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USPTO Issues 8,000,000th Patent
toybuilder writes "It took nearly 80 years for the first 1 million patents to issue in the U.S. On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued its eight-millionth patent. This most recent 1 million patents took only about 5 years."
Or most technological advances will not improve life on this planet.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This most recent 1 million patents took only about 5 years.
So, that means there's more technology being invented which should boost the economy and get us closer to a World like in Star Trek? Right?
All those patents are useful and unique - right?
So essentially, US patent #8,000,000 is more or less a very, very early version of Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge's visor. We have a long way to go.
I would assume that patents are in some way related to the commercial value of technology. Otherwise there wouldn't be the money to do all this patenting.
Thus this report is a good thing.
What to do about it?
1. Monetize it. Increase fees of all sorts.
2. Use the income to improve the system. Better prior art searching for example. Better examiners.
Oddly, it was a patent for a method of issuing patents given to a small legal firm, who then filed a lawsuit against the Patent Office.
Runaway government is more difficult to stop than a runaway freight train. (Don't think for a second that the business of government isn't the primary beneficiary of current patent law. The system consistently rakes in more money to the business of government than it does to any one if their associates in the "private" sector.)
I think it would have been hilarious if patent #8,000,000, to be recorded in the annals of patent history for all time, was some ridiculous, bullshit software patent on something horrifically obvious and broad.
That's a lot of innovation!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
And 2 or 3 might be valid!
...to patent a process for filing patents!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
1. If I ever invent something original, I wont own it - because I can't afford to patent it.
2. If someone actually has some world shattering amazing break through which could change the world - but they are not wealthy, that secret will go to the grave with them.
Go innovation... yippie.
PS: I fit into both categories, and I'm taking the goods to the grave.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
This was patent #8,000,000, or the 8,000,000th numbered patent. before the 1830s, patents were issued but not given numbers. I choose to be pedantic, rather than think about the travesty that our patent law has become - I'll leave that to someone else just this once.
It's to make tires more puncture resistant. Akron Ohio, must be Goodyear or an ex Goodyear employee?
We may not like the patent system but this one at least isn't a frivolous one for excercising your cat with a fricken laser beam!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I have a USPTO patent in my pants!
Method for putting spoon in mouth...
Method to lift food off plate using 2 pieces of wood ... :)
the 8,000,0000 patent was only the 10,000 for hyperlinking.
My grandpa got several patents in the 1940's, back when a patent actually meant something other than a method and system for trolls to screw over real innovators :-P FU USPO
See Subject:
1. Make patent applications progressively expensive (with a reasonable cap), while keeping the first one affordable to independent inventors.
2. Do the same for fees keeping patents alive.
3. Use most of the extra income to allow each patent examiner more time per application.
4. Use some of the extra income to help independent inventors who can't afford paying a good IP lawyer $10,000+ per application.
BTW, the purpose of a patent is to allow the inventor a temporary monopoly in exchange for publicly disclosing ALL the steps needed for others to create and benefit from the invention.
In other words, patents provide incentive for people to share necessary details for others to reproduce their invention.
Lastly, people seem to freak out about "broad patents" when they read a patent's title. However, it is the CLAIMS that define the scope of the patent. Read the claims and laugh at the title. Most of the time, CLAIMS are too broad (so they can be invalidated due to prior art) or they are too narrow (easy to work around.) Usually, the claims are too narrow if the examiner is given sufficient time. The few that are too broad make the headlines but are not the norm.
On to the next 8,000,000 'innovations'....
"Eighth-million patent" -> "eight millionth patent"
Yeesh - true geeks would say the editor's off by a factor of 2^5.
Most patents are completely ridiculous these days. In addition to that patents only serve to hamper innovation.
It's completely ridiculous to own an idea; somebody else might have the same idea at the same time, introducing actual competition. It also helps in creating monopolies and serves to strangle the market.
Considering how often high profile patents wind up getting overturned or narrowed on reexamination I propose that the front line of examiners of first instance that are simply rubber stamping everything that comes across their desk are either overworked or incompetent or both.
The fact that many of them are getting overturned later, either in court or on reexam, is strong evidence if not outright proof that most of them never should have been issued in the first place.
The USPTO needs to stop issuing bullshit patents. It also needs to hire more examiners so that patent busting reexaminations at least keep up with the rubber stamp train.
Finally, we need a loser pays court system that punishes companies that try to win cases, or even settlements, simply by outbudgeting their foes in court. All a company needs to do is use its legal department to harvest lucrative settlements and put the proceeds to hiring more lawyers and they're rolling in the dough.
Unfortunately the establishment is happy keeping things the way they are.
Even if I got into office and tried to stop it, my reforms would piss off enough companies that their lobbyists would force my fellow congress critters to give my ass the happy boot, either through expulsion or by impeachment.
8,000,000 government issued patents is 8,000,000 more ways in which innovation in the economy is stifled. That's 8,000,000 ways to prevent people from attempting at bringing products to the market. That's 8,000,000 ways multiplied by each claim in each one of those patents, multiplied by the number of patent lawyers around to start lawsuits, which do nothing to improve anything in economy.
That's 8,000,000 ways in which government prevents wealth from being generated by the public sector. That's 8,000,000 ways to protect monopoly power. That's 8,000,000 ways to prevent choices in products from entering market and competing on merit. That's 8,000,000 ways in which other competing economies will have millions of competing products and wealth generated if they don't discard the notion of US patents, and since the USD power is diminishing every day, the other economies have fewer and fewer reasons to care about US patents.
That's 8,000,000 ways in which wealth is drawn from the private sector and is directed at government. That's probably just a small portion of all the patents that were ever looked at and evaluated and assessed.
That's 8,000,000 ways to corruption, as patents are granted without looking at the rules of the patent office itself, without prior art being considered and with ideas being patented that never should be patented even by the patent office rules.
That's 8,000,000 x X ways, that money was removed from private economy, where it can invested and was put into public sector, where it's squandered (where X is the ratio of patents filed to patents granted).
That's 8,000,000 - that's a fraction of the size of the government. The people in the patent office, if instead of working for government, they were working in the private sector, they could have been productive members of society.
8,000,000 ways to mod this comment we know how.
You can't handle the truth.
This kind of acceleration in government can be seen everywhere.
Compare the sizes of the law books* put out by your state's legislature this year against ten or a hundred years ago.
I recently had to do some deed research at the County Registrar's office. Documents are organized by "book" and "page" number, for example, a deed will be referred to as "Book 123, Page 456." It took something like two hundred years for New Hampshire to hit book 1000, another 50 or so to hit Book 2000, and only a couple decades to make it to Book 3000. They're currently in 3800 or so. These books used to be used to record just deeds and mortgages, but now there's every manner of trivial document in there.
* Not the statutes themselves, but the book of bills that passed in a given legislative session.
Liberty in your lifetime
The fact is, without patents we would have far fewer inventions and technology would advance at a much slower pace.
If software patents were issued in the 70's, we would have practically none of the mainstream computer tech we have today. Every single piece would be too legally encumbered.
There are other incentives for inventing things like being the first to market etc.
And implementations of software are already protected under copyright anyway.
If you take that away, why should I invest all that time and money?
You shouldn't. Leave getting rich to people like Bill Gates, or the other people and companies that made computer software up through the 90's (especially the 1998 State Street decision) before software became generally patentable. They seemed to do just fine without them.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Yeah, they might invent new theories (relativity, atomic energy etc) and then we would really be in the shit.
It's hard to believe we've let the curse of patents to continue to exist. Abolish them, please, and make the world a better place.
Gee, you would expect that with an entire country full of inventors, who are able to generate patents at such a rate that we've had a million patents in just the last ten years, that this country would be humming along brilliantly with a strong economy, and lots of people working on bringing those inventions to market.
But the sad state of affairs is that most of those million patents are for things which already exist with the words "on the internet" tagged onto the end.
"Method and Practice for Taking a Dump... On the Internet" Woo! A new invention! Quick, submit it to the patent office! Next step, sue Google!
I'm willing to gamble that most of these million patents were submitted by patent lawyers or patent trolls (same thing), who patent something obvious, and then sit and wait for Apple to implement something close, and then blammo, they pounce.
Patents are no longer about inventing or creating, patents are about lawsuits and greed. Like everything else in this country, it's about corruption and gaming the system, leading to less innovation, less creating and therefore, less economy.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
mostly
was my guess
A few million patents here, a few million patents there, and pretty soon it is a real patent portfolio!
I've developed a method for issuing patents using more than 7 digits in their patent number.
I'd better hurry up and patent it.
Why would this get tagged as greed? If you ask me, it's the /. readers that are greedy for thinking that inventors shouldn't get legal protection for their hard work.
In response to the "get rid of patents" posts: if you had your way we would still be living in the 19th century. Why should I spend a ton of time and invest potentially millions of dollars coming up with an invention? Because my hard work will pay off and I can make a profit. This profit motive is protected by the patent process. If you take that away, why should I invest all that time and money?
The fact is, without patents we would have far fewer inventions and technology would advance at a much slower pace.
Now lets talk about patent "trolls." Lets say I invent something, but don't want to actually deal with developing a commercial product. Thanks to patent "trolls," I can sell my patent to them! This allows me to still be rewarded for my hard work, without having to develop a business around my idea.
The problem is that having 90% of all patents be complete unoriginal BS leads naturally to impulses to throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of the whole system.
If we were only now talking about the millionth patent coming up some time in the next 25 years, I bet there'd be absolutely no one suggesting we get rid of patents.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Am I correct in estimating that approximately 60% of these have expired and are now in the public domain?
It took nearly 80 years for the first 1 million patents to issue in the U.S. This most recent 1 million patents took only about 5 years.
And the average population of the US from 1790 (when the first patent was issued) to 1870 was around 15 million. Now it's around 300 million.
So... For the USA's first 80 years, we had 1/16th the patent rate of today, but 1/20th the population.
Is this, then, a story about how patent rates are declining?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Nothing like doing our best to halt all innovation in the U.S.
Well, at least it wasn't a patent for a linked-list. Oh wait, that's number: 7028023.
Let's see a quick history of inventions over time, one million at a time:
Interesting to look at an evolution of what was patented at different times in history.
To do list for Windows
"This most recent 1 million patents took only about 5 years" means there are more than 500 patents granted every day per average. Each paten is binding law. It's physically impossible to read memorise and than license or avoid patented solution at this rate.
Is it legal to create law that's against the laws of physics? If so, how can you punish anyone for breaking such law if it's physically impossible to obey it?