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Lawmakers Take Another Shot At Patent Reform
narramissic writes "Patent reform legislation was introduced yesterday (PDF), which, if it passes, would be the first major overhaul of US patent law in more than 50 years. (It should be noted that the new legislation is very similar to the Patent Reform Act of 2007, which died on the Senate floor last year.) The legislation would bring US patent law in line with global laws, and introduce 'reasonable royalty' provisions, which change the way damages are calculated and would reduce the likelihood of massive payouts for some patent holders. Representatives from Google, HP and Intel were quick to say that the changes would cut down on frivolous patent lawsuits. But the Innovation Alliance, a group representing patent-holders that oppose the legislation, said that it would 'devalue all patents, invite infringement — including from companies in China, India and other countries — and generate more litigation that will further strain the courts.'"
0. Any patent not being sold in a current product line shall pass into public domain.
Might as well add this to copyright reform too.
...it would 'devalue all patents, invite infringement -- including from companies in China, India and other countries...
Pardon my ignorance, but even if that is true does it matter? These countries, especially China, have a long history of not respecting patents and they don't look set to change that attitude.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
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But the Innovation Alliance, a group representing patent-holders that oppose the legislation said that it would 'devalue all patents, invite infringement -- including from companies in China, India and other countries -- and generate more litigation that will further strain the courts.'
These guys really need a new PR firm. Vague insinuations about the threat of SEAsia and clogged courts is soooo pre-9/11. It's all about child porn and terrorism now, guys - get with the program.
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I'd rather go one step further - instead of measures that will reduce patent troll-filed lawsuits, why not add a punitive measure?
This is a good first step. The US *should* be on a first to file system. Venue for patent suits *should* be restricted to venues that make sense (rarely ED TX).
But some provisions go too far. Damages should be linked to some market definition - NOT what the trial court thinks is reasonable. Also, we need a change to the laws that provide incentive for innovation in regulated industries. Patents are most valuable in the life sciences. We need reform here. We need to better align value with innovation. We've still a long way to go.
The Innovation Alliance, which opposes these patent reforms, include some of the best and brightest in patent/IP trolling. One prominent company is the Canopy Partners, which is famous for its previous ownership of The SCO Group and Tessera, which is suing everyone in the wireless industry right now.
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If there is a problem with the patent system, it is not that patents are issued too hastily, but rather that many are issued too slowly. On the other hand we need to ensure that the quality of patents that actually ARE issued is very high, and that they only last for a brief period of time (maybe 2-4 years, tops).
So overall, I'm not sure this is the right direction that we want to go.
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But the Innovation Alliance, a group representing patent-holders that oppose the legislation said that it would 'devalue all patents, invite infringement - including from companies in China, India and other countries
Yeah, because our American patent system has certainly stopped China and India from infringing thus far! Are these people nuts? Why the hell should these countries obey our patent laws regardless of whatever they happened to be? We're not the law there!
And another thing while I'm at it:
The legislation would bring U.S. patent law in line with global laws
This legislation would have the best chance for getting China and India to respect our patents, since we'd be adhering to a global standard and not a local one.
So this Innovation Alliance is, as far as I can tell - arguing against the very legislation that would have the best chance of supporting its agenda. In other words - yeah. They're nuts.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Do you think the Chinese patent-infringing manufacturers care about US laws?
They do if they want to sell their wares here.
Free Martian Whores!
Patents should reward putting your invention out in the open. Having a huge period in which to do secret development is the anti-thesis to what patents should reward.
The only problem with first to file is that there is no grace period.
Lawyers hate grace periods, because if a paper without a million of legalese claims holds any value in court that diminishes their contribution to patents ... they see the exact wording of those legalese claims as somehow more important than the subject covered. Which is ridiculous ... in the areas I'm an expert I can recognize the innovative parts of a paper better than a lawyer can capture it in claims.
I think the first to file vs first to invent difference is just being played up by lawyers to disguise the fact that the real thing they want to get rid of is the grace period.
The problem with the JPEG patent was it's non enforcement for all those years.
AFAICS the inventor in question was the first to combine RLE+VLC coding and the first to use zigzag scanning of DCT coefficients. Both pretty inventive steps for which I see no real prior art at the time. Nothing at the time could get anywhere close to his results.
Although I'm opposed to software patents in general, I think this one was more deserved than most.
17 years is bad. but it ends comparatively soon.
i'm sure if they touch it , it is going to come out at 50 years or longer.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Patents only give you a right to enforce. Hence you need to come up with legal costs. aka a corporations knows that you can't afford to litigate, they may not even bother offering a crap deal and just infringe. I know of one person personally where this was the case.
So in summary if you are poor forget patents. You just told everyone your invention.
The only winners in the current system are the lawyers.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
This whole thread has a lot of assumptions about how easy it is to define, delineate, and value so-called intellectual property. If it was so easy to do all that, as easy as marking the boundaries of a bit of land, then the patent system could be patched up. It's not that easy, and the patent system needs serious rolling back, starting with at the very least no more patents on software or "business methods".
As things stand, the system has led to very expensive and endless arguing and litigation about whether an idea is novel enough to warrant patenting, or is too broad and basic a concept of nature to be patentable, or whether two or more ideas are really the same idea, or even what exactly a particular patent covers. These questions are extremely difficult, and largely beside the point, which is to encourage innovation. It's guaranteed income for lawyers, without any clear net benefit to society. It's led to an informal truce where all the players spend to stockpile patents in the same way hostile nations expend resources to stockpile weapons. This is the "Tragedy of the Blood Sport" so to speak where the manner of the competition does such damage in finding out who's the most righteous that when it's all over the issue is likely moot because no one is left fit enough to be any good. The players would have been better off not playing. And they know it, and that's why the informal truce and cross licensing deals. In ancient Rome, a big point of blood sports was to have a bit of "fun" killing off the condemned, but in today's patent system, that is most definitely not the point. Why carry on maintaining this blood sport gig? And it is a blood sport, with the patent office issuing weapons as fast as they're allowed, and the courts dragged into officiating. There's a certain horror in seeing the Joe Theismann of the patent wars, RIM, taken for an incredible $612 million in damages. Innovators have little choice but to go ahead and hope they aren't sued by too many trolls, aren't called out to go fight in the Colosseum. You can't write a program without violating not just 1 or 2 patents, but hundreds of patents.
In your drug example, we can't know which version of two nearly identical drugs is better. It may be that one version is better for some people, and the other is better for the rest of the population. Or it may be that it depends on the environment, with one drug being better at sea level, or in winter time, or who knows? It can takes years to gather enough data to spot such trends. It may even take years to think to look for such correlations and discover that they were there all along, in decades old data. Patents interfere with this process of discovery, motivating companies to hold back data, or bury old generics so they won't compete with new patent protected drugs. Doctors are subtly and unsubtly pushed to use the new regardless of whether an old generic might actually be better.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
But they're usually satisfied with selling in the Chinese market. There's little money and a lot of red tape here. There's a lot more money in China. Which is why a lot of established, 1st world companies are trying to break into China. There are companies trying to do the reverse, but that's much rarer, and they probably operate in a market segment where IP is not an issue.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."