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Last NTP Patent Tentatively Thrown Out
pcause writes "Reuters reports that the fifth NTP patent has been rejected. What does it say about the US Patent office and software patents that these patents have made it through trials, appeals, etc and only now has the Patent Office decided they weren't any good in the first place?" From the article: "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has sided with BlackBerry portable e-mail device maker Research in Motion Ltd. by issuing a non-final rejection of a fifth patent at the center of its legal battle with patent holding company NTP Inc. The decision means the patent agency has now issued non-final rejections of all five patents at issue in a BlackBerry patent-infringement case before a federal judge."
As easy as it is for me to want to side with RIM, and be excited that this last patent was thrown out...
I'd like to know several things. First, what WAS the last patent? The article doesn't say - I'm sure someone could dig it up, though. Also, why was it rejected, and if there was good cause to reject it, why did it survive so much previous scrutiny? While the USPTO will accept almost anything at first - they don't do rigorous review of everything submitted, until it is challenged - they start scrutinizing them once court cases come up. So how did it survive previously if it could not survive now? Could this perhaps be only a political decision? The USPTO bowing to administration pressure?
-Daniel
What does it say about the US Patent office and software patents that these patents have made it through trials, appeals, etc and only now has the Patent Office decided they weren't any good in the first place?
It says that the USPTO has and will continue to issue bullshit patents on anything put in front of them, but that when a patent affects 25% of the government, regardless of validity, they will toss it out so they don't risk actual reform. No need to fret, however, any bullshit patents that only act as a cudgel for big businesses to kill or blackmail small businesses will remain inviolate.
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This action by the USPTO will have HUGE implications for anyone that has a patent on anything.
A patent is supposed to secure, for a limited time, exclusive use of the patented item for the inventor. What the USPTO has effectively done here is said:
"We rubber stamp almost everything. You shouldn't build a business on a patent until it has been tried in the courts."
Of course, most patents will not be tried in courts until there is money (and a big business) at stake....catch 22.
A patent is supposed to be a guarantee - the due diligence should have been done before the patent was granted. Now, no business based on a patent has any reason to believe that their business is safe, or that they will recoup the costs of their investment until the courts decide so.
The patents granted by the USPTO are effectively paper tigers and not worthy of investment trust.
-ted
What exactly did the little guy invent? Delivery of email via radio waves? Was a protocol designed? Distribution system designed?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I guess if the IRS came up with "One Click" tax returns Amazon's patent would have to be removed.
At least the US Gov. could have been a little more transparent about it.
"Go back to bed America, You are free to do what we tell you"
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
I agree... partially.
I think the patent system should not be granted by a centralised and under-staffed authority like the patent office. Rather, patents should be peer reviewed. After all, granted patents become publicly disclosed anyways. The patent office simply acts like a program committee. The patent office receives patent applications and, depending on the domain of the patent, picks random reviewers from a pool. The reviews are returned and weighted differently depending on reviewer's association with the applying party. The patent office then chooses whether or not to grant a patent. All patent applications and their reviews are made public. Not perfect, but I think it's a good compromise.
First, companies or individuals can register as reviewers for specific categories of patents. They are then added to the pool of reviewers for said category. If patent applications are given to a pool of a dozen or so random reviewers, the odds are small that a small group of companies can collude to push their own stuff through.
Right now there's no penalty for companies to file a ton of patents. But a peer-review system ensures that anything they wish to patent will be pre-examined by their competitors. I think this will automatically push most things off the patent treadmill and into trade-secret territory.
Second, instead of patent clerks trying to digest the mangled legalese that most companies file, their competitors have a vested intrest in using their own lawyers to demangle and pick apart any application. The clerks then have access to a relatively clarified view of whether or not an application is valid.
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*beware the cute-bunny virus
I went through this with a patent on game physics engines. The USPTO rejected some claims as an insufficent advance over prior art. So I sent in published reviews of games that didn't use my technology. "This game really sucked". "Worst game I ever played". "Game physics terrible". "Objects randomly flying off into space after a collision".
The USPTO then accepted the claims without any further argument. That's how you prove non-obviousness - show previous failure. If others tried and failed, but yours works, then you must have invented something.