Slashdot Mirror
The Patent Epidemic
cheesedog writes "BusinessWeek is running an editorial titled The Patent Epidemic, which chronicles not only how abusive and absurd our patent system has become for software and business method patents, but how it hurts even traditionally innovative fields such as the automobile industry. Interesting commentary can be found in the regular places, with Right to Create suggesting action you can take to stem the spread of this epidemic, and Patent Prospector attempting to refute BusinessWeek's arguments."
Totally Absurd Patents
IP funny
Patent of the week
I am sure there are more, but it gives you a glimpse of the absurdity in patents. Some of the patents are funny too .. so enjoy :) (just don't spill coffee while reading)
So are you suggesting no change at all, or are you suggesting we get rid of the patent system altogether?
The latter would be great. The current system of patents was completely broken from the start. Even if the US had the best patent law in the world, what stops other countries from ignoring it? I don't want to see the military going overseas to protect patents, and I don't like ANY trade deals as they are all forms of favoritism.
If you are sympathetic to the idea of abolishing patents and you live on this planet, the best you can hope for is gradual change towards weakening the power of patent monopolies.
How? There is no chance of things getting gradually better -- laws that protect 10 cartels worth billions are not going to get changed by 200 million individuals who might save $10 a year each because of the monopolies created. 10 people chasing $2 billion will work harder than 200 million people chasing $2 billion.
Only by performing the experiment of reducing patent force can our society begin to see the benefits of less government interference in essential human rights, such as the right to build stuff and the right to create new things -- rights that patent monopolies prevent you from doing.
I agree, but my argument from the previous paragraph stands: you won't see things becoming "kinder and better" as long as we allow Congress and the federal branches such abusive powers.
Unless, of course, you are advocating sitting on our hands and letting the IP-maximalists continue to increase and concentrate their power.
Their power that We the People granted them by ignoring the Constitution. We gave our federal branches the ultimate powers that they were never allowed, and we're surprised that they give those powers to the highest bidders?
The solution is no more laws and more control/regulation. The solution is to remove those powers from the federal politicians, and return them to the People.
That's why publishing your invention (assuming you're willing to give up overseas patent protection) is so important to keeping knowledge in the public space. In the US, you can publish and still file within a year of disclosure, which means you can get feedback on your invention and introduce it to the public, without fearing that some asshole patent portfolio will scoop it up and use it as another tollbooth against industry and innovation.
A lot of people will tell you that you should file before disclosing, but who can afford to file? Big companies with lawyers on salary, research universities with lawyers on salary, and companies that are made up of nothing but lawyers.
If you can't make truckloads of money on something you invented, at least you can make sure that people can benefit by the knowledge that you have gained. And if enough people start believing in the stuff that you've created, you might stand a better chance of getting the money and support to patent, produce, and market your NEXT invention.
At least, this is my opinion, having researched the process for something I built and thought was obvious in the field, but people kept telling me I ought to patent.
For your information, there is a so-called Provisional Patent Application available in US. It costs just 100$ to have your priority date locked for a 1-year grace period.
Better read about patent system first before posting ignorant comments
Apple licensed the GUI concept from Xerox.
First off, I believe some of their citations are a bit dubious. They mention these great critics without citing any, and use the period of two decades with no supporting fact for the decline over that time. The Patent backlog has only worsened in recent years and the only way I can think they came up with the two decade number is because that is around the time SCOTUS opened the door for software and business method patents.
Interestingly enough, the case they pointed to is in a field not covered by either of these, but this is their attack. This is probably because these have become the two hotbed matters of discussion so it is best to stick to what infuriates readers the most, I suppose. However, a decision by SCOTUS would affect all patent areas, so maybe they aren't too far off...but still.
They say the obviousness bar has been lowered. However, I truly believe it was only lowered once when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), decided to require motivations for making combinations and throwing "the one of ordinary skill in the art" out the window. Some have said this was an overreaction to hindsight issues in obviousness rejections.
They only mentioned one side of the brief as well. If I remember correctly an amiscus (that might be spelled wrong) brief was also filed against the arguments made by KSR. You see your technologies sit on one side while the bio-techs seem to be sitting on the other side, meaning two of the largest industries are pulling for opposite sides of the fight.
While they use the number of patent issuances going up, they seem to ignore the fact that patent filings have also sky-rocketed along with them. If the percentage of allowances per examinations are the same, then the stat is pretty irrelevant since the number would just be a case of more cases being viewed because of greater numbers of filings and more examiners examining cases.
I think an equally big problem with the patent process today is the number of simultaneous directions a company can use to defend itself. However, while you are waiting for a decision on one of the routes you may be decided against in another. The perfect example of this is RIM and NTP. RIM is waiting for the completion of re-examinations before the USPTO of NTPs patents and a case before SCOTUS on NTP's ability to sue RIM because of their location and operation as a Canadian company, but the District Court judge does not want to wait to hear from these cases (or the injunction case of ebay and Merch Exchange) and may force RIM into an expensive settlement that turns out to be pointless.
In the end, the blame for obviousness problems lies fairly firmly on the CAFC who added the unnecessary burden on the examiner of providing motivation for the combination of references. If this gets overturned it would send many patents tumbling and make rejections a lot easier. The last line of the article, however, is just plain wrong. I would be willing to wager that obviousness rejections under 35 USC 103 are the most common form of rejection used by the USPTO. It is very rare that anyone files for a patent for a device that has been previously released and would be rejectable under 35 USC 102. The article does provide some good information, but it also sorely lacks facts and definitely shows some degree of bias on the issue; however, it is an op-ed piece, so bias is fairly inherent.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
This is false, and is contradicted by a wealth of historical data and analysis of spending by drug companies. See Why Drug Companies Don't Need Patents
I know lots of people here love to bash patents, but really, they are a good thing.
/their/ patents. Well then you whip out your portfolio of patents and thumb through them until you find some things that /they/ are infringing on of yours. Then you horse trade: "Hey...I'll let you off the hook for THESE infringements if you let us off the hook for THOSE infringements..."
/your/ idea and makes a fortune off of it leaving you with nothing.
I am a mechanical designer. I am listed on several patents for designs that I have been created or been involved with.
Yes, a lot of patents seem absurd. Hell, a lot of them probably ARE absurd. There is a reason for this.
Corporations like to build webs of patents around their products. It is not sufficient or desireable to just have a single patent. The idea is to create a web of patents around your product so that when someone infringes on one of your patents, and you take them to court, and they manage to use their highly paid lawyers to wiggle out of the infringement, you then can slap them with infringements on a bunch of other patents.
Another thing a web of patents do for you is they allow you to horse trade. Let's say someone comes against you with a lawsuit that you are infringing on one of
Sounds corny, but consider this - when Kodak tried to get into the instant film business to compete against Polaroid, Polaroid took them to court for patent infringement. Kodak had nothing with which to horse trade, and Polaroid refused to negotiate - they drove them out of the market. This after Kodak had invested millions in new plants and employees. You never want to get caught with no bargaining chips at the patent negotation table.
But more importantly, patents protect intellectual property. I know, I know, everyone likes to poo-poo the idea of intellectual property. But without such protections, there would be little incentive for companies to pay people like me to invent new products, because as soon as we did, they would be copied by places like China, and sold back in our markets for pennies on the dollar for what we could be able to sell them for.
Let's face it, folks, thought (IP) is one of the last marketable things that our country (USA) produces. Just about everything else that can be mass produced is now made somewhere else. Without some mechanism to protect IP, it will become worthless, and then we are going to be in some deep shit.
No one likes patents, until someone takes
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
after the third time they reffered to the author of the article they were disputing as "BeavisWeek" though, I decided it was impossible to take them seriously.
No single raindrop believes that it is responsible for the storm.
>You had nothing to start with. An idea is just an idea ---
/did/ have the means to bring that machine to market.
>we all have them. What you are describing is simply envy that
>someone else has managed to make money out of an idea when you
>yourself didn't.
You are completely incorrect. Sure, we all have thoughts, but some are valuable and some are not. Very genreally, if you have a thought, and can demonstrate that there was no prior art (no one else thought of it first), you can patent it, and capitalize on that thought. If it is a good enough thought, people will pay you to make use of it.
>As an electronics engineer and software architect with many years
>behind me, I have a stack of notebooks absolutely brimming with novel
>ideas, the vast majority of which I will never use in any product.
>Patenting them would be utterly diabolical, effectively denying
>others the right to invent those concepts for themselves independently.
LOL! Patenting them would be diabolical? It happens every day, dude. People invent things themselves independently every day. And you know what? If they are first to the patent office, they get themselves a patent. If you don't care to participate, that's great, but not much of an argument for the case you appear to be making that thoughts aren't valuable, protectectable assets.
>Does it matter to me when someone else develops one of my ideas by
>themselves, or stumbles across it fortuitiously? Of course not.
>Ideas are two a penny, and "losing the potential to make money"
>is losing nothing at all. If I wanted to make money out of them myself,
>I would, and if I don't have the means to do so then this very clearly
>illustrates how that "potential" was actually an illusion and entirely
>worthless.
This is so flawed I'm not sure where to begin. Just becase you don't have the means to captalize on your ideas does not mean that the idea was worthless. I would hazzard to say that this is the quandry with most inventors - they have great ideas but lack the means to do anything with them. Hell, just getting a patent is very expensive! But this certainly does not mean that the idea is worthless. If I invented a machine that could produce gold out of horse shit but I didn't have the means to actually make the machine would my idea for this invention be worthless? Hell no - I'd be selling that thought for billions to someone who
It may not matter to you if your thoughts are independently discovered by others and then capitalized by them. But it would bother me. But that wasn't my point in my original posting - what my point was then is that patents protect your thoughts that other people DON'T get independently (they copy you) and they make a fortune off of.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And his article referenced therein.
Nickname: Stephan Kinsella
Review: As a practicing patent attorney, I've observed that both proponents and opponents of the patent system use unprincipled, flawed, utilitarian (wealth-maximization) reasoning to support their position. The primarily principled opponents of patents are anti-industrialist, anti-private-property socialists. The solution is to realize that there is a non-socialist, pro-property rights, principled case against patents, as I have laid out in my article Against Intellectual Property, available at Mises.org http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
Date reviewed: Jan 3, 2006 8:54 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!