SCOTUS To Hear Patentable Thought Case

skayell writes "The Supreme Court of the United States will hear a landmark patent case involving whether or not thoughts and relationships are patentable. Michael Crichton's essay in the New York Times attempts a thoughtful summary of Metabolite's primary assertion: they not only own the connection between homocysteine levels in the blood and vitamin B12 deficiency, but also any thought connecting the two."

Comments

Everything should be patented

[Nick Gisburne]

Let's just have patents on EVERYTHING, every gene, every molecule, every action you could ever think of. Then in 17 years (or whatever the time limit is) when they expire, we can forget all this patent bullshit and just get on with life again. I'd be willing to wait those 17 years if the patent system would just expire.

Re:Everything should be patented

[zilym]

You jest, but this just might work... The people wouldn't even need to wait the full 20 years for the patent system to meltdown:

Patents expire 20 years after the initial filing date of a patent application. If everyone were to DDoS the patent office with junk patent applications on every little thing imaginable in the world, we could bog down the patent office so much that it would take decades to get a patent reviewed and granted. If it takes 15 years to get a patent reviewed, the patent owner only gets a scant 5 years to enforce their patent against people ("infrigement" before the grant date doesn't count, and anything after the expiration date doesn't count either).

If the enforcement time period is short enough, then the owners will eventually figure out that patents are completely useless.

The Patent System is Broken

[Fitzghon]

The patent system is definitely broken. It is bogging down innovation with lawsuits and silly claims. It is very nice to see Crichton on the offensive about this issue, and hopefully he and Research in Motion (RIM) will be able to trigger some more response and reform in the patent office. As was noted earlier on ./ RIM is running full-page ads (cf. http://www.rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=25858) protesting the patent office situation.

Fitzghon

Possible angle of attack

[A Pressbutton]

Use the law against the patent holders.
If I was ill and someone actively prevented me from receiving medical aid then I am su re that that person would be breaking the law.
If the owner of the Hepatitis C virus is standing in the way of a possible cure, surely they are doing the same thing to all Hepatitis C sufferers.
I hope you can hear the rumbling of a class action lawsuit in the distance.

Before anyone responds - well fine, but this means that we should be able to sue hospitals for not providing free drugs - this is wrong - it is very unlikely that researchers will use any of the patent holders knowledge.

Re:Possible angle of attack

[tengwar]

A more elegant solution: if you hold the patent on the diabetes gene, you should be held responsible for all cases of diabetes, treated or not.

The first thin wedge

[Stephen Samuel]

Hopefully the SCOTUS has chosen this as a poster boy for the inanity of the current Patent system... The first thin wedge of peeling back the move to patent any and everything including software.

I have a dream .....

Please please PLEASE RTFA

[consonant]

It is brilliantly written.

Especially the ending - I reproduce it here (spoiler warning :-P)

I wanted to end this essay by telling a story about how current rulings hurt us, but the patent for "ending an essay with an anecdote" is owned. So I thought to end with a quotation from a famous person, but that strategy is patented, too. I then decided to end abruptly, but "abrupt ending for dramatic effect" is also patented. Finally, I decided to pay the "end with summary" patent fee, since it was the least expensive.

The Supreme Court should rule against Metabolite, and the Patent Office should begin to reverse its strategy of patenting strategies. Basic truths of nature can't be owned.

Oh, and by the way: I own the patent for "essay or letter criticizing a previous publication." So anyone who criticizes what I have said here had better pay a royalty first, or I'll see you in court.

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Just charge for any transaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Just charge for any transaction, whether it be video to the eyes, thoughts to the brain, or actions to reactions. Forget patents, just call them "transactions" and charge for everything. Of course everyone will want their fair share, so the profits made from this will go to the poor companies not making any products that can't make money like all of the companies that just produce things customers want, just like we have taxes on writable media now to compensate distribution companies, etc.

Re:Michael Crichton = Un-Informed

[tepples]

Literal infringement requires infringement of every single element in a claim.

It also requires infringement of every element of only one claim in a given patent.

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Re:Michael Crichton = Un-Informed

[the eric conspiracy]

I agree, and as far as I am concerned the publication of an article in the NYT that is so obviously full of factual errors exposes the editorial staff of what used to be a great newspaper as incompetant.Such ridiculous articles do nothing to further and in reality detract from efforts to promote real and needed patent reform.

The US patent process has some serious problems chief amoung them being the granting of business process patents and secondarily granting patents for material that does not actually constitute an invention. Congress should make it clear in patent reform legislation that a patent should only be granted for something novel and useful, and business proceses should not be covered. Software patents are an area of great abuse at present - many trivial ideas are being patented.

BTW, the following article describes in a much more cogent way the issues with this particular case than the Crichton editorial.

http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/10/labcor p_v_metab_1.html

Re:THOUGHTCRIME

[Fordiman]

Unfortunately, there is a general disease in the US called the 'dollar'.

See, it's based on faith - specifically, the faith that the US can back up each dollar with something of equal value. What the US has of most value is 'intellectual property'.

Now, this IP is a bit tricky; there is no intrinsic physical property of it that prevents it from being copied. It's an item of real value that can be had for no value. Further, it costs money to create.

This is not lost on trade governance; it's what the four tiers of IP law are based on: Patents, Copyright, Trade Secrets, and Trademarks.

The primary goal of these laws is to provide compensation to authors while allowing for the creation of a large and robust public domain.

Of these, two are highly contested. Patents - granted monopoly rights for business use of an idea - and Copyright - granted monopoly rights for use, copying and distribution of a complete work.

Copyrights are contested primarily because of the length of time rights are granted: it has migrated from about 7 years to approximately 95 years or more, depending on the character of the copyright. Almost anyone except Disney corporation would agree that this is excessive, but no one seems to want to cross major rights holders (the RIAA and MPAA) and fix the problem.

Patents, on the other hand, have a twofold problem: First, you can patent almost anything that's not already in the patent system, even things that have actually been around for years, like hyperlinks. Second, for certain patents, they too are starting to exceed their original time limits (eg: medical patents can be renewed).

On the first point, there is a prior art clause that can be shown to invalidate a patent, however patent law is slowly inching from the current 'first to market' system to a 'first to file' system, in which these patents would be gospel.

Now that you know the issues on patents and copyrights, please write your congressmen to repeal these laws. They, uh, kill babies and maim pregnant women. They're all bad and stuff.

No, seriously, write them and ask them to change the laws to something a little more, you know, sensible.

Re:crap

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I do understand the need for patents.

I don't. Or more precisely, I do understand the intention, but it is plain to see that while it might have been semi-workable in the 19th century, the idea is fundamentally flawed.

It is entirely reasonable to protect an idea long enough for a company to produce a product and start making money.

Not so. The claim is being made that patents "promote innovation". That is not true. Desire to learn in some areas and greed and competition in others "promote innovation". The concept of a patent, as an artificial stimuli for development has looong since outlived even the pretenses of its usefullness. The usual excuse, that of protecting "small time" inventor from predation by "large corporation", is also plainly false. Vast majority of patents are filed and held by various corporations, and the ones held by individuals are usualy crackpot.

Another argument for patents claims that they protect the company who invests into reasearch from "freeloading" by copy-cats. I say that such "copy cats" are precisely the engine of competition and the time lead afforded by the new design or discovery is reward enough in itself. It is even self-balancing: more complex the design, longer it will take the competition to copy it properly. Thus longer the exclusivity window. And only continuous research and development guarantees that lead over competitors to be permanent. As it should be. There is no need for an artificial bureaucratic nonsense to "protect", poor, downtrotten multi-billion corporations from each other.