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."
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.
Parent is a blatant plagiarist.. See also this other example from earlier today.
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.
If people can't see that having to deal with thousands of patents will only diminish innovation in the long run then... well f*^&@!!! people! I can't dumb it down much further. How about:
"Patents Bad"
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
You're a prolific patenter, I'm a Poli Sci student in the middle of writing a research paper about the bureaucratic pathologies of the patent office.
on point one, you're wrong. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05720.pdf , a report by the Government Accountibility Office, details that examiners are expected to review 87 patents a year, spending 19 hours each on them, on average. Other sources, including congressional testimony by the undersecretary of commerce on intellectual property and the head of POPA, the examiner's union, describe examiners having between 11 and 22 hours for each patent, depending on the complexity of the field (agricultural inventions vs. telecommunications, for example).
On point two, a real problem is the "continuing education" of examiners. For the most part, experienced examiners are at the top of the field simply because they're constantly exposed to it. New examiners, of which there are a lot, are not, for reasons you describe. There are a ton of new examiners because the patent office has been hiring more to deal with the pendency problem, and also because it has the highest firing rate in the federal government. In addition, turnover for examiners is usually 2 years - the patent office can't keep its examiners. Probably because it trains them so well that they can get better jobs outside the patent office, not to mention the horrible labor conditions at the office.
On point 4, that sounds like total conjecture. Unlike what you describe, there's an incentive for examiners to approve patents, not reject them. Approved patents are added to the examiner's "count"; rejected patents aren't added to the count if they are challenged. This leads to examiners approving patents they aren't sure about. Don't believe me? check out the GAO report above.
on point 5, what you're talking about is challenging a rejection, in which case a second examiner reviews the patent.
Finally, the amount of money the patent office makes, and that congress takes (which, by the way, it didn't for last year; excess money was spent on internal improvements) is a drop in the bucket for the federal government.
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.
I think that I've been unclear in what I meant by the terms 'model' and 'physical representation'... which doesn't totally surprise me since most of my work involves mathematical modeling.
I did not mean to imply that some bricks-and-mortar, or any other tangible prototype had to exist. I was addressing the idea that it used to be required, before software patents, that any patent be accompanied by a clear description of a physical device, whether the patent was for the device itself, or whether that device instantiated an algorithm.
To my knowledge, except for perpetual motion devices, patents have never required a prototype to be submitted (which hasn't stopped perpetual motion devices from receiving patents without that requirement, if the language has been sufficiently obscured), but beyond things that violate generally accepted 'natural laws', I don't see any need for any prototype device to accompany the application.