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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.
"It's a proven system, over 200 years old."
Using that logic, we should all be using horses as our primary mode of transportation. Just look how proven and older that locomotion model is!
Why don't we use evidence from the world since the Internet was invented, and base our new system upon the modern world?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Gamasutra had a good article on this recently. The thing that caught my eye was that the patent office is supported by fees collected for each patent application. They had a signed framed that read Our Patent Mission: To Help Our Customers Get Patents.
To me, that speaks volumes. Any system with an incentive to do crazy things, tends to do crazy things over time. In this case, the goal is to get as many patents issued as possible, so that more people patent odd things and more money flows into the patent office. Break that incentive and people might start behaving rationally again.
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.
Anybody else spotted this ?
[Pruneau
"every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S"
Other nations are thinking about it because of heavy pressure from the US to comply with the US model. That pressure comes in turn from lobbying of US govt by US businesses. In no way are other countries spontaneously saying "Hey, what a neat model!" Absent US pressure for trade agreements etc we would keep the status quo, or even free up current regimes.
If I were a betting man, and I bet you I'm not, I'd say he's spoken to people throughout the world who already agree that much tighter intellectual property laws are required who may coincidentally talk a lot to large corporations, many of which may be US based, who would like to protect their profits and don't have any reason to consider the social side of intellectual property legislation.
Also to say that the rest of the world is currently so awestruck with the benefits brought by US intellectual property legislation as it currently is wouldn't appear to be a good reason for suggesting changes to that legislation.
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. =====
Because when you're trying to get a patent approved, the last thing you need is people pointing out the prior art, or people double checking your 'facts'- those things are harrassment and hold up the timing of application processing!
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
It was all about bullshit then, and it still is.
While we're at it, maybe we can also deal with one area where patents work *too* well: drug patents.
The problem with drug patents isn't that they stifle innovation: it's that they encourage the *wrong sort* of innovation. After the patent on a useful and effective drug expires, it is quickly manufactured as a generic and profitability drops (which is exactly what the point of a patent is in the first place). Great.
The problem comes in when drug companies spend their R&D on creating new drugs that treat the exact same conditions as already existing drugs - just because they'll have another patent and therefore another (however short-lived) monopoly on the drug, which equals large profits.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
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.
From reading the article there are many benificial changes that are being looked at. The most important IMHO is more open review:
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
What is it about the word "broken" that the head of the Patent Office doesn't understand?
The patent system is broken. Consequently, the numbers that he's using to justify the existing system are totally bogus. You can't measure the stifling of innovation by using a broken system. You need a completely different approach.
Software used to be a highly innovative field back in the 1980s. Anybody could develop a new software system out of their house and become millionares. In fact, many people did, and we have those companies around today (let's see, Microsoft is one).
How many are happening now? Darned near 0. That's because anybody who comes up with a successful product is guaranteed to be sued as soon as they get some money in their pocket. Or if they look like they are remotely a threat to an existing big company. Unless, maybe, you get Venture Capital; but even if you do, you're going to have to spend a good chunk of that money on lawyers, and not developers.
This is not how to encourage innovation. This is how to discourage it. Heck, I doubt you could even build the Internet again today, because instead of the open RFC process you'd have to worry about some clowns promoting things based upon submarine patents (ala Rambus).
The head of the Patent Office just doesn't understand reality. He's completely out of touch with what's going on. We need help if we're ever going to restore innovation to the marketplace, and because this dude thinks things are OK, we're just not going to see innovation restored to the software field any time soon. And probably not even in our lifetimes.
I know a guy who worked as an examiner at the patent office. It's basically like working on a factory assembling line. Everything is based off of how many applications you can process. I think that new examiners are expected to do 2 or 3 patents a week, if you want to stay ahead and get promoted. Don't do your quota, you don't get promoted, and maybe eventually you get fired (but it's a government operation so let's not get too ridiculous here).
But basically, 2 or 3 patents need to cross your desk a week, and either be accepted or sent back. That means you can give each one maybe two days. That's two days to do all the research, and look for all the prior art, and make a judgment call. That's nothing on some of these patents, which can be hugely technical, particularly when the people filing them can take all the time they want to obfuscate their intentions and tweak the language to make them as broad as possible.
And here's the best part: if an examiner rejects a patent and sends it back to the applicant, and then the applicant sends it back in with updates, that updated application doesn't count towards the examiner's quota. So there's an obvious advantage towards accepting applications, because that's the absolutely sure way of getting it off your desk and making sure that it's not going to come back to haunt you later.
Anyone see anything wrong here?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The fact that patents on software hurt innovation is EXACTLY right and should be the way to frame the discussion.
"It's a proven system, over 200 years old."
Unfortunately wide spread computers and their programs are a relatively new phenomenon. The fact that the patent system is 200 years old should be your first clue that it may not work for such a radically new and different set of circumstances!
You sir are a moron... Oops... Strike that last sentence... (Damn and I was doing so well too!)
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
He also asserts that "It's a proven system, over 200 years old.". But business model patents, which are probably the most abused and the most common violators of "obviousness", are only a few years old, especially the common "Do {some normal business practice} ON THE INTERNET" business models which cropped up after the Internet became popular in the late 1990s. Even software patents didn't exist before 1979, and for the early years they had to work by pretending to describe hardware.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Once convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
I'm pretty sure you're confusing patents and copyright. They're different.
Yes copyrights and patents are different however they both had the same length of duration, 14 years: "a Patent Law (1791) gave inventors exclusive rights to their inventions for 14 years."
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why not just have the ability for the public to comment on prior art? Leave the application process approximately the way it is, and just post the approved patents online (as they do now), but allow individuals or corporations to send in a notice describing their prior art if it exists. If a member of the public sees an application and knows that prior art exists, then they can simply notify the person in question. This is far from perfect, but it is a relatively simple mechanism to prevent some of the more ridiculous patents in a way that would not cause a flood of correspondence for the Office to deal with. Once a reasonable period has passed, perhaps 30 days, then the patent would be finalized.