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Senate Panel Backs Patent Overhaul Bill
mvar writes "A bill to reduce the likelihood of massive damage awards in patent disputes took a step forward with approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee voted 15-0 to back the legislation that would give judges a major role in determining how important a particular patent is to a product, so that infringing minor patents would not lead to huge damages. The bill (PDF) also gives patents to the first inventor to file, rather than the first to invent, making the patent application process easier for companies who apply for patents in multiple countries. This year, Microsoft, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Biotechnology Industry Organization support the patent legislation, while Dell, Cisco and others oppose it."
Microsoft's blog post in support of patent reform calls for a quick review period for newly-granted patents and the acceptance of prior art submissions from third parties.
Well this is interesting. Do we like the track record of judges, or will they all file in East Texas where "a big corp clearly has better ideas on what to do with an idea that they were (second) to sell"?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Well..... that fixes all the problems with prior art, now there is none!
"The bill (PDF) also gives patents to the first inventor to file, rather than the first to invent"
WTF?
legislation that would give judges a major role in determining how important a particular patent is to a product, so that infringing minor patents would not lead to huge damages
Okay that sounds good, what's the catch?
patents to the first inventor to file, rather than the first to invent, making the patent application process easier for companies who apply for patents in multiple countries
... and making it much harder for anyone who is not a large company with money to throw at patent applications. Also could someone familiar with patent law explain how changing this one particular law in the U.S. makes it easier for companies to file in other countries?
Schumer's amendment would have allowed companies sued over such patents to ask the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to declare them invalid without resorting to litigation.
"I feel very strongly about this issue," said the Democrat from New York. He could not guarantee he would vote for patent reform once it hit the Senate floor if it was not in the bill.
So 90% of what would have protected smaller innovative companies was removed and what is left is further patent domination for the bureaucratic styled corporations.
Other provisions in this year's 99-page bill aim to prevent bad patents from being issued by allowing third parties to provide information on why an application should be rejected.
Useful, but not nearly as useful as the above proposed amendment.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has asked for the right to set its own fees in order to hire more examiners and upgrade technology so it can chip away at a massive backlog of patent applications.
The bill would give the patent office authority to set fees, but requires that the smallest applicants get relief on application fees.
They'll need it with the flood of "first to file" applications coming in.
Large companies, who can afford to defend themselves in court, will benefit from this. Same is true for Microsoft's case against i4i where they want to make it easier to invalidate patents in court.
For small and medium-sized companies, and for individuals, this won't help.
In software, people need the freedom to use the commonly used video formats, and the freedom to make a website to sell stuff. For a small company, the court case would cost more than the profits they'd be trying to protect.
Patents simply don't work for software. They *might* work for things where all mass production is done by large companies (e.g. pharma, cars), but for things which ordinary people do, such as writing books and writing software, patents don't work and must be abolished. Reform is not enough.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Why_software_is_different
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Why_abolish_software_patents
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
"First to file" doesn't eliminate the "novel, useful, unobvious" requirements on a patent. If an invention is already in the field and in use, first to file won't be the thing that locks it up. Instead, it will be the same thing that happens today when people get patents on obvious or preexisting "inventions".
First to file simply eliminates the fights over who invented things first. Of course, I'm of the opinion that if there is a "who invented it first" fight then the patent under question should immediately be invalidated or rejected, because near-enough simultaneous development by disparate parties means the invention is "obvious to those skilled in the art" QED.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
This will cripple innovation in America's Universities as researchers are forced to choose between publishing and patenting.
The Constitution authorizes the government to issue patents to reward the publication of inventions. Making information widely available to the public is the ONLY reason for the government to be involved at all with inventions. Government has no business rewarding invention itself.
The courts have been tightening the rules on venue for a while now. East Texas in particular is starting to lose cases. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3.
Not sure if having to file where you live or possibly where the corporate HQ is would help....
In cases with large corporations with offices all around the country there may be more important factors than the location of the corporate HQ. Consider a company based in Washington state with a research office and production facility in Florida. Sure, corporate HQ is in Washington, but all of the witnesses (e.g. the inventors) are in Florida. Important documents related to production costs and the like are in Florida. So in that case perhaps Florida makes more sense as the venue rather than forcing all of the witnesses to fly to Washington. Venue is complicated, and it can be hard to make the rules flexible enough without being so overinclusive that places like East Texas become available.
Depends on how a court interprets the phrase "public use". If the invention is used in secret by the inventor and his buddies sworn to secrecy, and the business cards incinerated to avoid disclosure, then it's probably not public use. If the invention is used reasonably openly in the company and being use to create products that are distributed outside of the company then I'd expect a judge to rule it as prior art. Of course that isn't guaranteed, which is possibly why the phrase could be better defined. The problem I think they try to avoid is that by defining things too tightly a law becomes more prone to loopholes or ageing. e.g. a law that specifically tackled the transmission of death threats via telex would probably not cover the same things done by fax.
-- Using the preview button since 2005