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Amazon Asks Congress to Curb Patent Abusers
theodp writes "As Amazon urged Congress to change the law to protect the e-tailler from patent abusers, Rep. Lamar Smith had a question: 'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?' Smith asked, a wry smile on his face." While it's nice to see to see tech companies behind such legislation, it would seem there's some pots calling the kettle black, so to speak.
A beautiful and entertaining suggestion, although unfortunately it's easily worked around by generating spinoff companies and leasing the technology from them.
So Lamer Smith, the guy who pushed for DMCA2 in April this year, obviously knows there is a problem with this wry comment, but it takes a patent troll like Amazon to push the issue before Congress? The guy shouldn't have such a smug smile on his face.
Perhaps what Amazon is really saying is that if companies weren't allowed to take out stupid patents, it wouldn't have to take out stupid patents to defend itself.
> If you have a "loser pays" technique, then the larger companies are just going to drown the small man into debt.
Only if you implement it in the most retarded way possible: big company determines what loser pays. Why do Americans always assume that's the only way to implement it?
In the UK we have loser pays and the courts recognise drowning someone in debt is not the solution, so the judge determines what the loser pays based on the loser's means. This can mean the winner scores a legal victory but still loses out financially, which is an incentive for the big company to settle out of court, which is no bad thing.
And the problem with forcing large corporations to think carefully about what they'd like patent protection for, rather than throwing one at every concept that has the remotest shot of being patentable, is...?
Parent's idea is a great one-it won't do a thing to impact the "small inventors" we always hear about the patent system benefitting (and it generally doesn't), while taking a significant step to curb both patent trolls and those corporations who simply overpatent. It would also be a significant step against business-method and software patents, which is also sorely needed, the companies who pull those often have patents by the hundreds.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Once a patent is applied for, the applicant has a cooling off period in which to decide whether to go through the whole process or to talk to other people about licensing (this helps small inventors)
The holder of a patent MUST either manufacture themselves or license manufacturing rights to any second parties on the same terms. The penalties for patent infringement shall be limited to legal costs plus the average current licensing rate for the goods sold to date. (If there are NO goods currently employing the patent, the licensing rate will be zero.)
Mathematical algorithms, natural laws and anything which has been created by a natural process (e.g. DNA sequences) cannot be patentable.
It shall not be possible to patent any business process simply because it is carried on in a different medium (e.g. one click is basically walking into shop, handing over money, receiving goods in exchange, and should not be patentable simply because it is computer implemented.)
Basically, the European patent system before the US and Microsoft started lobbying and threatening in order to try and break it.
Pining for the fjords
There is a better, simpler cure:
1.) Forbid "method patents". This would include software and business methods.
2.) Forbid "naturally occurring" patents. This would include genome sequences.
3.) Require a WORKING prototype before issuance.
Just those 3 would go a long way to eliminating patent trolls.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
How do we protect intellectual property without going absurd?
Here's a question for you: Is it not a bit absurd, in and of itself, to presume that ideas, a nonrival, infinitely replicatable good, can -ever- be considered or treated as property?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
~Rep. Lamar Smith had a question: 'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a ~troll for patenting the one-click?'
I'm kind of confused as to how this negates the fact it should be fixed.
Also the extraneous comment about him smiling concerns me. He is overly pleased with himself for having the observational powers of a 10 year old child.
This one can be bad.
You could have someone like Tesla, who conceived of the entire system of AC power generation and motors in his head, and who obviously could provide greatly detailed drawings and blueprints, and yet be unable to provide a "working prototype" because it would cost millions or billions to build. I think just banning software patents and business patents is good enough. And also fire judges who seem too stupid to throw out patents that are just goddamn obvious.
You are talking like there are people reading patents for gaining knowledge, instead of fearing lawsuits.
Try it sometime, I dare you..
Then we're back to the days when people hide their research to protect it
Research is rarely patented in the universities. Everybody gains from the shared knowledge, without patents. Patents stifles this process.
, and development progress grinds to a halt again where every company reinvents the wheel. Lots of unnecessarily wasted resources.
Everybody is reinventing the wheel already with closed source, and to avoid patent royalities. Now that is waste.
The cure is open standards, open science, open mathematics, open source, free software, etc.. etc.. Everybody benefits and gains value from open systems. Patents are not open systems, since it is based on fear, extortion and greed, rather than sharing a common good.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
There are two problems with this defense of Amazon:
1) They already have used the "one-click" patent aggressively against Barnes & Noble.
2) Any patent, no matter how ridiculous, will be sold off as "intellectual property" at some future date (when the corporation bankrupts if not sooner). At that time, it's almost guaranteed to be used aggressively, because the only people who will buy it will be the ones who expect it to be worth money. Amazon's work to build a patent portfolio of stupid patents foreseeably leads to future abuse, inevitably so in a publicly traded corporation.
My company encourages employees to patent seemingly anything useful they come up with not so that they can sue other companies who end up coming up with similar technologies, but for protection. They know that they have a much better chance at surviving a patent lawsuit if they already have a patent for the thing they are being sued for. Plus, they can be used as the business version of mutual assured destruction. If someone tries to sue us or sue a technology we support, we can return fire with our entire patent portfolio.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
You cannot sit back and watch someone build an empire from your patent without doing anything, bringing it to their attention, etc. and expect to cash in six or seven years down the road.
Except that, in fact, people (okay, more often corporations, which aren't people no matter what boneheaded decision the Supreme Court may have handed down 120 years ago) are still doing just that.
I swear, Slashdot should stick to technology and leave the legal commentary to people who know better.
Tell you what, the techies will stop bitching about the law when the lawyers stop trying to control the tech. Don't hold your breath.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.