Slashdot Mirror
A Look at the US Patent System
cheesedog writes "The LA Times published an interesting editorial on the current state of our patent system. From the article: 'on many levels, the U.S. patent system is profoundly flawed. Too many patents are issued for 'innovations' that are obvious, vague or already in wide use.' Online reaction has been mixed, with PatentHawk striking out in defense of the patent system, and Right to Create providing some support for the LA Times editorial."
Patent Hawk Invention Assistance is $125 per hour. Contact Patent Hawk for further details, and to find out whether Patent Hawk can help.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I'm glad that someone is finally standing up for the horribly broken, outdated patent system. Maybe this will increase public awareness, and open the door to better software innovations.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
It's nice to see decent media starting to report what most people are thinking and saying.
Patenting is really a boring issue unless your directly involved with its consequences but im happy the issue is starting to come up in mainstream media.
Because you know "Big Patent" is going to condemn itself.
About the Contributers
Peter A. Haas
Peter A. Haas, a registered patent attorney in Portland, Oregon, offers a full line of intellectual property law services, but focuses his practice on patent procurement and infringement opinions. An eight-year career in engineering prior to his entry into the legal profession, Peter understands good project management - a strategy reflected in his own practice - allowing him to offer many services on a fixed-fee arrangement. In addition to serving clients, Peter serves the legal community as an instructor of intellectual property law at Portland Community College.
Intellectual Assets - David McFeeters-Krone
David McFeeters-Krone of Intellectual Assets has an extensive background in patent licensing from working with MIT, NASA, and Intel. Since founding Intellectual Assets, David has provided Intellectual Property strategy services to DoD, NASA, Sharp Technology Ventures, Tektronix, Deloitte, OHSU, Providence Medical Center, PSC Inc., and the National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC). David's projects entail portfolio triage, technology evaluation, licensing and IP process implementation.
Patent Hawk - Gary Odom
Patent Hawk is a patent technical consultancy, serving attorneys, companies, and individual inventors. Patent Hawk services include: prior art search for patentability and patent validity; non-/infringement analysis; technically accurate claim construction; patent valuation and infringement damage assessment; assisting companies and individuals in profiting from their patents; helping companies maximize their patent portfolio by expanding the scope of their inventions; technical assistance in working around patents; mentoring individual inventors in patenting their own inventions.
I agree. It has becomming horrible... where I worked up until last summer, we were actually paid a bonus of approximately $1000 to file for obvious patents for the sole purpose of hoping that our competitors will accidentally use this idea in their products. Though those were stupid, I would have to say that the record goes to this: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnu mber=4,022,227
46487 466780 252994 376409 96920 39622 205366 244315 622115 512361 668040 63608 259203 955314 811176 652718 166330 23922
To the poster:
I have previously patented the right to complain about patents, specifically U.S. patents: I should further inform you that I have already actively started placing patents in other countries as well, regarding this issue.
As you did not pay me to post this message, I do request that you either pull this post or pay me 60% of all profit. If you are not making profit from this post: I will allow you to continue this post, provided you seek monetary compensation and that I get 60% of it, otherwise it must be removed immediately or face legal action.
You have 100 comments in order to respond,
Thank you.
Well here is just a question for my fellow techies who probably recognize that making a startup and selling it would be a better life than that of a salary man. How is our perception of the patent system affecting our plans for possible startups? Does the state of the patent system frighten you away from entrepreneurial ventures, or do you just plan to keep things closed source and ignore patent laws? Or would you try to stay out of the radar and get acquired before anyone with a patent portfolio came for a shakedown?
The late 90s were really fun, I'd like to see that entrepreneurial vibrance happen again, especially because it was fun for the nerds and irksome for the old guard, but I'm worried that perhaps the legal overhead is discouraging a lot of creative and competent people.
he said 'computerize'
Let's not forget about all of the innovation that has occurred under this "flawed" system.
It looks like all of blogspot is having trouble this afternoon. Too bad, Right to Create is a good read.
Sue anyone who uses the most obvious patents into existance.
Don't worry too much, this can't last forever, the worse it gets the more people will complain. Not that I'm against ending this nonsense here and now.
Perhaps we could change the system so that the first time any patent is used in court, the patent holder has to first defend his patent, then sue?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
From TFA:
Besides, the near-automatic granting of injunctions can lead to the absurd result of a company being forced to pay royalties to license patents later found to be invalid.
Easy enough to solve-require the holder of any patent later found invalid, or who charges licensing fees for something later ruled not to come under the scope of the patent, to pay back triple such fees and/or court awards they won from the invalid patent or improper use of it. You'll see a lot more caution in patent filings, and a lot more willingness to back down on questionable or obviously invalid stretches.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
In a perfect Soviet Russia the patent system would work. The government would be able to remain fair, honest, unbiased, beholden to their charter documents, and unfluenced by the allure of corporate money.
I think everyone knows just how well that worked out.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
How much stuff protected by this flawed system isn't really "innovation"?
.GIF, .MP3, and having fun with a laser pointer and a cat.
Think
I've got about 40 patents in the system right now, some issued, some pending.
My impressions of the process that the patent office uses to evaluate whether an invention is novel is that it is fundamentally and deeply flawed.
1. The patent examiner has extremely little time to evaluate a patent. Practically speaking they have just a few hours to spend on each patent. Many of my disclosures have been 40 pages or more in length. How the hell is somebody supposed to read through 40 pages of technical material on a topic they have little knowledge of in 3 or 4 hours?
2. Patent examiners have totally insufficient background in technical areas to evaluate them. They're not stupid people, not by any means, but we're talking about bachelors and masters degrees in the sciences with no research experience evaluating cutting-edge technology done by research phds. The fundamental problem is that the examiner is not up to date with what constitutes prior knowledge in a field. If you get a masters degree in computer science that's all very well, but it hardly brings you up to speed on the latest research, which is what is being patented.
3. The standard for what is an invention is something non-obvious to someone with "ordinary skill in the art". Well, that's a bad standard, because in many fields all product research and design is done by people with beyond ordinary skill in the art. So what _would_ be obvious to ordinary inventors in a field is completely non-obvious to one with ordinary skill. It's like asking asking a casual jogger to evaluate whether a sprinter is really fast.
4. Given the very little time patent examiners have to evaluate a disclosure, they basically perform keyword search on words from the disclosure against previous patents and the web. If they find some other sentences with about the same words, they issue a preliminary rejection. That lets them quickly reply and meet their hour requirements. So your disclosure says "A method for calculating maximum travel windows for freight" and they cite against you a patent on "A method for calculating the maximum size of windows on freight trains".
5. But despite the patent office's initial rejection of almost everything, if you spend more money, which resets the examiner's clock and lets them spend more hours on you, they're perfectly willing to grant you almost anything in the end. In fact that's their job: the patent examiners job description includes trying to help everybody get a patent.
These aren't insights. Almost everybody who has interacted with the patent office has experienced this. And its not going to change, because the patent office is a profit center for the government and they love the system of letting companies get whatever patents they want so long as they pay a lot of money to the patent office to go through the process.
Broken.
I don't think the people have figured out how things work from the Patent Office's view.
The more things which are patentable, the more important the Patent Office becomes. They can then push for a bigger budget, and hire more people to handle the amount of overwork the Examiners are under. Lather, rise, repeat.
There's no incentive whatsoever for them to base things on comman sense. Or to reduce the scope of their influence. Utopia (for the PTO) will only be reached when anything and everything is patentable, and the PTO is at the center of all attention in resolving things.
It can only be brought under control by Congress; and that's unlikely with all of the money paying for influence there.
Oh yeah? How about "system and method for providing reservations for restroom use"?
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html
Nobody would say that the all the great wealth produced by the plantation system was proof that slavery was ok, or that it is economically benificial - now would they?
Problem is patents favor corporations and screw the little guy. I tried to get a patent for an innovation to radar detectors once. I had a great idea, but I was told it would cost 5-15K to geta patent. That was far too much for me.
This is nothing for a large corp though. The will patent everything they ca, stragically patent, and hold all out patent wars. Often patents are just made preemptively as bargainiing chips.
Anyway, so much for protecting the intellectual property of the individual.
They quote the article:
"Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use."
Ask:
On what authority or statistical basis?
Then proceed with the same lack of authority or statistical basis to conclude:
This ignorant assertion is hoary, with no basis other than anecdotal evidence of patents occasionally being found invalid.
They misrepresent the article by stating:
More to the point, the editorial then complains how many patents apply to products nowadays.
This makes it sound as if the article was saying, "For many products, there is a patent that covers the product," when what the article is actually saying is "For any given product there are numerous patents covered by its components."
The statement makes numerous misstatements similar in nature to the above two.
Parent is a blatant plagiarist.. See also this other example from earlier today.
Many of the problems with the current patent system go to the fact that you can now patent things that can't be represented as physical devices. Reinstating the requirement that all patents are accompanied by a detailed description of a physical device would remove all the absurd business concept patents, as well as many unreasonable types of software patents.
h tml/srchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l= 50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=4803736.WKU.&OS=PN/4803736&RS=PN/ 4803736).
Before you scream that novel and non-trivial algorithms wouldn't be patenable (like, for example, a new algorithm for encoding images etc), all algorithms can be represented by specifically designed analog or digital electronics (example of a non-trivial algorithm that can also be represented by a physical device: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=/neta
Things that require code, like hyper-links, one click web ordering, and other patents that most people consider ridiculous would still be protected by copyright on the code... and last time I checked MS, Oracle, Sun, IBM, Apple etc.. didn't have all that much trouble protecting their intellectual property as start-ups without software patents.
Rolling back the clock to require a description of a physical device would both make patents a lot less vague as well as making the obvious harder to obsfucate, without requiring a massive paradigm change for what patents are supposed to protect (this isn't to say that I'm not in favor a more rational system for challenging a patent, especially for prior art issues, but reform tends to move in baby-steps)
" Let's not forget about all of the innovation that has occurred under this "flawed" system."
o n.html ).
Where is the cause and effect.
I personally put it down to a kind and loving Roman Pope that made Jesus smile down on us.
The only difference between our claims is that you can't prove mine wrong, but I could prove yours wrong easily.
For instance many people are claiming that innovation is decreasing precisely for the reasons you provide conjecture that it is increasing. For example in the article "A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation", Jonathan Huebner in the September 2005 issue claims new, important discoveries and inventions are decreasing in no small part to our draconian patent system (http://accelerating.org/articles/huebnerinnovati
So if you think its increasing, you'd better claim that Allah, or Jesus, or Budda told you that, because no facts actually back that up.
Sorry.
Somewhat off topic.. but still kinda relevant and very funny :-)
I will write on a huge cement block "By accepting this brick through your window, you accept it as it is and agree to my disclaimer of all warranties, express or implied, as well as disclaimers of all liability, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental, that may arise from the installation of this brick into your building." - PJ
Grok law
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
In other breaking news: pigs still unable to fly, Hell still without snow, and Natalie Portman still naked and petrified... covered in hot grits.
"How else do high-tech products keep improving other than by continual innovation meriting patent protection?!" - Patent Half
I think all patents do is grant a temporary control over a certain field of creation. If we were to eliminate or limit patents then that means in order to be #1 seller, your product has to be the best and decently priced. Of course, there's also marketing in there but that's a whole other subject.
What I'm trying to say is that Company A makes zig, Company B makes ziglar, a remarkably similar product which may be cheaper and maybe even better. If it's better and cheaper, then hey! How does Company A keep up? They make Zigziglar.
Of course there would need to be some restrictions, but nothing so bizarre as what we have today. This could, of course, be achieved through a more human process than just filling out forms and wording everything a certain way as to persuade different people. But hey, what do I know? I'm not an economist, professional engineer, or a marketer.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
The United States form a large country in Northern America with a population of around 295 million. Internet penetration is around 68% and software piracy rate is rampant.
Wow, I didn't even have to go beyond skimming to find illogic in your post. If "flashlight" and "light-emitting-device" are equivalent terms in your world, i fear that your lack of competence with the language disqualifies you from making any suggestions regarding legal documents.
Thank you for using the "post stupid idea to slashdot" ego-deflation method (patent pending). Have a nice day.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22tinker's+d amn
Actually, jobs are quite scarce in some sectors.
...and damns are, like, waaaaaaay overvalued.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
So lets say that of the oh, call it 200 patent licenses necessary to build and sell a laptop computer that roughly 50% are false. The laptop in question costs $1,200 of which $200 is parts, and another $100 labor, and yet $100 more is shipping. So $800 / 200 = $4.00 per license.
But as I said, assume half of the licenses are for bogus patents. That'd mean we're paying about $400 more for a laptop than we should actually have to.
I've seen some pretty wild patents. And the USPTO is just handing them out without any real validation. Reminds me of the RFC for TCP/IP via Carrier Pigeon. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt?number=1149
Hence, it's just like our good-ol politicians leaving service for some dinky, high-paying lobby job and then exploiting the system since they've worked both sides. It's sad that you'll only see 10% progress from 100% effort, where 90% goes in the pocket of the ex-govvy. What a racket.
I've been in the brand spanking new complex. It's nice, looks like lots of money when into those buildings, though the commissary is crap (then again, old town's a step away for nice $$ lunches). Aside from serving political agendas set by politicians, they have one goal: make money and lots of it--sort of like the rest of government nowadays. Where do those profits go? Now that's what the tax payer should be asking!
Agencies that run this way always remind me that we are currently under another form of government than your ideological democracy
So much for serving the public good.
The parent post is probably correct in its description of the process, but there's reason to believe that this system is not "fundamentally and deeply flawed".
Consider that the patent office received 406,302 patent applications in FY2005 ( http://www.uspto.gov/ ). It would be horribly *inefficient* to evaluate each of those applications thoroughly, especially because the vast majority of those patents are without value and will never be heard of again. What you really need is a system that somehow *selects* valuable patents, and subjects *only those valuable patents* to scrutiny.
The process where the USPTO first rejects an application, then eventually accepts it if you spend the money and persist is one way for the system to select valuable patents: applicants will only spend time and money on multiple resubmissions in proportion to the value they place on the patent.
The fact that patents can be challenged in court is another way the system selects valuable patents: useless patents are never challenged, while those with value will be challenged and carefully scrutinized by a court.
The patent system isn't perfect, but all serious reform proposals, e.g. third party pre-grant challenges, take this selection idea into account.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Compare what the article proposes to what it complains about.
The article proposes the following change: if a patent is valid and infringed, there will be no injunction unless the patentholder is using/selling the invention.
But, that change would do nothing to fix the things the article complains about: Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use. Too many patent holders try to extend their claims to devices and services that weren't even contemplated when the patents were granted. And it's a difficult, costly exercise to overturn a questionable patent after it has been awarded.
So "you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. . . . No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does NOT MAKE SENSE! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
RIM has been sued by NTP over patent infringement. A jury agreed that RIM had infringed NTP's patents. A judge is threatening to ban RIM from doing business in the US if they don't settle with NTP very soon. The patent office has issued at least a preliminary revocation of all the NTP patents.
So, there we have it, RIM is expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to NTP for patents that the patent office says are bogus. The patent system and the justice system are both broken. Neither encourages innovation. Both make lawyers rich. I chose the wrong profession.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
i live in canada, does this affect me?
I think, patent application should be cheap. But the patent should last for only 1 or 2 years, to give you a jumpstart... Renewal however should be very expensive (say 10.000 for one extra year, 100000 for two more years, etc..), and they should expire in 10 years no matter what. Then only worthy patents would get renewed, and the companies would not keep huge portfolios forever, since it is just too expensive. mark
Personally I think that the middle east/Mediterranean, as the birthplace of civilization has rights to licensing fees regarding all agriculture patents(developed agriculture methods still used today) and a patent on democracy, and free speech, and since I am a descendant from that region I demand that everyone pay me a small licensing fee before expressing their opinions. Also, I feel that all farmers should give me half of their crops.
Finally as a direct descendant of Adam and Eve, I demand that everyone who has ever had sexual contact with someone, or reproduced using methods developed by Adam and Eve(excluding non-heterosexual behavior since that was developed later) are required to sacrifice their firstborn in order to meet my licensing requirements.
You seem to be the typical troll who complains about something without suggesting how to fix it.
Does the patent system have problems? Yep. Easy to fix? Nope. Great alternatives? Nope.
unless they are working 60/h a week at a crappy service job, all because no company will bother to hire them unless the company can profit from his or her work.
Companies hire scientists for the sole reason of producing patents. Without patents, the services of scientists become much less valuable, and therefore you will have fewer of them. Yes, these people will still be smart, but their time, energy, and thoughts will be diverted to other ventures.
Completely and utterly revoke all non-physical property laws.
The only people that seem to be calling out for protections are middlemen, not inventors. The human race has been creative since the dawn of time: whether it's music, art, or any one of inventions (like the lil' disk we call a "wheel") that predates all modern inventions, and upon which all modern inventions are based (in some way, shape or form) - - they all have one thing in common: they were made in the complete absence of any protection whatsoever.
Patents 'fixed' something that wasn't broken, and yes, an entire industry was built around it, and yes, if patents are removed some people will lose some money. But the more important issue is that the human race will win, and it will remove the imbalance and inherent problems created when artificial scarcity was created, and your physical property rights were usurped by the notion of intellect as property.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
1. Create a dictionary of all words used in applying for a patent.
See MPEP 2111.01. In applying for a patent, you may define "giraffe" to mean "flashlight". There are at present few (if any) reasons for doing so, but if you're going to "computerize" the patent prior art search as you have described, there is suddenly an extremely good reason to say "giraffe" when you mean "flashlight".
2. A second dictionary of terms which are equal to each other.
See above. As an aside, maybe a better solution would be a classification system that categorizes patents and patent applications according to the technology involved, regardless of the vocabulary invoked? Such a classification could be performed by humans - maybe even get patent examiners involved. If a certain group gets too large, further subdivide it. Try to keep the groups to about 250 patents if possible. (I've described the system that's been in use for at least 100 years, but seriously, this super-thesaurus idea sounds promising. Except useless because of MPEP 2111.01.)
3b. All entries should be listed (just like with Google) in a descending order of revelance.
This has been available to examiners for years.
4. All applied for patents should be kept on file so they too can be checked against.
This was a great idea when Thomas Jefferson first thought of it.
People may say we can't do this.
Yes, but Thomas Jefferson was a great man, and when the computer technology of 1987 implemented the rest of what you're talking about, those people looked like idiots.
As for graphical pictures showing how something works - it depends.
The entire collection of patents (except the X series that burned) are available in image format to the examiners.
You need the bad patents in there as a way to say "Hey! Here are examples of why you can't have a patent!"
I'm not sure how you define a "bad patent" - that is not an invitation to explain - but regardless, this is an absurdly bad idea. As an alternative, investigate what an SIR is at MPEP 1111
Just my $0.02 worth.
Is there a rebate?
Other responses suggest your whole post is plagarized. If so, I imagine it was -extremely- relavant 15 years ago. I really wish Slashdot had a "What Made You Think You Were Qualified To Post?" moderation.
'''2. Patent examiners have totally insufficient background in technical areas to evaluate them. They're not stupid people, not by any means, but we're talking about bachelors and masters degrees in the sciences with no research experience evaluating cutting-edge technology done by research phds.
'''
Even if patent examiners were PhDs, this would not solve the problem... Don't know about CS (still a very young and a reasonably small science), but in physics just try asking say a solid state physicist to evaluate a patent, say, in gas lasers...
Assuming that the patent is real (ie. is indeed at the cutting edge of science/technology) it may easily take MONTHS of hard work to evaluate either novelty or non-obviousness of that patent...
Frankly, I simply don't see how the current patent system could even in principle work for high-tech...
If it is the capitalist who will win and they are indeed strong, why have this weak patent system? We pay too much homage [and cash] to average companies that should innovate more at less cost...patents are just internal tariffs and tariffs are for the weak, real men and woman say "F@#K tariffs I can take all comers"...the weak say "we need protection we are slow and inefficient, help us!" F@#k the weak and patents, let it be a free market where I spend my dollar where I want, not in some tax accessed kick back. Don't get me started on the claim jumpers who do nothing then sue...c#$k eaters all of them... - The meek will inherit what I choose not to use
...but despite of the system.
It is part of our lives to have to find solutions for the problems we face. Many times, the solution is just the application of knowledge we have previously acquired (through education, experience). Sometimes we just buy a product that does what we need. But often you need to come up with a solution by going through a creative thinking process. In that case, chances are someone has gone through the same problem and solved it in a similar way, but in most cases this will be very hard (if not impossible) to find out, even if there is a public database containing all the ideas someone currently owns.
Why is the other person more entitled to use the idea than you? You went exactly through the same trouble! Why do you have to pay or find an alternative way of solving the problem you already solved?
I don't think that there will ever be a sane patent system. In that case, I would rather live in a world with no concept of intellectual property (even acknowledging that in some fewer cases that may be unfair to the original inventor) than the mess we are now.
The vast, vast majority of software patents I've seen don't need a Ph.D. to understand -- any difficulty in understanding comes only from the legalese they are written in. Moreover, very few software patent inventors actually have Ph.D.s. Most patents are not on some arcane variation of a data compression algorithm, but some basic user interface feature written by a couple of engineers at Adobe or IBM who got their bachelor's at a state university. (Remember the "Progress Bar" patent?) I should point out, also, that many entrepreneurs like "the boys" at Google, Yahoo!'s founders, and of course Bill Gates dropped out of their programs.
I'm going to assume that you have a Ph.D., and it is your belief that no mere mortal without those letters after his or her name can understand the "cutting-edge" research you are doing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you think that the reason that "obvious" patents are getting issued is that that the patent examiners are too uneducated to know if something is obvious. In fact that's not right as a legal matter. The obviousness standard almost requires the suggestion to be found in the literature; patent examiners (and judges) are not permitted anymore to simply say that an idea looks obvious and reject the patent.
Biotech patents, on the other hand, are often written by patent agents and lawyers with Ph.D.s, reflecting the higher level of knowledge required in practice. And while software patents can usually be had for under $10k, a biotech patent usually runs $50k. The only time Ph.D.s get involved in a software patent dispute is usually at trial, when some security-camera company claims that their patent covers computer network firewalls and the law firm has to hire a professor to tell the judge and the jury that the plaintiff is full of shit.
With great power comes great fan noise.
Win Slashdot (12/03/05) - PyWiz
Here's a playfully clever idea: win slashdot Every post we make is a repost found using the database tool from anti-slash.org. Luckily the slashbots don't bother to remember what they've seen before and just automatically mod us up. All news articles are reposts found on digg. Using this strategy, we've managed to get Excellent karma in 3 DAYS. YOU KNOW YOU LIKE THAT!
its like looking into the sun, you'll be blinded!!!!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Something I've always wondered about - If patents are there to foster innovation by allowing the inventor to reap the rewards of his investment (of time, capital, whatever), then why do we have the same twenty-year term for areas as different as software and drugs? For the sake of argument, I'll believe that it takes a drug company twenty years post-filing to earn an economic reward for their research. Software, at least the software patents that I've had to deal with, has a vanishingly small development cost in comparison to drug costs, yet, the most trivial software patent still gets twenty-years of protection.
Yeah, the big problem with SW patents seems to be the grant of patents that are obvious to a "person having ordinary skill in the art", but wouldn't a shorter term for SW patents make some sense, given their shorter development time and smaller development cost? Yes, the system is way more broken than this, and yes, you'd have international patent law to deal with, but a two-four year term for software patents might be a manageable compropmise that mitigates some of the problems with stealth patents etc.
In case you haven't noticed, complaining doesn't influence anything in government anymore. Witness the huge number of complaints and general opposition to the U.S. actions in Iraq by U.S. citizens, even prior to those actions being taken. What did that end up doing? Not a fucking thing.
It's not how many people complain that counts. It's how many big corporations complain. Until they start complaining loudly, nothing will change.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
In my experience, I find many tech corporate patents are unused by anyone else. So why should we burden the USPO with finding how unique a stated invention is if it's never used?
I think we should split our patent application process into two phases. Phase 1 approval gets your patent in the system with a specified date. Phase 1 approval gets only minor validation by the USPO. However, Phase 1 approval will not give you the authority to sue for infringement.
Phase 2 has the more rigourous validation that we expect with the current patent approval process. One could not register for phase 2 approval unless the company/person had an actual user to license or infringer to sue.
By pricing phase 1 to be cheap and phase 2 as expensive, small businesses would not be unduly burdened by patent costs. Once a small business had it's phase 1 approval, getting V.C. funding would be less difficult (no need to NDA) and it could delay the costs of phase 2 until the patent was applicable. Companies/people who would like to contest a "phase 1" patent could submit their prior art evidence to the USPO so that it would be available during it's "phase 2" evaluation. This way the industry can help provide the detailed technical experience that the USPO often doesn't have.
There would still be bad "phase 2" patents that would eventually have to be invalidated, but I think this design would greatly reduce their numbers.
One thing I hope the Patent Office will one day do is return the requirement of a working prototype. The trick is in forcing the patent requestor to store the prototype and giving the patent office the right to inspect it at short notice, 1-2 weeks. This is primarily during the application stage.
This should stop at least some junk patents, where someone has thought of a great idea but cannot build it. If you add in fines for failing to have a prototype on demand then you can start reducing the rates of junk filing. If they cannot pay the fines you can then take away their other patents simply by adding the fine to patent renewal fee notices and taking the fine portion out first.
This should help small inventors as they have to store very little compared to large patent hording companies.
37 - what does it stand for really...
It does take a very long time for complaining to work. But when it comes down to (re)election time, politicians start to pay a little more attention. And they will at least promise to fix popular complaints, or risk not being elected. Corporations don't have to wait until election time, but they won't be bribing you if you're not in office.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
1. They do. They create a database entry that is stripped of all words like "the" or "and", and this is indexed by the main search engines, EAST and WEST. This covers the abstract, claims, specifications, everything relevent.
2. Done. It's on NORTH, and it's also done internally by the majority of workgroups. They are called synonyms. There is no _good_ automatic way to do it.
3. Yeah, we do that to. It's called a PLUS search, and it compares the distilled word list generated at step 1 to the word lists of all other patents. It's generally not as useful as you might think, and class searching and keyword searches are much more fruitful.
3a. The PLUS search is not constrained by classes/subclasses.
3b. You end up having to pick a threshold, ie "let me see the 200 most relevent", then you can browse the contents of that set.
4. Yep, we do.
Every patent discussion on here puts me off of Slashdot, and reminds me to take everything read with a grain of salt. The patent examiners fight two battles: meet production, don't allow anything that makes the front page of slashdot.
Yes, the managers warn us about you.
The poster involved in the previous post (not the most recent post but the post which is this post's parent post) has been sacked.
He may be eligible to receive unemployment compensation in the county, state, commonwealth or province in which he was formerly employed, at his former pay grade (the rate at which he was compensated for the aforementioned post)(not the most recent post but the post which is this post's parent post), times 60%.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Public Patent foundation knocked out the Pfizer patent Look at the guy who is taking on the Amazon "One Click" for example http://www.infoanarchy.org/section/features http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051130/1243250_ F.shtml
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/12/4/45354/8981
http://igdmlgd.blogspot.com/ etc
I know jack about patent application procedures etc., but I feel the key is to give others a strong incentive to refute patents as they are filed.
Here's how it might work:
1. When I apply for a patent, I'll pay a "refutation fee" of $2500.
2. The first person from the general public to successfully refute the patent's claims will be paid the $2500.
If a domain expert can cause just 5-6 absurd patent applications to be denied in a month, he'd make a neat enough income to concentrate on his open source (or whatever..) projects.
The asshats in the USPO are either terminally or criminally stupid - the difference is irrelevant.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Sue people into existance? I'd pay a buck to see that.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Sombody patented the comb over? What has this world come to? When a man has to pay a fee to cover up his chrome dome? I tell you the terrorists have won, my friend, the terrorists have won.
Yes, they will promise to do so. But they won't actually do so, because what matters to them is what their corporate masters want, not what the people want.
Why? Because while they might not be reelected if they ignore what the people want, it's guaranteed that they won't be reelected if they ignore what their corporate masters want. Their corporate masters make their election possible in the first place. You can't win an election if the media ignores you or paints you in a bad light, and the media is owned by some very large corporations indeed (that of course are going to do deals with other large corporations). And that's on top of the corporate sponsorship that politicians have to have just to be able to pay for the media spots that they can't get through backroom deals and the like (which also obviously generally require corporate sponsorship).
No, sorry, but the corporations own politicians the way they might own slaves. Almost all politicians today will do whatever their corporate masters tell them to because they must. They won't be reelected otherwise -- guaranteed.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Resorting to holding up the pharmaceutical industry as an example of why intellectual "property" needs special protection actually demonstrates the reverse, since pharmcos spend more than twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D.
They are just average people. Maybe they could get better, bribe-proof people by paying more for the job.
The problem lies in the system, in the perversion of granting a minority of society exclusive, monopolist rights to certain *ideas*, just because they
* got there first
* know how to work the system (i.e. formulate patents, so they sound NEW)
IP attorneys are making loads of money, but think about it. They have to find an infringement in order to stay in business. No infringment, no income.
I work for a well-known graphics and advertising company - http://quickstickers.com/ - and we were targeted by IP "watchdogs". Last year, an attorney specializing in "intellectual property protection" ordered a handful of trademarks of some very large and well-known companies. Our company produced and shipped the requested decals. He then met with these companies and encouraged them to allow him to pursue legal action. Soon, he filed a federal lawsuit alleging trademark infringement. Settlement was immediately offered at a HUGE price. Apparently the attorney gets to keep whatever they can convince you to pay them. This allows the big companies to save even more money by not having these guys on their payroll -- basically, IP watchdogs make commission based on what they can "find".
Needless to say, almost all advertising consists of trademarks, so it's not uncommon to reproduce them all day at a print shop. Also, if you go into Kinko's and claim to have authority to reproduce a trademark, *you* are liable, not Kinko's.
The company wasn't hit with any fees or judgments, but getting everything straightened out took a lot of time and money. The shame of it is that a lot of small business owners will just roll over and not fight. I'm all about having an attorney, but seriously, do these companies need more guard dogs? We're already rewriting all our laws -- of, for and by the corporations -- many of them hell-bent on crushing all those who employ any technology that resembles their IP.
The fight for IP control will continue to be the dominant theme of legislation.
...copywrite law...
A new law?
If you cannot understand the patent, there isn't enough information. If you don't understand it, you acnnot assess it.
If you don't understand it, say no to the patent.
The best way nature reinvents man is death.
So you better reinvent yourself while living.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It's Microsoft's fault!
The patent examiners fight two battles: meet production, don't allow anything that makes the front page of slashdot.
So by putting all new patent applications on the frontpage of Slashdot no more patents would be issued? That is very interesting. Would you care to set up a RSS-feed for CmdrTaco?
So people on the internet are now disagreeing with each other?! Woe is us, the end is nigh.
So essentially, you have to be rich already to be granted a patent. Hooray for the small inventor.
There is a loophole in this idea - and it is similar to one used all the time.
When sleezy-patent-holding-company wants to go after microsoft/mozilla/etc, they don't just sue them. They first sue some little guy who more clearly ripped them off and who has no money to defend themselves. They win that case, and then repeat this several times to build up a precedent. Then they go after a big company, who now has a harder case to make due to the setting of precedent.
If you force patents to be defended the first time they are in court, you'll just see people suing their cousins - who surprisingly will not mount a vigorous defence. Once the first-trial hurdle is passed the awards get returned under the table, and then the real lawsuits start...
Patents are an insidious problem. I'm not sure there is an easy solution, but a good start would be to clean up the patent office, which currently incentivizes blanket issue of patents.
I am a scientist. Why do people pay us for our work? Because they can patent it. If they couldn't, it wouldn't matter a whit "how much it worth", because anyone and everyone could copy it. I could invent the world's best mousetrap, but without patent protection, the company paying my salary could not manufacture it at a reasonable profit. The day they released it, the next company would copy the design and have it to market it in weeks.
Scientists and inventors are paid what their information worth - however, how much the value the information has is based on context. In a world where it can be copied freely, the answer is about the marginal cost - zero.
And yes, we would keep on inventing - as soon as we got done slaving away at Wal-Mart and McD's 60/h week in order to put a roof over our heads. And just imagine the fancy equipment we can afford on that wage!
You don't see "open source nanotechnology", though, do you. Why? Because you can't do it at home. It requires a tremendous investment in equipment and facilities, and no one is going to do it unless they can turn a profit.
Corporations have been pursuing patents since the founding of the nation.
poor (50%) and doctor education (40%). Direct to consumer is about 10%.
In any case, since when spreading information a waste? I am not sure what point you are trying to make.
this kind of posting is what comes from kids fresh out of school facing the blunt reality that they are standing on a field laid down by those who came before them. They dislike losing, and they sure as hell don't like being late to the party.
... or there's global warming if you really want to stretch your horizons... and if that is too limiting the kids in the physics lab are puzzled with StringTheory.
Well, grow up, son. There's plenty of intellectual property for the taking in the World. You just have to get your hands dirtier than at a keyboard if your going to get into the play.
Need help? Cure cancer, malaria, diabetes, aids,
Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use.
There is a gross lack of statistics to back this statement up. Do some inventions get overturned by courts? Yes. Is this a result of poor examination? Not always. There are many reasons a patent may be overturned by the courts and to attribute everyone to the poor patent system is not a good reason. In some cases they get overturned by "prior art" that is not readily available to the patent office or to the general public.
Too many patent holders try to extend their claims to devices and services that weren't even contemplated when the patents were granted.
Examples? If they are trying to extend their claims then this is a problem more at the level of the courts. The job on the patent office is to ensure they get a patent for their invention. If their invention is relatively broad reaching, it is possible that they truly are the first to invent something. Wouldn't it be reasonable to think the first patents on LCDs and computer mice would be pretty broad?
And it's a difficult, costly exercise to overturn a questionable patent after it has been awarded.
This statement is not completely true. As quoted from the MPEP:
Any person may, at any time during the period of enforceability of a patent, file a request for an ex parte reexamination by the Office of any claim of the patent on the basis of prior art patents or printed publications cited under 1.501. The request must be accompanied by the fee for requesting reexamination set in 1.20(c)(1).
The fee is $2520 which is outside the range many normal individuals might be willing to pay, but any corporation of some size who had an interest in the patent in question could easily fight a single claim outside of court relatively cheap.
The appeals court in Washington takes the position that, except in exceptional circumstances, courts must issue permanent injunctions to stop infringers from using the inventions in dispute.
Something currently being disputed before SCOTUS so get back to this one after that is over.
The article itself manages to complain primarily about the ruling that injunctions be permanent. The piece will probably not be read or even fully understood by the vast majority of its readers. If memory serves me, the most recent attempt to reform patent law did include limitations on these sort of material. Hardly a scathing review of the patent system, it is much more a little complaining from someone who doesn't understand much about the system itself.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Once upon a time, I worked for a large hardware and software company in a "Technology Transfer" capacity. One of the jobs of our group was to review recently awarded patents to determine the effect (if any) it would have on our operations.
Back in 1982, one patent that I was reading seemed awfully familiar, despite being camouflaged in legalese and an obtuse algorithm description. Moving over to my whiteboard, I started diagramming the steps outlined in the patent description. After a few iterations I stepped back to see what I had done; It was a BUBBLE SORT! Someone had managed, in 1982, to get a patent on the bubble sort, the height of "obvious" and "prior art".
ken
Think about RSA patent, or Karmarkar patent for that matter...
Those patents were produced by scientists. The average Joe "the open-source" developer will actually have hard time even reading those patents, much less understanding the intricacies involved...
Have you ever heard of the open-source speech recognition software ?
(Yes, there are some university-funded projects but they are done mostly
by MS and PhD students working on their professor's grants, not by
Jow "open-source developeler" working full time at Mcdonads)
Maybe the reason you don't hear inventors calling out for protection is because we already have it and are happy with it. Sure, there are some things we'd like changed, but they are minor. The people that are being hurt by the current problems with patents aren't inventors - they are engineers and other people who work on things that are not brand new. I invent new stuff. Really new stuff. Sometimes I have trouble figuring out what patent class an invention would fall in. So I'm not too worried about prior art or some guy in Des Moines having an overly broad patent on weed eaters. It is the engineers who work on already existing ideas who are suffering under the current system, as they have to navigate their designs through a sea of patents, half of which should be found invalid under a court of law. I agree that there are problems with too many bad patents being issued, but the reason you don't hear inventors bitching is because we are not the ones that are affected.
Now, as far as your idea of getting rid of patents altogether, please go jump in a lake.
Patents aren't about incentivizing the creation of new ideas. They are about incentivizing the publication of new ideas. I'm working on something really cool right now. Want me to tell you about it? Too bad, I don't have a patent on it yet (I'd like to get a working model built first before I put the time and money into another patent). Without a patent, do you think I'm going to tell anybody who could possibly be a competitor about it? Why should I shoot myself in the foot? But in a couple of months, once I have satisfied myself that I know what I am doing with it and I've sent in a provisional patent application, I'd be happy to tell you all about it and how it works. Without a patent, I would be forced to develop this idea in secret, which could slow its development by years or decades. Do you think that adding years to its development time, and using a lot more of my valuable time, is going to reduce scarcity? Perhaps you ought to look back at the 17th century when patents were first granted to see why they were instituted.
Now, I do agree with you that there are some problems with patents. However, most of those problems have as much to do with the practice of law in this country as they do with patents. Do you think we ought to abolish the courts as a solution, too? And please don't conflate copyright law with patent law. Patent law is in nearly the same state it was in when it was first instituted, with a few modern perversions like genetic and software patents. Copyright terms on the other hand have been extended essentially indefinitely. I don't want a patent that lasts 100 years; I want a fair deal with society. But take away patents altogether and I'll be happy playing with my inventions by myself without telling anyone else about them.
Actually, we have no incentive to approve a patent at all. Examiners also recieve a count for abandonment and for requests for continued examination (abandonment by the applicant which starts the clock all over). You just have to wait 6 months from the date of your final rejection.
If anything it is in the examiners best interest to issue a proper final rejection (filling an improper rejection wastes the examiner's time, they would have to withdraw finality and issue another action), get the RCE count, and then get another first action count as less time is required to examine the application after RCE. The examiner has already preformed the vast majority of the reasearch.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Promotions in the PTO are rapid, you can be a gs-13 or gs-14 in just 4-5 years ($80-95k), where as in other portions of the government it takes an entire career.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Standing up FOR the broken system means defending it in some way.
Standing up TO the broken system means challenging or defying it in some way.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
hmmm ... I see the middlemen have been here before me, spreading their fear that the world will come to an end if they don't get their cut. ... that's sad.
In your vision of the world without middlemen you can't make a living by any means other than minimum wage jobs
The secret bit that they don't want you to realise is that marketers will look for products to market; and in the absence of existing products they will simply hire creative people to create stuff to market; so your "job" as a creator is 100% safe.
What's not safe is the middleman's income. The billions in profit that they make for selling your idea over and over again (while you only got paid once). And don't think that a scientist has a guaranteed job at any given company: If management feels that you specifically, or your group in general isn't making them their minimum return - you will be fired/layed-off/downsized/rightsized/whatever.
I'll say it again:
The middleman needs the creator, the creator doesn't need the middleman.*
Want proof? Linux. With (essentially) zero marketing and no middleman, Linus has created a product that is used by everyone (directly or indirectly) in the industrialised world today. Better: the product has spawned income generation sources for private individuals on up to giant software companies.
So ... if you really are a scientist, you of all people need worry the least about this anti-protectionist movement ... you're the one everyone needs.
*those who wish to argue this statement should first contrast the words "need" and "want".
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Ever tried to read some digital signal processing patents ?
Try it once. For one thing, I am quite sure you won't be able to read them, much less to understand . You need at least research M.S. from one of the good universities, better a Ph.D. and some research background too..
Whether you call that a "service" or "product" is rather irrelevant. However, the amount people are willing to pay for my information is the marginal cost. If it can be copied freely, that number vanishes to zero. If I can control who can use that information, I can sell it to the highest bidder.
Companies hire scientists in order to produce patentable information. It really is that sample. The scientific profession is already under tremendous pressure due to competition from low-salary nations such as China and India. You are proposing whiping out whatever is left of private-sector research (which is the majority - depending on one's field, the private sector hires 50-65% of PhDs and even higher fractions of BS/MS scientists).
Forget US Constitition, Founding Fathers and more than 200 years of history
of invention in USA.
Slashbot knows better...
Most patent attorneys and agents DO have at least BS degree in some
technical field, and quite a few have M.S or Ph.D.
It is only after they get their technical degree they go to Law School and become patent attorneys - because being an engineer sucks...
Many of the founding fathers were very skeptical about _any_ form of "intellectual property" protection (see writings of Thomas Jefferson), and the brief clause that the Constitution has about such things was considered to be more of a social/economic experiment than a fundamental feature of the new government structure.
As far as "200 years of history" is concerned, if you actually read about the social/economic development factors of the United States, one of the big reasons that the U.S. became such an economic powerhouse during the Industrial Revolution is because the entrepreneurs in the U.S. unabashedly stole every industrial secret they could ship overseas from Europe, against European protests, and even as the U.S. paid lip service to "IP protection". If the U.S. had faithfully "played nice" with the European laws about IP protection, it is highly probable that it wouldn't be anywhere near as economically powerful as it is today.
Of course, now the situation is reversed - Asian countries like China are stealing any kind of advancement they can get their hands on from the U.S. & other "modern" countries, while the U.S. just sits and whines about "intellectual property" instead of fixing up its education/training/research systems to try and keep its technological advantange over its competitors. Unless the U.S. public gets its head out of its collective butt & realises that they actually have to WORK & _truly_ innovate to compete instead of relying on passing laws to suppress competition, the U.S. is rapidly becoming another has-been superpower.