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Patent Reform Act Proposes Sweeping Changes
Geccie writes "CNet is reporting that Senators Patrick Leahy and Orin Hatch have proposed sweeping changes in the patent system in the form of the Patent Reform Act of 2006. Key features are the ability to challenge (postgrant opposition) with the Senate version being somewhat broader and better than the house version." From the article: "Specifically, it would shift to a 'first to file' method of awarding patents, which is already used in most foreign countries, instead of the existing 'first to invent' standard, which has been criticized as complicated to prove. Such a change has already earned backing from Jon Dudas, chief of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office."
How about eliminating patents and guaarantee the freedom to innovate so true competition may exist? That way a small inventor won't lose his house when trying to compete with the large companies who buy up all the intellectual real estate on the monopoly board.
No, he'll just go broke when trying to compete with the large companies who wait for him to build something cool and then use their huge existing resources to cheaply mass produce his invention before he has a chance to make a dime off it. Not that either the existing or proposed system is "good", but yours would suck pretty bad, too.
Brent O. Hatch is one of SCOs many lawyers. One wonders if any part of the new law would be of any help to SCO grabbing the work on many Linux programmers?
In the current system, a person/company has some fixed amount of time (1 year? 6 months? I don't recall) to file a patent after the invention has been mentioned publicly. Some companies rely on this by shipping the product first, then worrying about filing the patent applications. "First to file" will likely delay many product releases, as the inventor will be required to get the patent application process started before release.
Oh dear God, not Orrin Hatch again! Seriously, this idiot was the man who introduced the DMCA and look how wonderful that piece of legislation was.
As usual, follow the money....
Orrin Hatch received $126,918 from the entertainment industry in this last cycle. Not to be outdone, Leahy received $251,970
By my calculations that means that congressmen can be bought for less than $400K. My, my, my what an insanely great ROI.
America, the best government money can buy®
..as two of congress's biggest sock puppets to moneyed interests, so there is no surprise theyre the ones comming up with this, and it's also a slight relief to know this is what some of the worst of the worst are comming up with, because if not this it would be something much much worse.
Anyway, this is designed to "reform" the system by clearing the courts of many cases by simply awarding the sneakiest party. This law would result in the legitimizing of those "patent parasite" firms who snag patents, then ambush companies just as theyre going to market. It would reverse the apple v creative case too. This is definitely at the expense of the inventor, and would also make invalidation of obvious patents much harder, since prior art would no longer apply. In that way it is playing to moneyed interests, but even moneyed interests would incur great expense to these parasites mentioned above.
The hatch/leahy duo are the perfect illustration of how partisan grandstanding only serves as a red herring, and that corruption extends beyond party lines.
In addition to the horizontal axis of left and right, there is a vertical axis nobody in the media or politics wants the public to pay attentin to, moneyed elitists vs populists.
voting one party or the other does not guarantee the politician's position along this vertical axis, and that axis in this nation is the one which is more important.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Is it all just a farce, then? Or perhaps they've just been going about it the wrong way, and we should handle diseases the same way we did when people had the lifespan of a fruitfly in a blender? It wasn't all that long ago.
BSD: The most efficient way of subsidizing the enemy.
Where it gets interesting when you bring up the theory under which patents are granted is that, at least in my opinion, the situation these different methods are meant to resolve shouldn't exist.
Patents supposedly reward invention, and a key aspect that distinguishes an invention from a mere design is non-obviousness. But what does it mean to be "non-obvious"? It's a subjective measure: what is obvious to an experienced designer is not at all obvious to a novice, or to a lawyer or to a patent examiner. We are basically granting government sanctioned monopolies on ideas based on the subjective opinions of non-qualified people.
What we need is an objective standard. Let me propose one:
If an idea is arrived at independently by two parties working on the same problem, the idea is, ipso facto, an obvious one.
Under that standard, it doesn't matter who "invented" first or who filed first: if two parties came up with the same thing without knowledge of relevant details of each others' work, then the idea is not worthy of a patent.
This would (a) invalidate most patents and (b) greatly increase (according to the law of supply and demand) the value of truly orginal ideas, which now compete with merely patentable ideas. In my view that'd amount to an unquestionably superior patent system.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.