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Obama To Sign 'America Invents Act of 2011' Today
ideonexus writes "President Obama will be signing the 'America Invents Act of 2011' into law today at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va. The bill will transition America from a 'first-to-invent" to a 'first-to-file" country, but critics argue that the bill fails to address the more important problem that 'nobody can tell what a patent covers until they've spent months or years working it out, often in the courts.'"
What kind of title is that? Doublespeak and marketing entering politics.
Oh, this is just the start of a whole raft of things wrong with US patent law.
Business method, anyone?
How about first to do both. You would have to have an invention before you can file. Otherwise, I'm patenting time travel.
Invents a better way to screw Americans.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
critics argue that the bill fails to address the more important problem that 'nobody can tell what a patent covers until they've spent months or years working it out, often in the courts.
So... other than that transition from some bullshit "I thought of that first" standard to an "I got it to the government first" standard, nothing important happened. Patents are worthless, requiring expensive litigation before they have any value. They're tools of extortion because of this litigation requirement.
Oh, and business method and software patents still exist. Thanks Obama, for proving our government is more toothless than ever. "America Invents" -- hah! I'd rather do my inventing somewhere else.
The old way: You have to have invented the product or process and reduced it to practice, you have to file a patent application, and you have to have invented before other inventors.
The new way: You have to have invented the product or process and reduced it to practice, you have to file a patent application, and you have to have filed before other inventors.
The purported advantage of the new way is that it's a lot easier to prove having filed first than to prove having reduced it to practice first.
The term "patent reform" clearly wasn't specific enough, in the same way that "body panel reform" to a clearly damaged car could mean whacking it with a crow bar in some random places. Hey, it's reformed, right?
We have to come up with an unmistakeable description. Patent lightening? Patent un-fucking? I dunno. Make some suggestions.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Uh-oh, you can't invent it. I already patented and locked it up. :D
ZING.
They at least made a "first to file" change instead of the "first to invent" garbage. I wonder if this means all that time you spent keeping detailed and dated lab books doesn't matter anymore.
Anyway... go Colonials!
-www.awkwardengineer.com
Again, I just posted on this in the previous story.
HONESTY IN NAMING. Give that bill's number, make them read it. Of-course this will do nothing for Obama's reelection, but this "America Invents Act" will do nothing for inventions in America.
There are 152 PAGES in that bill. (PDF warning)
152 pages. You'd think to have America "inventing" you wouldn't need that. What you'd need is to stop punishing people for investments with inflation, taxes, regulations and insane spending, like that on wars. How about ABOLISHING the patent system altogether and abolishing all patents and refunding those that are pending by the way? Having a freer society, so that people could ACTUALLY INVENT AND INNOVATE without FEAR of being SUED?
You think they'll stop wars in that bill? You think they'll stop inflation and encourage underconsumption, savings and investments?
Please. It's about dates of filing, it's about law suits. It's about more government protections given to large corporations. It's about lawyers.
The only 'innovation' that will be promoted by this bill will be lawyer innovation, innovative ways to file MORE LAWSUITS.
That's all this is going to do - more lawsuits and actually less innovation and fewer inventions, as always the exact opposite of what the bill is named.
You can't handle the truth.
... otherwise someone could easily steal your design, write up a patent for it, and beat you to the patent office. Now you're out of business unless you pay royalties to them because they beat you to the office first.
Makes me wonder what FOSS software hasn't been patented yet, seems like all you need to do now is file a patent and you can claim ownership over a project that you had nothing to do with.
I was listening to a TWiT tech podcast, don't remember which one or who said this, but... They asked for one thing in a software patent... working demonstration code.
Immediately, light bulbs were going off for me. Finally, that might solve some abandon-ware problems. Forces companies to actually make a practical use idea (rather than, "two taps does a different action than one tap" patent, and yes, that's a real patent). And, above all, satisfies what patents were originally intended for. Protecting innovation, but also, sharing that idea with others who can improve it... and a significant improvement on someone's patent is itself, patentable.
More than anything, this would also expose frivolous patents. You have to actually MAKE the product or at least a demo before you can patent it. And, code can be checked with an algorithm to see if it already exists. That would be a fabulous tool for dev shops who could check all sorts of software, and get an immediate response with a quick code search.
I8-D
This critic argues that the bill fails to address the most important problem in patent law: that it still exists!
Obama, Justice Roberts & the whole corporate government by bribery model has taken another step towards the collapse of America!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The defense against it is simple. Do your research and publish it ALL to the public. Release it and get it out there Creative commons licensing eliminates the possibility of your idea being patented and stolen from you.
Stop being selfish asshats. Invent and release it to the wild.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I can't find the original PDF that I had, but this blog has a copy of a letter that the CEO of OnLive wrote, condemning this legislation. He holds a number of patents that are used throughout the tech industry, and describes from a real life example (motion capture) how first-to-file would have ruined it.
http://onlivespot.blogspot.com/2011/09/onlive-founder-and-ceo-steve-perlman.html
You never know the full effect of legislation until it hits the courts. We'll see if this has any improvement. Personally I feel that new copyright law for software is needed and then limit patents to only physically producible items. No software patents, no business practice patents. If it can't be manufactured, you can't patent it. Patent infringement should be handled first by submitting documentation of a product that is actually being sold and your patent number to the patent office. If an examiner finds that the product matches your patent you may file with the court system. If not, you're out of luck.
Let us all not forget that patients are designed to stifle the inventor's competition and further innovations. This has been proven. An example was drafted by analyzing the evolution of the steam engine. In a short non-cited summary: the steam engine was invented, and then several years down the track there were individual inventions made to improve the engines various capability beyond the initial innovative patient, and eventually the patient game was underway.
The game involves holding onto further inventions (and innovation) until the patient runs out. This soaks up all possible monies and fees for others competitors while the customers in the end suffer the consequences.
I am all for protecting one's investment and creative rights against people who intentionally steal your idea without the permission of the owner, like a troll scouring the net. But, some of these "inventions" are so basic and rudimentary that I am often afraid that something that I have done would have already been "patented" by someone else. Fear eventually ensues after I imagine that they're going to sue me saying, "but we invented it first, so we win" regardless as to whether you came to the same conclusion and evolution as they once did. Not much can be done to satiate needs of the masses.
Back to the change at hand. This political change is nothing but political, and it is a meaningless change to inventors. It favors billion dollar corporations, because they're going to have the monies and the drive to fund and pay filing fees. This move was done to collect more money from patent applications, they even said that they have to hire more staff to reviewing upcoming wave of applications.
Eventually all of us will be calling hopelessness,
master.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/business/patent-bill-could-save-a-law-firm-millions.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y smoke and mirrors....
There are many wealthy American corporations that will benefit greatly from this.
The only ones harmed are the independent inventers and startups. Of course they should be harmed, because the primary role of government is to protect the market dominance of existing wealthy businesses against competition from startups.
I know...that isn't the ostensible role of government. But that nonsense is just to get the poor to approve of their own oppression.
I am more interested in what riders are going through as part of this act as opposed to the main act itself.
The somebody invents and corporations steal it act of 2011
How ironic is that, because if it is, it would undermine one of the greatest achievements that Americans like to attribute to their country. Will this act from Obama cause Americans to rewrite their history books about who invented the Airplane, since the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont filed first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santos-Dumont_14-bis ?
Before Americans start to bash me, I would suggest them read this article: http://www.airshowfan.com/first-airplane.htm
www.meneguzzi.eu/felipe
Invent some truly ground breaking energy process. Get patent. Ignore patent and let any and everyone free reign on said tech. Buck system and crash economy. We all end up better off as a society.
Win and Win here folks!
This critic argues that the bill fails to address the most important problem in patent law: that it still exists!
That is indeed unfortunate but until you can solve the even bigger problem of the free rider problem then a well designed patent regime remains better than no patent regime. Patents may slow invention but the free rider problem can halt invention entirely. There is no point in investing lots of money developing a technology that can be copied much more cheaply by someone who doesn't have to pay your R&D costs.
You can argue (and I will probably agree) that our current patent system is rather broken. That is not the same thing as making a credible argument that it should disappear.
Yes, having individuals file patents is bad. We will raise prices (already around several thousand dollars) to even higher levels ensuring only large corporations can claim patents and steal all invention.
Exhaustive patent searching in advance of application is the real solution to the problem of knowing whether an innovative idea has been reduced to practice and filed on by someone else. The new rules make searching easier, since no-one can know for sure if the invention existed before but had not been formally filed on. That said the patent examination process should not be burdened with performing the search for the inventor. It is the responsibility of the inventor to determine the existence of all prior art, and now with the new rules, the existence of all previously filed inventions. Obviously the inventor will occasionally miss something in their search that the examiner will catch, causing a bit more work for everyone. On the other hand, some inventors are so paranoid about being first to file, they will slap together an application and file it without giving due diligence to the search step. These new rules are going to exacerbate THAT problem. The real fix would seem to be giving inventors, large and small entities alike, the incentive to do a thorough search of prior art in advance of filing. yes IAAI, 20 issued so far
So if I develop something and release it as open source, any jerk with the money to pay for a patent filing can file a patent on my work and claim it as their own, because they were the first to file. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Isn't that legalized claim jumping?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I am not even going to get political here..
What really pisses me off.. is that they closed down 395 between Alexandria and DC.. fortunately for me I took lunch at 11, when they were setting up the road blocks. I just missed being stuck in about 10 miles of stopped traffic and people walking around outside of their cars on 395.. a massive road.. and one of the main thoroughfares into and out of DC..
You have a helicopter Mr President.. use the fucking thing and stop screwing up traffic that is already a mess in the first place...
I saw the traffic on the way back to work from lunch.. with miles of backup, it being a Friday where rush hour starts early, usually around lunchtime, todays commute home is going to be an absolute nightmare..
So Mr Pres.. thanks for fucking up the afternoon for about 500k drivers... (probably more)
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
First-to-file doesn't affect novelty at all. Published prior art that disqualifies an invention under first-to-invent also disqualifies an invention under first-to-file. Furthermore, I've read that the Act makes it easier to challenge a questionable patent, so you'll have an easier time of getting your open source project into the USPTO examiner's hands.
*Waves hand*
Oh, no it really is not the reform we were looking for. But thanks for screwing up the patent system further. This should have been named 'He with the most patent lawyers wins' act. I guess it could have also been called 'Create new lawyer jobs' act, because hey at leat some people have work right?
Deciding what a patent does is just another example of Kurt Godel's theorem
And, code can be checked with an algorithm to see if it already exists.
That would require solving the halting problem.
some real analysis on what this means. I get it, as an american im used to political bills having little to do with their meaning
but what does RMS think of this? Corey Doctorow? even the guys from Oracle and Microsoft might be neat to hear from as to
what this does and why/if it matters. Patents are weird, often times they suck, and frequently they're just surrogates for invention at all.
id also love to know who sponsored the bill
Good people go to bed earlier.
Justice Roberts? if your accusing him of being corrupt, you need to back this up. Far as I can see, this man has a lot of integrity. His opinions are always spot on and there is nothing in his past to suggest anything corrupt
:D
I agree with you on Obama. Everyone knows he is corrupt. Green Energy anyone
Why would you sue for violating your own patent?
If you do something innovative, the most you can hope for is to sell your company to a bigger player... you have next to no chance of actually becoming big yourself
Complete nonsense. It is pretty clear you aren't an entrepreneur. Yes it is hard to grow from a small company to a bigger one but it happens every single day. Large companies have advantages but new smaller companies push them out of the way all the time. There is only one company in the Dow Jones index that was there 100 years ago (GE) and in another 100 years the list will likely change completely again. If you've got something genuinely valuable it isn't especially difficult to get capital to grow the business regardless of size. Most patents are not actually very valuable and thus will not attract capital. Companies like IBM have huge patent portfolios but relatively few of those patents are actually worth much.
Innovation alone is not sufficient either. A better mousetrap without a well executed business surrounding it will accomplish nothing. Running a business effectively is very difficult. There are lots of "innovations" that did not succeed for reasons other than getting crushed by a larger competitor. In fact many companies manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory due to their incompetence at business.
Furthermore you talk about selling a small company or its assets to a bigger company like that is a bad thing. Lots of companies are started with that exact end in mind. The point is to make money - if you build a business that is valuable enough that someone wants to buy it then you have succeeded.
Invention happened BEFORE patents existed.
Very inefficiently in capital intensive industries. If you have a product that is manpower intensive, patents won't matter. Before patents most industry was in agriculture which (at the time) was not a capital intensive industry. If you have a capital intensive product (which describes most things we'd call technology these days) invention is very difficult because the incentive to invest is seriously impacted by the free rider problem. You simply aren't going to invest billions in research if someone else gets most of the benefit.
Economic incentives exist without patents.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You will note that countries without strong patent laws and a justice system to go with it tend to be quite unable to develop capital intensive industries. India has a drug industry but for the longest time you could only patent a process, not a product. As a result India developed very few novel drugs and instead only could produce copies of existing drugs. The lack of effective patent protection killed any financial incentive to invest in R&D for that industry.
Inventors just keep things much more secret than before to hold on to it longer; which is probably more effective than any patent China just ignores after reading the publicly published details-- not even that hard, they make it already so they just take of your brand name and sell another one from the same factory.
Which depresses profit margins, slows invention and makes people unwilling to invest. I've been to China. I've had things manufactured there. Companies are VERY hesitant to take any sensitive intellectual property there because of the free rider problem. It is very hard to make the case to invest large amounts of capital if anyone can just copy your invention freely at a fraction of the cost.
Does this mean a future where industrial espionage becomes the norm, where companies can steal and get patents on other companies property at least up to the point where the crime cannot be proved? Doing this across borders to gain US patents on foreign competitors products could prove lucrative if your Govt. is not keen on allowing foreign parties to investigate to far in your country.
How government defines the problem:
A backlog of 700,000 patent applications.
How government responds:
Add more resources; people, money. While incentivizing more patent applications with FTF, which will require more resources.
How government should have solved it:
Eliminate 90% of patent applications by limiting patents to actual, tangible innovations.
How exactly:
Apply for patents online. Stage 1: Inventor enters summary of invention and selects category. A panel of 5 experts in category, vote on whether summary is new, novel, not frivolous, not overly broad, not an abstract idea like software or business methods, and finally based on their expertise in the field, has no known prior art or current use in the marketplace. Stage 2: If majority of panel approves, allow inventor to submit details, and 2 examiners perform a comprehensive analysis on whether invention is worthy of awarding a patent.
Here, let me reduce to practice the meaning of this change in today's world.
Several people or groups are all working in a field and certain ideas are in the air, as is typical of science and industry.
The organization that has the most patent-oriented mindset with the largest, most experienced, and highest paid team of patent lawyers gets the papers drawn up and filed first.
If you think that sounds a lot like certain large and well-known software and hardware companies, you've just figured out who benefits from this change.
If I am not mistaken this means we can no longer challenge bad patents with "Prior Art" as has been done up to now. Julian
I go out of my way to complicate the simple things, so that I can simplify the complicated things.
So, you don't remember "Citizens United"? Thomas, Scalia & Roberts have taken this august body down a path nobody could have predicted!
Even Obama called Roberts out on this!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The old way:
I've been using this clever unpublished process for years before your silly process patent, go away.
The new way:
Oops, I lost my ability to use this clever unpublished process I invented first, because I don't retain an army of patent lawyers filing every process in my business, and I wasn't first-to-file.
In other words, the Patent office will be doing even more brisk business processing bogus patent applications for professional patent trolls. Keep up the good work, Bammy!
just like you would start to tune me out if I called you a racist. See how that works?
BTW: Racist.
The hippies of the 60's didn't get much right, but one they did was "change the system from within."
Included in this bill is a big o' wad of cash so the patent office can hire more patent examiners. These are the people that really make the decisions of what's truly innovative and what's bogus. So... you critics of the system should watch the USPTO's website because they'll soon be hiring a whole lot of new examiners. Get a job there and you can (surreptitiously) reform the system yourselves by simply rejecting bogus patents. No legislation, lobbying, or protesting could make a bigger difference than a diligent and conscientious examiner. Keep your agenda to yourself but once you're in you'll be in the best possible position to change the system from within.
---Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
The problem with that may be in the definition of "published". If someone posts in a USENET newsgroup about a great piece of software that they invented, is that considered "published" and therefore enought to prevent someone else from patenting it?
If patent law does not define publication, a judge must look elsewhere in the U.S. Code. For example, a judge might look at how publication is defined for works of authorship, namely distribution of copies of a work to the public, and consider an invention "published" if its description in a published work teaches one with ordinary skill in the art to replicate the invention.
First-to-file doesn't affect patent vs. prior art, but it does affect patent vs. patent. Consider a patent application filed while an interfering patent application (one covering a nearly identical invention) is pending. Under first-to-invent, the second to file could drag out discovery by claiming he was the first to invent the product or process. Under first-to-file, instead of priority being based on a fact-intensive inquisition into exactly when each inventor finished reducing the invention to practice, it's based on when the patent application was received.
Does this make it even more lucrative to take or start a company to/in some other country? Which country is best to invent in now? Especially, which country is best to have a software company in?
They imagined it, they were fully aware of the possibility and propensity for rulers to abuse their powers and collude against the best interests of the governed, and they tried to put two crucial things in place to prevent it: Checks and balances, and limitations of powers.
Once we demanded that politicians have the authority to fix things, we also gave them the power to rig things. There's no way around that. If your ability to remain employed depends on the generosity of donors, and the generosity of donors depends on how beneficial you are to them, the system you erect will naturally pull towards oligarchy.
Pi Ran Out
Someone posted this in a prior slashdot article about this change. Seems like this severely hurts small startups.
http://www.rearden.com/public/110301-Steve_Perlman_S.23_Letter_to_Senator_Feinstein.pdf
"It typically costs us $20,000-$30,000 to obtain a commercial-grade patent. As you can imagine, in a First-
to-File country, as a startup, we could only file patents on a small fraction of the inventions at the time
of conception."
...did we invent?
This is depressing. Slashdot really has gone to the dogs. The 'Business Insider' article isn't even a critic of the change to first-to-file, as the summary tries brazenly to infer, it actually says that the patent system is so broken that this change isn't going to make any difference. The whole link is a complete distraction and irrelevance.
The whole of the world outside of the USA uses first-to-file. It works fine. Nobody else is stupid enough to allow software or business patents. That's your problem. Suits us fine though, America's loss is often Europe's gain.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Do your research and publish it ALL to the public. Release it and wait (up to a year) for someone else to develop it to marketability. Then file the patent.
Be a selfish asshat.
First to file sounds like a gold mine.
"Yes Mr. Ballmer, we are busy examining Linux starting with version 1.0 and patenting everything we can find!"
Oh wait, weren't they doing that already? Hmm...
The old way: You have to have invented the product or process and reduced it to practice, you have to file a patent application, and you have to have invented before other inventors.
The new way: You have to have invented the product or process and reduced it to practice, you have to file a patent application, and you have to have filed before other inventors.
Bullshit;
Sony patents technique of beaming info into brain
Posted 4/6/2005 3:02 PM
[...]
The U.S. patent, granted to Sony researcher Thomas Dawson[1], describes a technique
for aiming ultrasonic pulses at specific areas of the brain to induce "sensory
experiences" such as smells, sounds and images.
[...]
A Sony Electronics spokeswoman told the magazine that no experiments had been
conducted, and that the patent "was based on an inspiration that this may someday
be the direction that technology will take us".
[...]
1. Method and system for generating sensory data onto the human neural cortex
United States Patent 6,536,440
The real difference is that now the poor bastard who actually invents an implementable mind
beaming device will actually owe Sony Electronics every cent the invention makes.
If you publish the invention before they file, others are ineligible for a patent on the same invention. See my other comment about novelty.
I hate to say it, but the USA is considered a) a has-been power, where the intelligence and manufacturing was shipped off-shore.
b) It is too expensive to send all students to college or university for about 50% of the population.
c) American business is the true power, not the USA government, and they control the puppets in government
d) Government elected get their funding from big business. Ergo, they represent big-business and not the everyday citizen.
e) Aside from Democracy, which is perverted in the USA, (Serve the party, not the citizens), America is considered corrupt and on the verge of bankruptcy.
f) Medicare -- let the citizens without money die. We are not a charity organization for our citizens who were born here, who served in military. If you have money, you get medical help beyond the band-aid.
Two points:
1) *Stimuls* rarely worked
2) patents are fundamentally incompatible in a Libertarian society.
Cool.
Using Creative Commons not only to block other patent filers (under new act), but it lets ONLY you to file for patent anyway.
One of the few helpful measures that I see contained in this legislation is a provision requiring a showing of "competitive injury" in order to obtain standing in a false marking suit. This should prove effective in reducing (if not eliminating) the new scourge of false marking patent trolls. And, doubtless, those at the USPTO are looking forward to a probable increase in fees. But, from what I can tell, the rest of this bill is mostly a wash.