'd have to agree that all the most techonologically advanced countries have a patent system of some sort. Either having a patent system boosts your rate of progress or it's a side effect of having a high rate of progress.
It just seems common sense that if a society rewards people for producing good ideas then it will get a boost from people who have to work for a living having idea hamster as a career option.
What is interesting is that IBM now has the position that software patents are not good. What is also interesting is that IBM has been letting some of its patents go. I haven't looked at which patents, so they could be useless ones. If not, then perhaps IBM sees them as not likely to increase in value and is converting them to cash. That's what I'd do if I had a lot of patents that were going to EOL as a result of chaning legislation.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Once again, thanks P.L. for taking the time to reply.
Original A.C. from the start of this thread.