Slashdot Mirror
PTO Eliminates "Technological Arts" Requirement
MdntToker writes to tell us that the Patent Board has issued an opinion which removes the existing procedure of rejecting patents under 35 U.S.C. 101 as outside of the "technological arts". From the article: "Our determination is that there is currently no judicially recognized separate "technological arts" test to determine patent eligible subject matter under 101. We decline to create one. Therefore, it is apparent that the examiner's rejection can not be sustained."
Time to go patent all my fiction writings, before someone else does it.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever even imagined. Just when you think it cannot possibly get any worse.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Then I'll be the only one who can pay my employees.
...In the direction of making patents completely and utterly useless.
Now all they have to do is remove the prior art clauses and were in patent utopia.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
So now they aren't even going to be limiting patents to software and "business methods"? In another 5 years we're all going to have to pay license fees to take a crap without being sued for violating a patent for "method of voiding bowels into a porcelain fixture while seated."
But that won't be the end of it: microphones in the toilet will be listening to make sure it doesn't sound like the tune to some Britney Spears song, while cameras examine the shape of the turds to see if they resemble a corporate logo. I can't wait to see which company owns the rights to each particular method for wiping your ass.
Come on, they had to do this at some point. All intellectual works are basically discovery of some *previously existing* but useful aspect of reality. If you invent a new mousetrap, you're discovering the previously-existing aspect of reality that some organization of different materials is better at catching mice. If you write a book, you're discovering the previously-existing aspect of reality that people like a certain combination of words. Trying to classify one kind as "technological" and the other as not gets really tricky.
Next on the list: the patent office stops rejecting discoveries as being "too theoretical". Imagine working around those patents!
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Her definition of invent was out there already. I can see her joining a patent holidng company and patenting countless common and inane ideas.
The reason that the technological art standard does not come up much as a reason for rejection is that, generally, people whose invention didn't meet that standard wouldn't even bother filing a patent. Patent lawyers wouldn't waste their time.
Now that this particular court has ruled differently, expect a rash of filings that would previously have been rejected under this clause.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I. Method of Selling items: The business shall offer a customer an item/good/idea/etc for an amount of currency (Dollars/Euro/Yen/etc). Upon receipt of currency, or promisory currency note, the aforementioned item/good/idea/etc's ownership will be transferred to the customer.
It's not like the PTO even looks for prior art.
-- Dan
A vibrant economy requires resources to be used efficiently. In theory, patents are supposed to help this process by increasing the incentive to invest in capital. Indeed, such investment can benefit both the inventor and the end user. As such, patents encourage the production of new capital, and the new capital is often more efficient at using resources than the previous capital. Thus the economy grows.
However, it appears as though America is reaching a point where patents interfere with the process so much that productivity is diminished. When an inventor has to search for patents when designing every portion of a capital work, less time is spent on developing the capital itself. Thus the creation of new capital diminishes, and resources are not used as efficiently. That can eventually cause the economy to basically rot.
This is not what the American economy needs, considering its various other problems (massive debt, inflated stock markets, a housing bubble, and so forth).
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
It seems there are actually examiners at the USPTO that are willing to call bullshit on a bogus patent. That offers a bit of encouragement.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This is all because the people who make money from patents are patent lawyers. The more stuff out there that can be patented then litigated for patent infringment the better. I agree the patent office sucks ass, Ive been trying to patent something without the help of a lawyer which is next to imposibble and it's all because they have complicated things beyond comprehension. To what extent I have no idea.
Am I the only one who thinks this could go well for IP in the long run?
If the patent office makes a blatantly terrible move like this one seems to be, its possible it could trigger a backlash that will get patent law fixed up properly. People talk about this with the Supreme Court as well - it might be better to overturn Roe v. Wade because it would so energize the choice crowd and maybe even motivate congressional action.
Just something to consider.
Anyone have a spare Senator they're not using?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Taking this doctrine to its logical extreme may, unfortunately, be the only way to force people to recognise how flawed it is. In that regard, this may be a useful decision.
Does the patented process fall under "Science" or does it fall under "Useful Arts"?
The court in question declined to create a standard for "Useful Arts" because that is not their responsibility -- the Congress should define Useful Arts, and the Courts could then apply that definition.
One of the dissenting judges specifically asked for this.
The three consenting judges did not, but typically when the court declines to establish some standard, they are implying that someone else has that responsibility.
So all the people who are against "Activist Judges" should be happy.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's become clear that since the patent office is willing to let anyone patent anything with very minimal checking on validity that patents will effectively end productivity and innovation in the US (and everywhere that has an enforcement treaty with the US). So either we cripple our economy and technological advancement or we modify patents so they don't strangle innovation. So ditch them or limit the duration to a more reasonable timeframe (given the current rate of advancement).
I submit the parent for the Worlds greatest answer prize. Not only is the parent dead on, but their answer reflects the kind of half-ass journalism that we've become accustomed to. A journalism in which the reader isn't expected to actually read the article. A journalism in which no question will be answered and where diagrams are appropriate, none will be provided. And... ahh screw it, nobody is really going to read this any way!
Damn fucking right you should thank FDR. Without him, you'd be slaving away 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, in horrible conditions in the guts of some factory, and wouldn't live past 30. FDR gave America the workplace protections that allowed her to thrive through the middle of this century. Now that those protections are being rolled back again, everything is, of course, going all to hell.
Here's news for you: there's nothing outside of science and useful arts. Business is a useful art. Economics is a science.
A better argument against business method patents is that they do not serve the common good.
Funniest damn thing I've heard all day!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just because he did one thing correctly does not make everything he did correct. The workplace and labor laws were coming anyway. However, for FDR's signature on that, we also ended up with a lot of terrible programs, such as welfare and Social Security. While we aren't working 7 days a week and 10 hours a day, we *are* working 5 days and 8 hours a day for 60 years, and the majority of people in the country barely keep their heads above water in the process. Add to that the high taxation that everyone endures, and it's pretty messy. We have an unstable currency (see Federal Reserve and the gold standard). We have tremendous numbers of people working for government instead of in private sector. And then there's the fact that even parts of the labor reform have been bad for the country...
No, FDR was not a good thing, and we shouldn't thank him for all the harm he caused.
As a liberal, I would have to say that protection of human rights is governments' sole legitimate role. Property is a social concept, without society there would be no need for the concept of property. By owning property, you are stealing the opportunity to use that property from everyone else, most of whom would never grant you that right without some recompense. For the privelege of private ownership of anything, you owe a debt to everyone. Private property is not a right, it is a privelege granted to the individual by society.
All "intellectual property" is based on ideas freely granted to the individual by society. The individual owes society for the ideas that sparked the innovation. Processes and other abstract things should never be patentable because doing so does not benefit society. It does not protect innovation at all.
Collective property is at least as valid as private property, and given the right control structure it is as feasible to maintain collectively as it is privately. In fact, one could argue the opposite of the tragedy of the commons, saying that an individual owner would always find it easier to profit from a resource in a destructive fashion and then move on than a collective owner of the same resource. Collective ownership is far more natural to the human mind than private ownership. Witness the fact that most "primitive" (as we in the west see them) societies have little conception of private ownership.
I postulate that you and people like you benefit from private ownership in an unfair fashion and that you cling to the myth of the benefits of private ownership in order to justify your ego-based worldview and your position of power and privilege rather than from an real and logically arrived at conclusion that it truely benefits the collection of individuals known as society the most.
Yes, this post is slightly trollish but hey, wouldn't you conservatives and libertarians out there rather point out how foolish and knee-jerk my post is rather than mod me down? After all, if my arguments are so knee-jerk, they should be pretty easy to refute, right?
However, if you want to mod me down for using a sixty seven word, paragraph-long run on sentence, be my guest.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How did FDR give us workplace protection? He is part of the executive branch, and so he should not have any constitutional power to make laws?
But even if I assume your assumption is true, and labor unions and direct action by working people had nothing to do with it, and the work week for most people wasn't already 40 hours a week at the time the "fair labor standards act" was made a law, and instead the 40 hour work week was a glorious gift dropped into our lap by a member of the millioniare ruling class, what does that have to do with FDRs disasterous effect on the government, including things that effect the patent laws?
FDR did so many horrible things: he approved rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps because of their race, and turned the U.S., who was comitted to being neutral and staying out of wars, into the worlds most vast and powerful war machine which has continued to this day. He installed government censorship and control of the media that we couldn't even imagine even in these days of G. W. Bush (some may say "it was only because of the war", but his own records show he wanted all waretime controls to be permanent)... and he forced millions into the military service without their concent.
And, as it relates to this topic, his supreme court justices who he stacked into the court, so broadly defined "interstate commerce" and the governments regulation that there isn't anything that the government can't do in the name of "interstate commerce". So, if a corporation wants to patent a buisness model, or human DNA, or things like that that are clearly an absolute abuse of the patent system, the government is free to enforce those rediculous laws because any restrictions on the government were abandoned with FDR.
FDR was a facist monster, probably the closest thing the U.S. ever had to a dictator. He was a racist, totalitarian thug, not much different than the facisism in Europe that he was against.
Also, perhaps as individuals, copyright doesn't matter, but for businesses it does matter very much, and basically when you are a smaller company, you simply can't afford to risk getting sued, even if you are technically "in the right", because the endless legal processes are very expensive and disruptive (they can ask for all kinds of documents, no matter how unreasonabe). This leads to a situation where the big companies have huge portfolios of patents and other IP that they can use do deals with other big companies, but small companies get screwed.
As a private individual, this may not affect you directly, however when smaller upstart companies cannot effectively compete with the giants, as a consumer, you lose out because of decreased competition, and are left with higher prices, shoddier quality, and/or decreased innovation.
Unfortunately, I think the situation will just continue to worsen, and more and more IP will be privatized much as land has been, more control will be taken away from consumers, and all we can really do is try and slow it as much as possible. I mean, really, when the only counterpoint to folks like the MPAA et al is China, that's hardly a "beacon of light on the hill"...
For the record, I personally feel that the copyright system mostly works as intended, and it's really software patents where the harmful side-effects far outweigh any benefit to society.
Your patent is supposed to not duplicate prior art and it is supposed to be non-obvious.
Both of these criteria are criteria honoured in the work to register a patent in good faith (a search for prior art) and after the fact, by the fact your patent can be challenged.
A lot of the most obvious patents will not be upheld if challenged and either meaningful prior art exists or if the patent actually *is* obvious. In the Litigious States of America, this mechanism for defeating patents should not be surprising.
It is, however, expensive to register patents. It is also expensive to challenge them. This gives the leverage to the financially wealthy. It gives even more leverage to larger companies that don't do anything but patent registration and litigation - they don't spend any money inovating, just patenting other people's ideas and chasing down infringers. Usually this results in out of court settlements rather than challenges, since it could cost you $100K to challenge a patent, and $20K to license it from the current patent holder.
We've created a system that has within it a built in niche for a group of butt-sucking parasites who do no actual work. I'm not talking about lawyers, but of patent attack/defense companies that don't *make* anything. They are just storehouses for intellectual property, not with the idea of protecting of the inventors or even their investors, but simply for profit. They act as leghold traps on innovation, rather than incentives.
This is the surest sign that the system is broken. The patent system itself now has so many companies co-opted into the machine that they can't imagine life without it. And their fear keeps the system going strong and growing. And of course, as it grows, it stifles invention and innovation, instead of protecting it as it probably did way back when the patents were first envisioned.
At one time, it did bring together investors and inventors because it helped ensure RoI for the investors, because anyone who knocked off their process or product could be litigated against and punished. Thus it fostered innovation.
That day is long past. What we have left is the rotting carcass of a system that protected innovation, and the only creatures that enjoy hanging around rotting carcasses are maggots, flies, and carrion eaters. And that's what the Patent system has develoved to.
Get rid of it, because it no longer serves the purpose it was meant for.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."