Congress to Overhaul Patent Law

karvind writes "According to story at law.com, 'lawmakers in Washington are considering changes to the patent code that would bring U.S. law closer to intellectual property standards in the rest of the industrialized world.' The stated result of Patent Reform Act of 2005, HR 2795 is supposed to make the system work 'more efficiently' and be 'less prone to litigation.'"

Comments

Oh boy...

[benjamindees]

They'll save us from 'litigation' by creating a new bureaucracy of patent dispute resolution within the executive branch.

Same story, bankrolled by the taxpayers instead of the corporations, with no juries, no appeals, and thus no risk for said corps.

Call me cynical

[Mille Mots]

The stated result of Patent Reform Act of 2005, HR 2795 is supposed to make the system work 'more efficiently' and be 'less prone to litigation.'"

Five bucks says the unstated continuation of that reads '...to make the system work more efficiently and be less prone to litigation, on behalf of our benefactors and major contributors to our campaign coffers. With any luck at all, the proletariat won't make the connection.'

--

When we fear the .sigs, the .sigs have already won.

Make it better?

[Trip Ericson]

I, for one, don't like the first-to-file system, because it is easy for something like the recent Apple/MS iTunes interface thing. Apple CLEARLY introduced it first, and yet MS has filed for a patent. I wonder, if a case like this went before the Supreme Court, would they say that Apple had the right to the patent after all?

That would suck, some person working for years on a new device, only for someone to learn about it and file a patent first and get away with it.

We should be tackling the real issue, which is allowing patents for "a method to put numbers in a box" and the like. Obvious patents should not only not be granted, but if it's blatantly obvious, they should be fined or at the least admonished for wasting time and resources on it.

Re:I've got a better idea....

[shanen]

It's not a matter of psychiatry. It's a matter of remembering the principles that are supposed to justify patents in the first place. Patents are supposed to encourage innovation, but they are now used mostly in negative ways to block and control innovation. The "positive" goal is merely to maximize corporate profits with a special kind of monopoly, and the legal powers have been increased and focused on that objective. These days many good and innovative ideas are actually blocked either because people are afraid of infringing upon someone else's patent or because the idea is discarded as insufficiently profitable because it doesn't include any patentable aspects (with the resulting monopoly profits).

Monopoly IP profits was never intended to be the primary goal of the patent system.

There is a natural tendency for powers to become increasingly concentrated and self-destructive. Fortunately, such power systems finally break down. Unfortunately, the breakdowns are often disruptive, and sometimes even violent.

This sucks - write you congress critter

[rolfwind]

This is BS - first to file means the innovators of the future will be patent secretaries who'll file vague claims to for a litigation friendly future.

I'm for going further away from standard "world practice" and going back to the 19th century Patent Office where you have to provide a working model along with the application. How it used to be. No more BS-ridden unreadable application that want to change your paradigm of life by synergized the future. Just cold hard proof of either a new idea or not.