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Inventors Protest Patent Reform Bill

Posted by Zonk on from the sticky-wicket dept.

narramissic writes "A group of inventors and U.S. company execs, among them Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and the AutoSyringe, and Steve Perlman, inventor of WebTV and lead developer of Apple Inc.'s QuickTime, paid a visit to Washington to encourage Congress to defeat the Patent Reform Act. The inventors say the Act will weaken the patent system, devalue patents, and encourage infringement. A version of the act, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, is supported by several large tech vendors including Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. The big companies hope it will make it harder for patent holders to sue and collect huge damage awards when only a small piece of a tech product is found to infringe."

4 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What part is most dangerous? by Elektroschock · · Score: 2, Informative

    First to file and first to invent has *nothing* to do with prior art. But in a "first to invent" thinking market players tend to believe prior art was more important. In a first to file system novelty is still a requirement that kills the claim. Protests based on these grounds follow illusions about the reality of the patent system.

  2. Re:"Incumbent Patent Holders", not "Inventors" by Svartalf · · Score: 2, Informative

    That'd be my take on things. They're not trying to fix the real problem with the system.

    Amazon's One-Click patent should never have happened. There's a vast SEA of patents that're the same way (Just
    putting the Internet in the mix seems to be a magic formula for making something patentable these days...)

    Fix that stupidity and you'd go a long way to fixing the patent problem.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  3. Publish early, publish often by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 2, Informative

    Anything you publish becomes prior art, after which you are the only one who can patent it anymore (inside the grace period).

  4. I'm seeing it ... are you? by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 2, Informative

    A person shall be entitled to a patent unless--
    (a)
    the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or
    (b)
    the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or