Nanomedicine Patent Thickets Threaten Future

cheesedog writes "Over 5000 nanomedicine/nanotech patents have now been granted, and the patent land grab continues unabated. Dr. Raj Bawa says, "Patent thickets are considered to discourage and stifle innovation. Claims in such patent thickets have been characterized as often broad, overlapping and conflicting - a scenario ripe for massive patent litigation battles in the future." According to Bawa, nanomedicine start-ups may soon find themselves in patent disputes with large, established companies, as well as between themselves. In most of the patent battles the larger entity with the deeper pockets will rule the day even if the innovators are on the other side."

Comments

5000 nanomedicine patents bad news?

[ChrisGilliard]

Can someone tell me why this is bad news? Why is the assumption that innovation will be followed by excessive litigation? Even though there have been patent lawsuits that are meritless, I can only see the amount of innovation in this area as a good thing.

Re:5000 nanomedicine patents bad news?

[yeOldeSkeptic]

Its bad news because if someone tried to patent A Method of Using Nanotechnology To Cure Mammalian Organic Diseases and was granted the license, then that person can sue almost everyone who comes up with a nano*** to cure any human diseases.

It's like someone getting a patent for A Method of Protecting Human Habitats from the Elements. Everyone who builds a roof over a house now owes a license fees to the patent holder. OK, so there is prior art with roofs, but is there such a prior art with the new and exciting field of nanotechnology? I guess not.

The US Patent System is severely broken and must be fixed, somehow. Otherwise, truly innovative companies may just decide to move their businesses to China or India and do their manufacturing there.

I remember the time during the 1980's when the US State Department hobbled almost every computer company which tried to export their goods with a thicket of regulations and bureaucratic red tape. It was feared that the Intel 8088 CPU is so advanced that it constitutes supercomputer technology that could be of military use! Hence export restrictions on Intel, Apple, IBM, etc.

The net result of those restrictions was that Intel, Fairchild, and other semiconductor companies moved their manufacturing facilities to sites in Mexico, Europe, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc. Sites that are beyond the reach of US Government export restrictions.

We are seeing a similar exportation of technology again with regards to stem cell research. If the patent system is not fixed soon, nanotechnology may soon follow the same offshoring trend.

Re:5000 nanomedicine patents bad news?

[Flyboy Connor]

Compare it with domain names.

There was a time when the Internet did not exist. Suddenly it was there, and there was a way of navigating it easily from scratch: by using domain names. The problem was that every domain name had to be unique. Big companies jumped in quickly and reserved .com. A few small companies were also lucky. Then we saw the rise of the domain-name-grabber: suddenly EVERY domain name .com, .net, .org, and . was registered. The domain name grabbers had no use for any of these names, they just wanted to place their big butt in a spot that was desirable, even necessary, to occupy by others, so that they could receive a fat stack of bills to move that butt.

There is not much difference between the domain-name-grab and the patent-grab. It is not that hard to generate patents nowadays. It is no longer required to have an actual implementation of a patent ready, it is enough to formulate an idea. Hell, I could (with the help of a lawyer) write a computer program that generates patent claims and automatically sends them off to the USPTO. Most of the texts will be silly, but a few will have meaning; those will be awarded (maybe I make it sound a bit too easy here, you need to do a prior art search for each patent claim, but I guess I can come up with a program that uses the text of previously awarded patents to generate new patents, and then list those previously awarded patents as prior art). The only snag is that it costs too much money to get all those patent claims verified. But with a little bit of insight, it is pretty easy to write down a patent claim (by hand) for something that does not exist yet, but that someone will probably invent in the coming ten years. Maybe only one in ten of such patent claims will actually come true, but if your pockets are deep enough, no problem: the one that actually comes true will bring in enough dough in the end to make you rich. At the expense of the actual innovator.

But it is worse: even those patent claims that seem to be worthless can be made worthwhile by a lawyer who just starts litigating some successful startup claiming that they violated this worthless patent. The startup might see that the claim is worthless, but cannot afford the costs involved in defending his case, and rather pay off the shark on his back. And make no mistake: the patent troll companies are all filled with lawyers and only lawyers; they make their living by sueing the crap out of people who actually produce something.

So, it is not "the more patents, the worse we are off", but "the more worthless patents without supporting implementation, in the hands of patent trolls, the worse we are off."

Great News!!!!

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

Why of course, the sooner these folks are granted their "over-broad" patents, the sooner they'll expire, leaving the field WIDE-OPEN.....

Perhaps we could see a situation where the first of these patents are expiring before the first real nano-technology is available! By all means guys... get your patents in early, the earlier the better.

I seem to recall there was a catch though....Didn't you need to actually be able to "do" the thing you were going to patent? I seem to recall that was part of the test, that it actually needed to be possible at the time you were patenting something, not just a crack-pipe dream....

Re:Great News!!!!

[barefootgenius]

A thought. Perhaps, this whole patent issue is just a metter of perspective. Perhaps, from a top down viewpoint, our governments do not care about these issues because in reality they benefit from them.

For instance;
*Would you prefer to deal with many small companies or a few large ones?
*Would dealing with a few companies allow for better forcasting?
*Would you prefer to deal with people you know, or people you don't?

If smaller companies are litigated out of existence in patent litigation, then how does the government loose. The method is still available, the owner of the method has many more resources to put it into practice, and the government still makes its money on taxes.

From a top down viewpoint, it would seem be a hell of a lot easier to only have to watch a few companies, deal with a few persons, and have stability.

Of course, I'm probably totally wrong (it's my day for it). What do you think?

20 years till guns

[Anonymous Coward]

mark my words:

In 20 years (give or take) the medical patent fiasco will have led / be leading to violent warfare. Everything from 'insurgents' (read: terrorists / read parents who don't have 100 grand for their kids cancer) to invasions of countries that are violating some (Bush family read: Phizer) intellectual property feudal land holdings. It's not a coincidence that the US pharm industry is stacked with 'retired' air force generals and military industrial profiteers.

mark my words and sign me

Anonymous Coward

America currently winning "The War on Innovation"

[styryx]

I know this will get flamed to hell by all those who know better, but if you can follow the idea/intent and not so much the specifics....

So here's my idea, extremely shorten the life of a patent! (Say 5 years.)

Reasoning: A company or person spends some time, some money, thinks about it and comes up with this great innovative thing. As a reward for this they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want with it for the time period to establish themselves as a brand, develop the technology etc... If they're innovative (and they'll have to be now to survive) then they'll always stay ahead of the game and hence will keep getting paid (a 5 year headstart is a lot in technology). If they sit back just to collect bucks then it will be finite and still run out.

This way they can charge companies who want to use up-to-the-minute technology and when the idea becomes out of date, or commonplace/practice (e.g. MP4 !FU2BELL!) then it's anyone's game.

There are i'm sure a lot of dissadvantages to this, i'm not saying it's perfect, but even this is a shit load better than what is already in place.

I guess to cut it short there needs to be a patent system that
1) REWARDS INNOVATION
2) PUNISHES TROLLS

If you're 5 years ahead of the game before the competition can even start developing that technology, get in.

Maybe not even make it free, but say reduce it's costs to like a 1/3 of the price. I'm rambling and typing quickly, apologies.