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A Simple Plan To Defeat Dumb Patents
Steve Jones writes "With the EU being rumored to look at software patents again I thought I'd have a look at the root of the problem — the US Patent Office — and work out if there is a simple way to defeat dumb patents. The big thing that defeats a patent is prior art. At the Patent Office they have the definition of Prior Art that includes the phrase: 'known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country.' Now suppose that every time we have an idea that we think is 'obvious' but that hasn't been done before, or something we think would be interesting but don't have the money to create — that we blogged about that idea, tagging it as 'prior art' via Technorati. This would give people an RSS feed of prior art." Read on for more details of Steve's proposal.
My argument is that by doing this we can, rightly, claim that the ideas have been described in the 21st-century version of a printed publication. Even if that is challenged, it is undeniable that by using the RSS feed it can be proven that people in a given country could have "known" about it.
I'm fed up thinking "Bloody hell I did that ten years ago," or "I thought about doing that, its a bit obvious" — when companies with as little intention as I had in developing the idea start putting the squeeze on businesses and developers. What I've always lacked is the visible proof to submit against a claim. This is a simple suggestion about using the power of the Web to create a massive prior art database. IANAL, but could it be this simple?
My argument is that by doing this we can, rightly, claim that the ideas have been described in the 21st-century version of a printed publication. Even if that is challenged, it is undeniable that by using the RSS feed it can be proven that people in a given country could have "known" about it.
I'm fed up thinking "Bloody hell I did that ten years ago," or "I thought about doing that, its a bit obvious" — when companies with as little intention as I had in developing the idea start putting the squeeze on businesses and developers. What I've always lacked is the visible proof to submit against a claim. This is a simple suggestion about using the power of the Web to create a massive prior art database. IANAL, but could it be this simple?
Personally, I don't think we can record all the blindingly obvious stuff we think of, mainly because it's blindingly obvious. Or very often, we can think of salient prior art that would probably invalidate any patent claims, so we assume it's not worth mentioning.
I would rather see the patent process made a little more transparent: any patent application has to go through 90 days on a public wiki or discussion board, where we could view applications and immediately reference prior art. This might simplify the job of the patent reviewers, who cannot possibly know the history of entire industries. They could simply check out the claims of prior art (which themselves could be ranked by visitors for validity -- "oh ya, I remember THAT") and immediately see that, duh, one-click purchasing is a really dumb idea.
Why would anyone participate? First, it's in our nature. You might have heard of Slashdot, where people with varying kinds of brain matter make varying kinds of comments about varying kinds of "news." But second and more importantly, it would be protection. If you work in a business that would be affected by a one-click patent, you have incentive to make sure nobody can charge you for it, or sue you for using it, if it isn't really an original idea.
Today's patent process in the U.S. is slightly public, I know, but how about making it totally Web 2.0 and buzzword-compliant?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Whenever a patent is classified as "dumb patent" and the jury has decided that you went to the court with a "dumb reason", you will be requested to pay X times the amount requested to the court and the person/company you sued for wasting everybody's time. You would be put also on a probation period during which suing for "dumb reasons" would increase the X for each time you bother the court with invalid/stupid reasons.
... Economics is based on incentive, people react to incentives and the courts are already enough busy to deal with these complaints.
Would work also for RIAA abuse.
Now that would save alot of time and money
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
In many cases, there is never a problem finding prior art. Most software patents would never survive in court. The problem is that no company, working in their rational self-interest, would take the time, expense, and risk of a court case. It's cheaper to either take a settlement or fire back with their own patent warchest (resulting in stalemate).
Not a typewriter
There are several web sites out there that do nothing but publish your ideas (like these guys) so that they can be recorded as prior art. The stupid part is that they charge a very high fee. There needs to be a free site that is add-sponsored and community supported. In fact, if no one else does it, I'll do one. I already have my own dumb idea blog for this purpose. If a few of you respond to this post, suggesting that I actually provide this free service (and maybe some nice ideas about what web host, what CRM software, what to do to get paid adds, etc), I'll go ahead and do it. If any of you would rather do this yourself, please say so. I'd like to be an early user.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
The patent system is just some arbitrary way of encouraging innovation. The US system is obviously failing, as the costs of maintaining the system outweigh the benefits it imparts on our society.
Other countries have different ways of encouraging innovation, and in the long term, their economies may dwarf ours due to our failing system.
All property rights, be they Intellectual or Physical property, exist to encourage investment. No one "naturally" owns anything, though many people have been brainwashed into thinking that is the case.
I don't know which way is best. It seems the Stalinist system doesn't work well, and the US system has some SERIOUS problems which require periodic correction (trust-busting and such).
My advice: Watch the world economies, and don't be afraid to immigrate if you see one system collapsing and another rising. Of course, you should avoid contributing to economies in countries which deny fundamental human rights (China, Iran, etc.) but don't let nationalism blind you to economic realities.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It would take a lot of time, effort, and money to make the website something worthwhile.
Eh, A talented web developer could setup a useful site in a weekend or two. To make it good would take a few months longer. It's not like we're talking about something extraordinarily complex here, just a site to post ideas that has a few fields to enter keywords, categories, and free text. Then make it searchable.
It wouldn't take any money to speak of, and it's even in the best interest of software developers, so there's motivation to do so. Hell, it's even in the best interests of large software companies as it takes some burden off them for obvious software patents. The only people it's NOT in the best interest of is scumbag IP companies who don't produce anything but lawyers who sue other companies who actually DO produce things.
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