Slashdot Mirror
Inventors Protest Patent Reform Bill
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."
>And no just being first to market isn't enough.
Ah, but in the patent system, that is essentially all you are supposed to get. I should remind everyone that the patent system with its 20 year protection was created back when information and people traveled a lot slower. 20 years was a fairly good amount of time needed to build, and reach the markets. Today, companies can perform the same amount of work in only a few years, and a single inventor can do it in less then 10.
> I really don't understand what effects this proposed tweak to the patent system will have.
Favoring the big corps against small companies. Never mind if the small company is a patent troll or not.
Let's say a guy finds a killer algorithm to speed up data mining. Big corp selling data mining software can gobble it up. Guy can't sell any data mining competing software because I'm infringing 800 silly patents (double linked lists and stuff).
Only cure for the patent system: no silly patents. Difficult to find a metric for silliness but we are not remotely trying. What about "whatever patent a team of students can find a similar solution for in 3 months (summer-of-code style) can't be used to prevent deployment and improvement of the newfound alternative solution"?. If the solution is identical to the patent, patent is revoked, if not they can use copyright to defend the patent especially if it performs better, yet they don't prevent other people to do their silly things.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
These days, the USPTO hands out patents like candy. That obviously must stop.
The only meaningful patent reform bill is one which makes it much harder to get a patent. A patent is a monopoly on an invention. Today, the term "invention" is used so loosely that it's almost devoid of meaning -- you can get a patent on pretty much anything these days.
But the nature of a patent is such that it should be hard to get. So what should be required to accomplish that?
I think the most important requirement should be that the patent itself be publicly peer-reviewed. Some will argue that the downside is that if the patent isn't granted, then suddenly the invention will be made known to the world -- the inventor won't have the opportunity to keep it secret. To that, I say good! If you want the monopoly that getting a patent gives you, you should be forced to risk the possibility of losing control over your invention. This alone would eliminate most of the patent applications, and rightly so.
Additionally, the patent itself must be a technical document, not a legal document as it is now. It must provide the average practitioner in the field in question with all the information he needs to implement the invention. The patent can be rejected by the peer reviewers on this basis alone.
Right now, neither of those is required, and the results are predictable: nonsensical and/or trivial "inventions" are routinely granted patent status, and we're all worse off for it.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
On basics, I tend to think any patent "reform" from the current political system (populated by its heavily bribed players) can favor only the big companies.
I think patents should require a working model of a physical device. Anything that doesn't cover should be copyrighted, or just admitted that it's "just a good idea".
When registering a patent, the inventor should register their auditable invested costs. When either 14 years (the original term the first Congress set) pass, or 10x the registered investment is taken as income (corroborated with the IRS), then the patent expires. No renewals.
Those two reforms should constitute practically all the entire system. And clean practically all of it up. Anything left to fix we can get to next. Because, as you say, we're so far from a working system that anything that works should be welcome, even just serious negotiations around it in Congress.
--
make install -not war
The "first to file" as opposed to the "first to invent" rewards the thief not the inventor. Shortly follows the end of individual innovation - because all it takes is one slip and the invention is stolen. It also prevents collaboration / full disclosure and scientific discourse because the first to file wins. Secrecy becomes the norm and we all lose.
Anybody know the story of the wiper-delay circuit? That was stolen AFTER a patent issued. It took nearly 20 years to win the suits and the inventor finally was paid. The system is flawed - but at least the inventor reaped the benefit.
This change only concentrates patents and wealth in the largest entities.
Imagine a product that requires experimental use to perfect - say, a new roadbed (city of Elizabeth) and somebody who observes the experimental use files for the patent - guess who wins? First to file.
The pharmaceutical industry is happy - the rest of us can tough it out.
...corporate death penalties, modeled on the "three strikes and you are out" deal they apply to single named humans with felonies. Corporation A gets caught and convicted three times for fraud, misrepresentation, cooking the books, paying bribes, manipulating the stock price, etc, your normal malfeasance stuff, that's it, their stock gets declared worthless and can't be traded, the corporation loses it's charter (if in the US), or is banned from doing business here, and the entire board of directors is banned from ever being in any managerial capacity forever.
This will make "investors" think about just a little more than the gross bottom line, make them pay attention to what is being done in their name with their money, and make executives think long and hard about their actions.
Modern corporations are freaking zombies, no matter how much they screw up, you can't kill them! Just change that one point, and it will go pretty far in cleaning up business in general terms. Examples, not exhaustive at all, but just a few here : think if this was already in place, half the MAFIAA members would be gone, several large and abusive software companies would have been dissolved, and etc. And the remainder would be the more honest companies....so what's not to like? Yes, in the beginning stages of such a new law and policy there will be some collateral damage and social realignment unfortunately, but "workers" and "consumers" are ALREADY being grossly hurt by these zombie corporations. Frankly, I'd rather be in the job market where the numbers of potential employers had been thinned to the more honest ones. They are far more likely to be better employers and to do well in business over the long run, ethics actually work when there are laws backing up policy. And so far, the threshold to "kill" a corporation is so absurdly high, with "fines" being easily passed on to the next consumer or taken away from potential employee pay or stockholder dividends, that there is little incentive for them to do right, and all the incentive in the world to just be sneaky conmen and crooks, so that's we are growing in the business world, and it gets worse yearly.