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Microsoft Pushes For Single Global Patent System

Posted by timothy on from the what-about-ecosystems dept.

Xerolooper writes "What would the world be like if everyone could enjoy the same patent system we use in the USA? From the article: 'A senior lawyer at Microsoft is calling for the creation of a global patent system to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world.' They have already attracted opposition from the open-source community and the Pirate Party. According to the article, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will be meeting in Geneva on the 17th and 18th of September."

17 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. nightmares by blackraven14250 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...why does it seem like every nightmare I have relating to patents and copyrights comes true?

    1. Re:nightmares by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about we clean up the patent system inside the US before we push our system outside of the US?

      Seriously, almost everything Microsoft has ever owned or claimed to own properly belonged under COPYRIGHT law. They may hold a small handful of valid patents - like, keyboard and mouse, maybe?

      MS needs to shut up and go sit in the corner, or surrender most of their patents as an example of how things SHOULD be.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    2. Re:nightmares by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about we clean up the patent system inside the US before we push our system outside of the US?

      You mean, like... abolishing the whole "intellectual property" bullshit?

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    3. Re:nightmares by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "You mean, like... abolishing the whole "intellectual property" bullshit?"

      Actually, no. I really believe that patents are justified, but they are being terribly abused. Likewise with copyright. With either one, if I come up with a truly original idea, I feel that I should be permitted to make money from it, for a period of time. No competition, it's all mine. For a LIMITED period of time, of course. Certainly no longer than a decade. 5 years, 7 years, 10 years max.

      And, I really believe that if patents and copyrights were regulated in such a way, people would accept them.

      My two cents, anyway.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    4. Re:nightmares by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There are actually some admirable parts of the US patent system. For example, disclosure. You can disclose your product in the US up to a year before you file your patent. In Europe, there's no grace period. What the lack of a grace period means in practice is that startups that don't know any better get bitten while established companies don't. A grace period also lets startups try to raise money to fund development of their product before you have to fork out $10k to get it patented. In general, that aspect of the US system is small business friendly.

      In terms of software, while it used to be really bad, I think US patent law is moving in the right direction -- it looks like ultimately they'll allow software patents, but they're going to have to be a *lot* less general and a *lot* more in depth. Which is a good thing. I think all patents should have a shorter term, especially software patents (these days, if you can't turn a profit in 5-10 years, you're not going to -- and the public domain is more important than ever). But that's no reason to throw out the system altogether.

      I've taken a much softer stance toward our patent system after I got involved with it in the process of starting a business. Now our trademark system... ugh, don't get me started. I may not be able to trademark my business's name because there's a company that sells Asian videos and eyeglasses under the same name, and they got shoved into the computer catch-all category '9' with me simply because their videos are downloadable online. Everything even tangentially related to computers gets shoved into category 9, but beanwhile, there are separate classes for, for example, "precious metals" versus "common metals" (and all sorts of things like that).

      --
      Get out, or I'll have vice-president Agnew's headless body throw you out!"
    5. Re:nightmares by pthreadunixman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your entire post rests entirely on unfalsifiable statements, conjecture and unsubstantiated claims about evidence.

    6. Re:nightmares by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Odd, I regard the grace period, and the first-to-invent system of which it is a side-effect, as some of the worst features of the US patent system. The entire point of patents is to encourage disclosure. If you have already disclosed, then society gains nothing by granting you a monopoly on your invention. This system in the USA means that your best bet is often to keep your invention secret, wait for someone else to invent it independently, and only then file the patent. You can even wait until they file the patent (see TI Vs Intel) and then produce notebooks showing that you thought of it first. If you do this in most of the world, it just invalidates their patent application. If you do it in the USA, you get the patent.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Global patent system? by MartinSchou · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about the companies give us something first - like a push for a global taxation system, so that companies cannot just set up shell offices in tax havens, or threaten to leave a country/state because some other country/state has cheaper taxes?

    But that'd be unfair of course. To the companies I mean.

    Obviously one system doesn't fit all - unless it's something that benefits the companies.

    1. Re:Global patent system? by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Because corporations are legal persons, so should pay taxes just like all other people do.

      If you want to abolish corporate personhood, then sure, we can abolish corporate taxation too. But you can't count corporations as just proxies for individuals in one case, and not in another.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:Global patent system? by MarkvW · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's just silly. Of course you can count a corporation as a proxy for an individual in one case and not in another.

      Corporations are treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing profits. They are not treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing liabilities.

      Corporations are regulated quite differently than individuals are because they have the potential to do much harm as well as much good.

      Corporations are a creation of the State. The State can define and redefine them as it sees fit.

    3. Re:Global patent system? by xigxag · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And furthermore, corporations do get representation through their right to hire lobbyists and establish political action committees. Let's not kid ourselves. In any reasonable interpretation of the notion, any major corporation gets far more "representation" than the average natural person, despite being barred from voting.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
  3. Borg by orzetto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Bill Gates as Borg icon was never more appropriate.

    --
    Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
  4. No Patents Without Representation! by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do I get a representative vote in WIPO?

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
  5. Global laws by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I assume all the same logic applies to global labor laws, a global minimum wage and global tax rate?

  6. Advantages for Inventors and Small Businesses by Grond · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A unified patent system would actually benefit individual inventors, small businesses, and startups more than established players with deep pockets. Right now if one wants to file for patent protection in every country with a patent system worth the name it costs ~$200,000 in filing fees alone, to say nothing of attorney and translation costs. The lifetime maintenance fees of that single patent will be well into the millions. Even only filing in the 'big three' of the US, Europe, and Japan typically costs well over $100,000 in government fees and attorney fees.

    For a big company like Microsoft, that's just the cost of doing business. But that $200,000 is a huge amount of money to a startup, to say nothing of an individual garage inventor. Globalization and the internet mean that an inventor can sell an invention to people all around the world for far less than it would have cost 20 or 30 years ago. Protecting that invention all around the world, however, is often prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-funded, established companies.

    It's true that companies like Microsoft would also benefit from lower filing costs, but small companies and individual inventors will benefit much more. It will also mean less money wasted on lawyers, as a single attorney in a single country can handle the whole process instead of having to use attorneys all over the world. And of course it will mean less duplication of effort in government as patent offices share resources. Right now there is an enormous duplication of effort as each application in each country is met with the same prior art, which is overcome with the same arguments. This is a tremendous waste of both government and applicant resources.

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. Ugh. by dskoll · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that if a global patent system were devised that were more sane than the US system, the US would say "screw you; we won't tolerate this violation of our sovereignty" and continue with it's own broken patent system.

    So a global patent system is guaranteed to be no better than the US system, and likely to be worse.