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Patent Office Head Lays Out Reform Strategy
jeevesbond writes to tell us that Jon Dudas, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office has laid out a plan for patent reform. "Speaking at the Tech Policy Summit in San Jose, Dudas said that characterizing the patent system as hurting innovation is a 'fundamentally wrong' way to frame the debate. 'I have traveled around the world, and every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S,' Dudas said. 'It's a proven system, over 200 years old. The Supreme Court, Congress and policy makers are involved [in cases and legal reforms] not because the system is broken. It's not perfect, and we should be having the debate on how to improve.'"
Other than the fact that this guy is out of his bloody mind?
Software patents: totally ridiculous, and putting a huge hurt on an area that should be boiling with creativity. Creatively speaking, this time in our history offers more creative ground and lower barriers to entry than ever before in our history. The primary barrier, aside from your own intellectual resources, is the patent system. It is a barrier to creativity, and furthermore, it is a barrier to progress.
Hardware patents: First guy with the money into the patent system and with the wherewithal to defend the patent wins. Nothing to do with the actual inventor; totally centered about money. Anything wrong with that? Only that it suppresses any inventor without corporate backing, which ought to be a crime in and of itself.
And oh yeah, the other inventor(s) who worked on this? A second late to file, and they are well and truly locked out. Is that fair? Is that even slightly fair?
The US patent system is a well of misery, corporate bootlicking, and "let's crush the little guy" methodologies. Sure, everyone else looks to the US system, because it is a system designed to turn over money, not encourage innovation. The fact that it manages to encourage at least corporations to innovate can be considered a side effect. It certainly isn't the main goal of the system, which is to feed the legal profession a regular set of juicy, meaty bones.
I'll tell you what is "fundamentally wrong"; The US patent system is fundamentally wrong. Why? Because it is a system that guarantees that anyone but the 1st to the gate is hammered; because it is a system that guarantees that anyone without deep pockets cannot actually be protected (read, encouraged) by the system; because it discourages innovation. The number of devices/programs you can actually create without running smack into someone's fool patent is very near zero. So much for encouraging innovation. Now lawyers... they are encouraged. Oh yes. Very much so.
The copyright system isn't doing a lot better, but that's a different issue, somewhat.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
But only because US companies push a lot of money into the political chains to push the broken patent system of gentech and software upon the rest of the world. It is a shame what is going on here in Europe, the affected polticians dont even try to hide on who's paylist they indirectly are.
I have traveled around the world, and every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S.
should probably read
every nation that we can strong-arm into accepting our rules is modelling its IP governance after the U.S.
If he were honest, that is.
But not being a particularly honest person was probably a job requirement for his position, though.
A.
Nice spin. I think he means nations are afraid of not modeling their system after the US since the US has proven time and time again that whatever needs to be done to have their way will be done.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
'I have traveled around the world, and every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S,' Dudas said. 'It's a proven system, over 200 years old.
Just because it's a proven system over 200 years old, doesn't mean it still functions today the way it was intended 200 years ago. Hell, I don't bank the way I did five years ago. Times change and a huge part of why it doesn't work is that almost everything has changed along with it.
Life's parameters change. When that happens the algorithm that governs it sometimes must change too.
In addition, I am very sceptical of the claim that countries are modeling their laws after ours because it is a proven system. I'd wager that it has more to do with being required to have IP laws which are simular to the US and Old Europe in order to participate in various trade groups and treaties.
The "200 year old" system he's bragging about worked fine. It's the recent introduction of changes to that system which have caused the problems.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Sure, when you get the hard stuff back, you have something tangible.
Here's the kicker though. If you get a patent, then you're protecting the **idea**, not a physical board. At the stage in the process when the ideas emerged (ie. design), there was no "hard stuff" involved. I don't really think that there is a case to treat sw and hw patents differently.
The biggest problem with software patents is that they are examined badly. Being able to spot really novel software is very difficult, but the same applies to, say, a hardware motor driver circuit.
And, for the record, I design both hardware and software.
Engineering is the art of compromise.