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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."
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.
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You're right about the flood of prior art challenges that would come up, but in many cases it wouldn't be hard to see which patents needed closer examination. In the public patent review system, there could be a choice: patent is 'new' or 'prior art exists'. Then if the patent office sees that 80% of the reponses say 'prior art exists' that tips them off that the patent is widely believed to be invalid and probably should be investigated.
What about idiots and others who wrongly affect the ratio of new:exists? A simple account system could be created. You need an account to comment on the validity of a patent, and if a person is discovered to repeatedly be wrong about the final decisions they could be given warnings, then their accounts could be disabled, for some time period or permanently.. That's another discussion though.
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.
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