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.'"

Comments

Just a few things

[fyngyrz]

See any serious problems with this story?

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.

Re:Just a few things

[AndersOSU]

I don't think software patents are a good thing, so I'm not going to argue with you there. But hardware should be patentable - it is a real physical devise, and provided it does something novel and non-obvious, the R&D investment should be protected. In the rare case that individuals independently discover something - tough luck if you didn't think of it first - that is the way it works.

You seem to be mistaken as to how the US patent system works. The US operates under a first-inventor principle, which means that it isn't the guy who makes it to the office with the money first that gets the rights. Not that first-inventor isn't without problems, but the race to the patent office isn't one of them.

The US system is most certainly broken, but clearly not in the ways you think it is. I'm looking forward to reading the article, but it appears slashdotted. IMHO the biggest problem with the current state of the patent office is the rubber stamping of obvious and trivial inventions.

Yah, right

[pembo13]

'I have traveled around the world, and every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S,' Dudas said.

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.

Re:Try recent evidence maybe?

[pavon]

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.

200 years? It's closer to twenty.

[Jaywalk]

It's a proven system, over 200 years old.

You might want to check up on your history. Parts of the patent system may be a couple of centuries old, but software patents aren't in that class. Until 1980 the Patent Office didn't allow software patents at all until it was forced to do so by the Supreme Court. Even that wasn't really a "software patent" in the sense that Amazon's one-click patent is; it was just a computer program that was part of a larger invention. Unfortunately this bone-headed decision has blurred the long-established principle that ideas can't be patented. Since computer code is basically just the instantiation of an idea, software patents make ideas patentable. That has led to further deterioration by allowing things like business methods to be patented. So now you even have these clowns claiming that story plot lines can be patented.

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.