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Reform Could Kill EFF "Patent Busting Project"
netbuzz alerts us to a letter the EFF sent today to Senators Leahy and Specter pointing out a deleterious clause in the current draft of the Patent Reform Act of 2007 — which EFF generally supports. As written, the proposal would kill the EFF's Patent Busting Project. Fine print in the bill would limit the time in which a patent could be challenged, by anyone other than those suffering direct financial harm, to one year after the patent's grant. Since the EFF is non-profit it would have a hard time showing financial harm.
Couldn't ALL consumers demonstrate financial harm? Stupid patents drive up prices, directly affecting ALL of us.
I suggest that what we really need is a second Patent Office. The first one can go on granting patents as usual. The second one's mission will be to invalidate and throw out as many patents as it can. Patent examiners in the second one will be paid bonuses according to how many patents they manage to invalidate.
I'm kidding... but only partly. The more I think about this, the more I like it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
We should make the patent office liable for damages done and court costs for the bogus patents they issue. They only started rubber-stamping business methods and software patents when they were required to generate revenue. So stop the revenue stream.
...would definitely be a good idea. Actually, I'd have two new units, plus the original. You'd then have a pro-active team that actively opposes every patent that is submitted, seeking any possible prior art, any possible flaw, and taking in any filed preliminary challenges in the pre-patent cooling-off time. If the patent makes it through that, it then gets the "gentle" treatment from the regular patent folk. The third unit, the overseers, challenge both subordinate units to prove their points and prove their cases. Anything that gets through the system intact should be entitled to be challenged by anyone, but that challenge may be thrown out without hearing if it's a point already answered within the above chain. Existing patents would then be resubmitted but deemed valid until clearly shown otherwise by the first stage. Historic patents, no longer valid but of major public interest, should periodically be thrown through the same test to see if their granting was actually lawful. Less for any purpose of redress and more as an educational experience.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
WikiBill?
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
I agree - publically accessable source code control with logs on this stuff is a must (same with actual law) - some countries are already going this way
Good god, no you don't.
What you want is bills that are accepted or rejected wholesale, as-is, unmodified.
The last thing you want is to make it easier for someone to add unrelated ammendments, or insert language that totally changes the meaning of the bill. Line-by-line, letter-by-letter editing would make doing this much easier, than the already easy "I submit an ammendment to prepend section 12, subsection (viii), item Q with the word 'not'".
Bills should be submitted in a take-it-or-leave it fashion. If you think you've got an improvement, submit a whole bill with that improvement and convince the original submitter to withdraw their bill.
Enough mucking around with pet causes and unassociated pork-barrelling (now, associated pork-barrelling -- that's good and all).
Anyhow, what do I know. I'm Canadian. You just go keep running your country the way you want to.
E.
Just because you are a non-profit organization doesn't mean you aren't harmed. Say you had a cash flow of $2,000. that means 2,000 came in and 2,000 went out. If a "bad" patent caused harm then the cash flow would have been $1,500, instead you spent 2,000. You were harmed to the tune of $500. Whether you show a profit, break even or loose money on you balance sheet doesn't affect whether or not the "bad" patent caused you harm it just affects the final numbers. I can see how this would limit the EFF efforts since they only have so much money/time/effort to spend on litigation per year, if there's a "statute of limitations" for contesting a patent then many will get a free ride simply because there is only so much that can be looked at per unit of time. Sounds like a bad clause.
sorry, but corporations aren't liable in that way. That's one of the big problems with patent trolls. They aren't their own companies you know.
this proposed bill will make it unbelievably difficult to stop patent trolls...
1. Get stupidly obvious patent
2. Wait 1 year and a day
3. Sue everybody in sight
4. ??????
5. Profit...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The ability to perform a line by line veto (vs actually line by line editing) is something the President has been asking for over his administration. While a LBL would solve some problems, I believe it's the riders that get attached to a bill that are the real issue. If the President should line veto anything, the entire bill (riders and all) should be rejected/vetoed. The LBL should simply be an indication to Congress that this is something the President would probaboy sign and send it back to the House or Senate for rework/revote - no one person should have the ability to make law entirely by themself.
It's the fear of giving the President a real LBL veto that scares the heck out of a lot of people - and with good reason.
If the President does veto a bill because of a rider, perhaps it would be nice for the media to actually acknowledge WHY he chose not to boost funding for our troops or fund CHIP and place the blame back on the real culprits - those that attached riders to a bill simply because they figured the bill was likely to pass and ride on its coat tails. Similarly, if CHIP or a troop funding bill comes with no riders, make it law to have the President explain why he vetoed it.
An alternative way to game back is to contest every patent granted as soon as the grant comes out by claiming the "Obviousness" and "Prior art" statements. Just make a short use of Google and most patents will fall short. At least that may make the patent office saturated enough to keep their heads down.
One alternative is to use the Amazon Mechanical Turk to get help to hunt for stupid patents. Just raise some money first.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.