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Congress Tackles Patent Reform
nadamsieee writes "Wired's Luke O'Brian recently reported about Congress' latest attempt to reform the patent system. In the article O'Brian tells of how 'witnesses at Thursday's hearing painted a bleak picture of that system. Adam Jaffe, a Brandeis University professor and author of a book on the subject, described the system as 'out of whack.' Instead of 'the engine of innovation,' the patent has become 'the sand in the gears,' he said, citing widespread fears of litigation. The House Oversight Committee website has more details. How would you fix the patent system?"
This gives us several benefits: 1) it's more analogous to a physical invention where all the parts have to be described in detail; 2) the source code to enable an invention would be free and public knowledge at the expiration of the patent; and 3) it's useful for others to understand exactly what the inventor is trying to claim as part of his patent. The public would benefit from a better description of the invention, competitors could determine exactly what a patent is supposed to do, and the patentor would not have to face the specter of business method or software patents being eliminated in their entirety (which I'm sure more than a few people will call for).
1. Get rid of the "presumption of validity". Patents, once issued, are assumed to be valid unless proved otherwise, but actually doing the legwork on every single patent to make sure it's good before approving just isn't feasable, so lots of bogus patents get passed.
But courts still defer to the patent office unless the case is unambiguously bogus.
Move to something more like the copyright system, where having a copyright issued only proves that you had a claim as of a certain date and that your paperwork was in order.
The burden of proof would then be shifted to the patent holder to prove that their patent was valid as part of an infringement lawsuit, back where it belongs.
2. Get rid of or at least weaken submarine patents. The obvious way to do this is to make it so that no damages can be collected for actions before the patent holder files an infringement lawsuit.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
company. The truth is that large companies regularly steal ideas and then BEG you to sue them. If you do, they grind you into the ground. You think that SCO vs IBM is long winded and expensive? Not even close. There are suits that take a decade. and the small guy always lose because they have to settle for a fraction (or sell out to somebody with DEEEEPPPPPP pockets).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here's how I'd approach the problem:
(1) Every year, a patent recipient names the price of an unencumbered license, $X.
(2) Every year, to renew the patent, the patentor pays $X*(2^r) for r being the number of previous renewals.
(3) As soon as a patent is not renewed for a year, it ends.
What this means:
(a) It is not practical in the long term to use a patent to prevent something from being built -- a high $X means a high renewal fee.
(b) Patents that are genuinely useful get renewed; patents that are just so much legal cow-dung will not be profitable to renew for as long.
Problems with this scheme: The exponent constant might need to vary by field; the scheme would have to be revised for design patents and plant patents; might conflict with various treaties; might be preferable to restrict the ability to use a small X one year and a larger one the next year (require X to be non-increasing?).
My first item is simple common sense, at least to anyone on /..
Second item would restore patents to individuals. The concept of patents was not designed or intended to foster large portfolios wielded by legal entities with mountains of cash and armies of lawyers. It was not even designed with Edison in mind. Restore patent holding to the actual living, breathing inventors, and let their employers have first refusal on any patentable item developed with company funds.
Third, business moves a lot faster than it did 50, 100, 200 years ago. Allowing patents to last 20 years is absurd in today's market.
Public Universities should not be allowed to be complicit with large corporations in holding patents hostage, especially in the science and medical fields. Actually, this could be made irrelevant by #2.
In general, reform the entire system to be oriented toward individual inventors, rather than Corporate innovation squatters.
If Congress does anything about this, it won't be caused by any domestic forces. The EU is gaining strength in these areas and pushing lots of reforms through. If the US wants to continue trading with Europe, many of America's draconian laws will have to be updated, including patents.
A number of posters are arguing that the patent period needs to be reduced to some rather short interval, typically around 5 years. The problem is, it often takes about that long just to get the financial backing to turn your patented widget into a viable commercial product. A too short of a patent period and no one would be stupid enough to fund a patented project. Just wait a few years and you can skip paying the inventor his share.
The problem has never been how long a patent lasts. The 20 year period is actually quite reasonable. The problem is how easy some really stupid shit can be patented, and how much of a pain it is to get a bad patent revoked.
Unfortunately, I'll bet money that Congress will do to patents what they did to copyright, make a bad situation worse. (bad for the little guy, wonderful for the megacorps).
-- Will program for bandwidth
This is pure undiluted horse shit. Code is covered by copyright not patents. Method patents (of which software patents are a subset) should be abolished! If you have a patent on software, you should be required to relinquish any and all copyright claims to that code. Why should software methods be protected by both copyright and patents?
And that is how I would "fix" the patent system. Abolish all future method patents and give current holders the choice of continuing their current patents with no copyright protections after expiration or simply converting them to copyright where they belong. The choice would be theirs to make.
While I'm on a roll here, if you can also remove the assumption of validity of patents, that alone would go a long way to stopping the patent trolls.
B.
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