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Patent Reform Bill Unable To Clean Up Patent Mess
First to submit writes "Ars Technica analyzes the Patent Reform Act that has passed the House and is being debated in the Senate. Unfortunately for those longing for real, meaningful patent reform, the bill comes up short in some significant ways. 'Despite the heated rhetoric on both sides, it is unclear if the legislation will do much to fix the most serious flaws in the patent system. A series of appeals court rulings in the 1990s greatly expanded patentable subject matter, making patents on software, business methods, and other abstract concepts unambiguously legal for the first time.'"
... it is kind of hard to legislate common sense.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
In other words, Ars Technica finds this reform patently absurd?
Patent Reform sat on a wall
Patent Reform had a great fall
All the King's horses
And all the King's men
Couldn't put Patent Reform together again.
So let's start over.
Need I say more?
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
I'm sure it's a debate between those in bed with the defensive patent holders and those spooning the offensive patent holders. They dare not make the bill too radical and wake any sleeping giants.
Seems to be that patent trolls have to stick to jurisdictions they have a significant presence in, and can't go to courts that have been sympathetic to plaintiffs in patent cases. This isn't much of a reform to me. What about stopping these common sense patents and business model patents. Until that happens this is just a motion of appeasement, not a real solution to the problems.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
I confess to being totally ignorant of how patents affect most industries, but it seems to me that the real problem with patents in IT is the fact that they grant such long protection for products with such short shelf lives. Several years ago, I tried to explain that to my congresscritter at the time, but he couldn't grok how his argument that we need to protect IT because it is so rapid at innovation actually is an argument AGAINST many aspects of strong IP law as they apply to IT-related products. For example, granting 17 years or more of protection to a video codec means that you own it for its natural life, plus 5-10 years in many cases.
IMO, patents should cover the schematics of a product, not the ideas that went into the product. A car maker should be able to patent the final design of their latest product, but there should be nothing stopping someone from looking at it, and extending it in some meaningful direction without compensating them. All innovation is, after all, built on someone else's ideas.
Software and other bogus patents are truly America's loss.
With so much functionality available via the web browser, it's only a matter of time before companies will choose to offshore their software services instead of fight in court.
Let's see a court in Texas tell a software company in India they can't host some software due to patents. Let's see any system that will prevent proxying around ISP blocking; either voluntary or mandatory.
America needs to wake up and smell the coffee; or lose to the global economy.
Filled with pork, unrelated funding requirement and special interest exceptions the bill fails completely to provide any relief to the American citizenry from an unstemmable flood of "with a computer" patent applications.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
My main gripe with patents is that they use federal regulation establish intellectual property. That means tons of patents and copyrights and trademarks that they layman has no hope of negotiating. I don't see why they can't just write a law establishing that you own your ideas, and that other must secure your consent or give you reasonable compensation before using them.
Patents and copyrights are intended to prevent people from free-loading off of the work of others, and I think it is pretty clear when that has happened. If someone sells counterfeit merchandise, that's obvious. If someone reverse-engineers your software, that's also pretty obvious. I say, write the law, and let people settle it in court if they think someone's benefiting from their work without consent or due compensation.
Just something to think about.
Watered down legislation such as this is clearly the result of the massive influx of dollars into the pockets of our politicians via the industries who thrive on ridiculous structures like the US Patent Office. Until we force our representatives to get off that teet we are foolish to expect anything less.
Nothing says goodbye like a tax.
Patents are touted as a means of securing the incentive to innovate.
However, these patents on abstract concepts fail to do that, and instead provide a means of legally preventing potential competitors from competing.
Wealthy and established businesses have an obvious incentive to want that power. Basically, anyone who intents to dominate a market has an incentive to erect legal barriers to others. Why take an even playing field when I can tilt it in my favor?
On the other hand, anyone who wants to enter a market that already exists, and compete in it, has incentive to deny this power to others.
So its just a battle of the dollar bills. The wealthiest will win in the end, as usual.
The established 'business' entities have too much... 'investments' riding on patents, as such a meaningful reform will never happen. What winning card player will ask to be dealt a new hand?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It is not true that the map of freedom will be complete
with the erasure of the last invidious border
when it remains for us to chart the attractors of thunder
and delineate the arrhythmias of drought
to reveal the molecular dialects of forest and savanna
as rich as a thousand human tongues
and to comprehend the deepest history of our passions
ancient beyond mythology's reach
So I declare that no corporation holds a monopoly on numbers
no patent can encompass zero and one
no nation has sovereignty over adenine and guanine
no empire rules the quantum waves
And there must be room for all at the celebration of understanding
for there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold
imposed by force, resisted
or escaped.
Greg Egan as Muteba Kazadi
Some real consideration should be given to getting rid of patents altogether. Really, do they serve any real usefulness other than the stuff of Big Corporate Sticks? It's way too expensive for the little guy to get a patent; still even more expensive for the little guy to defend his patent against VBCs that have deep pockets.
But, seriously, what would happen to the marketplace if patents were to be thrown out tomorrow? Would innovation cease? I don't think so. It would change for sure, but it may actually change for the better, giving the Little Guy an edge, a leg up, since he would not fear being crushed out of financial existence by VBCs.
Really, I don't know how the patent examiners could possibly be knowledgeable about all the various areas of mathematics, science, and technology that has grown exponentially since patents were created.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
the real problem with patents in IT is the fact that they grant such long protection for products with such short shelf lives.
True, and here is the problem.
You can't tell from the claims whether something is a "software" patent or not. Any software patent claim I can engineer to be a piece of hardware. The problem is that there really aren't clear claims that scream software (as from Beugrard claims, which are secondary claims anyhow [never could spell that]) . You can't ban all method claim as that would ban claims on how to manufacture things, etc.
So, the answer is to judge whether or not something is software based when enforcement time comes. Now you have a clearly defined product. Now you can clearly say "This is >50% software. We don't enforce patents against software."
So, we need to fix software patents not at the granting stage, but at the enforcement stage.
As for your schematics patents, we have those. They are called design patents. The problem with them is that you move something small (where a bolt is) and you have just designed around their patents.
While it's true that high-tech patents last too long, technology is also a field where many inventions are easy to implement once you know about them. Without patents, the R&D you do is automatically shared by the whole industry -- which reduces your motivation to do R&D.
Regarding extensions, a major point of the patent system (as opposed to making everything a trade secret) is to encourage everyone to publish their inventions so others can build up on them. Patents (in theory) only cover actual inventions, not ideas, and indeed you can patent a modified version of an existing invention.
A bigger problem today is with idea patents like "business methods" and software patents, but the real problem is that "obviousness" has ceased to be a meaningful limitation on patentability. As courts rule that the idea of "I'll do things the way I always did them, but the calculations will be done by computer and not by hand" is patentable, or that it is an original idea that a course-management system should accomodate users which are students and TAs at the same time, patents become a problem. I'd like to ban software patents in general, but I don't think it makes good sense. Most software patents are bogus because they are obvious, but let's say you invent a new faster algorithm for multiplying matrices. This costs money to develop, and the basic rationale behind patents leads me to think that you should be able to patent this algorithm. Of course, if someone can improve the algorithm -- they would gain.
is to eliminate them. Nothing good has ever come out of the patent system anyways.
And honestly, when you "gain leverage" in the marketplace, and in this case politics as well, there is some level of spooning or money involved.
PATENTS really ARE out OF control THESE days. I once INVENTED the ROLLERBLADE but SOMEONE else GOT the PATENT before I did. IT made ME really MAD. man, I would HAVE been ROLLING down STREETS throwing MONEY to EVERYONE. that WOULD be FREAKING awesome. SWOOOOOOSH, "here, HAVE some MONEY"
seems to be the only way then... (AI applied to business)
Presentation Oct 2005 http://www.cwi.nl/pr/CWIiB/2005/
Abstracts (doc format)
A.I.I want to file a patent to cover all really stupid and pathetic legislation, it's a broad far reaching concept that I feel is over used, obviously I invented stupid and pathetic legislation otherwise how would I right now be patenting it? I suppose though, it's been around far longer then i've been alive, so I won't ask for backward royalties, i'm a forward thinker.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First question you have to ask is who owns all these patents are they americans or foriegn companies/individuals. If its the latter then your patent system is working against you to make you less competivitve. In fact it could even kill whole industries. Is that what you really want?