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EFF Launching 'Patent Fail' Campaign
netbuzz writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has long been at the forefront of fighting software patent abuse with its Patent Busting Project, is launching a new initiative called 'Patent Fail: In Defense of Innovation.' EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels tells Network World: 'The project has three components: educating individuals about the problems with the current patent system, providing individuals with resources to deal with patent issues, and then exploring what the system should be in the long-term.'"
It's a fine initiative.
Of course, it will be completely ignored by anyone that matters, but very fine nonetheless...
I'm advocating a biological weapon that targets IP attorneys.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's against the word "fail" and anyone who uses it.
I'd like to thank the countries which have hamstrung themselves by allowing software patents, for the mass publication of ideas which would otherwise be trade secrets.
I work in the 'innovation' space and wish this would come up at the classes, conventions, etc. So many in innovation rush out to patent every idea they have in hope of making a fortune on IP - without any 'real' work. If these people understood just how this activity stifles their own endeavors it would go at least some way toward turning things around.
With that said, another problem in the patent space is that it appears to offer a 'silver bullet' to companies looking to get a leg up on their competition. I've worked with a number of small software oriented start-ups and some think (probably rightly so) that superior IP rights are much more effective at overcoming the competition than a superior product. I'm not sure what to do in this space or in the space where mega-corps use patents very effectively to erect a barrier to entry.
I frequently hear ideas about using patents in ways that I feel do nothing but stifle innovation. I launch off on my little patent diatribe and many people note that they've never really thought of it that way. Given that so many people look at patents simply as a war-chest item, it would seem that education is a good start in getting them to see the harms in that attitude.
As usual with these efforts, no solution is offered except for some vague requirements for a solution. "it should, like, encourage innovation and stuff!"
According to the article, phase 1 is complaining, phase 2 is providing a "kit" for those sued by patent trolls (who really just need a lawyer), and phase 3 is solutions. Who wants to bet Phase 3 never sees the light of day?
Even if it does and they miraculously come up with something like a concrete plan, it'll just languish on the Internet, because they will never put together a plan to actually get legislators to pay attention to it.
where patents and copyrights are laughable exercises in greed and have no place in civilized society. They exist to make sure people have incentives to be creative and that people don't get rich off of other people's ideas. Are either of those goals really met in our current landscape? I think not. But then I guess I'm going against the status-quo just by 'thinking' to begin with.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
It's for the word "lawn" and against anyone who is on it.
Some of these patents and "points" are to most engineers with more than 3 years of experience to be able to solve and would be obvious to them. One problem is that the law now considers this engineer an "expert" (LOL) and thus, it qualifies as a patent.
Now, the patents that have been flying around are 15 years old or so. It's ridiculous. When was the last time you even USED a computer that was 15 years old? How many people actually use the first generation Pentium? Basically no one. Why do we keep patents around for so many generations of computers? 15 years is essentially 10 generations old in terms of computers. I know patents help to protect the little guy, but do you really need *20* years for your patent?
No, make it a few generations, total. Cut it down to just a simple 10 or perhaps down to 7 years. (By the 7th year, you'll know if you will be successful or not in your business based upon the patent.)
Slash the years and let innovation thrive again.
They say, about FOSS:
The implication is that if FOSS doesn't stop patents, something else will. I'm not sure what they think it will be. I've seen the claim that open-source publication of the actual implementation of a technique in source code doesn't constitute prior art for a patent; if that's the case, what is? Certainly not prior patents; the patent office issues patents for stuff that has already been patented all the time. Not publications in journals; they issue patents for that too.
...is a Mechanical Turk / crowdsourcing engine for distributedly nuking crap patents with prior art. Occasionally, specific bad tech patents reach notoriety on /. and elsewhere and the comment threads fill up with posts from geeks who have potentially credible examples of prior art. Some 80% of those don't really understand how to read a patent (not really their fault; they don't exactly teach this in school), but overall there's a good chance the discussion turned up something that would narrow the patent in question. However, that leaves many, many other bad patents lurking below the notoriety threshold.
How many here would sign up to a service where you could subscribe to feeds for your fields / areas of expertise (e.g. "video compression algorithms" or "input devices", etc.), see an individual top-level claim and filing date, and get paid to point out examples of prior art that you are aware of?
Prior Art databases exist, but with some issues. EFF's Patent Busting project is a good start, but there are relatively few patents to bust, and no one with the incentive (other than ideological) to finance a specific action. I bet a lot of companies would be willing to pay a more than fair bounty for information that nukes a specific problematic claim in a competitor's overbroad patent.
Wishlist features:
* A quickstart guide for laymen / "non-lawyer professionals" on how to parse patent claim constructions, how to determine if prior work exactly matches ("prior art"), or "teaches" (alone or in combination with some other pieces) or "renders obvious" a claim, even if not an exact match. It can't make participants into patent lawyers overnight, but many do not even know the basics, and those basics would improve the quality of prior art submitted.
* Advice/tools for determining effective priority date. There are plenty of things (provisionals, continuations, filings across various countries, etc.) that will bamboozle many casual patent-busters in deciding if a piece of art is "prior" or not.
* Random / Rainy day browse modes. Claim-a-day sent to your mobile?
(Before anyone thinks this would just create another tool that could be used for evil, remember that the patent office - presumably in any country - is not supposed to be granting patents for things that already exist in the first place... so correcting such a mistake is not really foul play.)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
They should let people submit patent numbers for them to investigate. If they turn out to be stupid patents they should work on getting them invalidated.
The current Patent System Stifles innovation in the worst ways possible.
The Patent system needs to be revamped with a more "Free Market Solution"... but not "Free Market" as the republicans define it.
If someone has a new idea, and wants to take out a patent for it, they should be given the patent, and allowed 5 years to produce, and release a product based on that idea. After that, the idea becomes Free Information, publicly available... by law.
No extensions upon that time, no loopholes, not even after the idea hits the market.
You have an idea, you Patent it, you rush to produce it, and get it to market before your idea becomes the property of everyone. That's it.
What will result is more innovation, less lawsuits, and more recognition for brands that produce Quality because the market will demand that a Brand name not only has good ideas, but implements those ideas in a way that makes things work better, and last longer than the competition.
Copyrights are an increasing problem. Patents expire after 20 years. OK, 20 years is a long time in technology, but they do expire. Copyright is the better part of a century and the line between concept and copy is disappearing. In many areas of science, private multinational corporations hold copyright on almost all of the literature. It is literally impossible for a physician to practice medicine or an engineer to work without copying material from copyright texts in the form of medical orders or design procedures.
Statesman
Is Intellectual Property Good or Bad? Lots of people on this thread seem to come down pretty hard on one side or another (mostly the latter). But I think when pressed most would agree that sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. For a good introduction on fleshing out the good and the bad of intellectual property, I highly recommend Fisher's "Theories of Intellectual Property," available for free online here: http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/tfisher/iptheory.html
It goes through the justifications for intellectual property and can help you think clearly about when it is bad. It can help you justify the feeling that most people have that a patent troll is "bad" but a lone inventor that patents his invention is "good." Even if you don't think the lone inventor should get the patent, I think the article can help you explain why.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
But here's the question I have never, not even once, seen a patent advocate address: where is the evidence that patents actually promote innovation (i.e., that they cause a net increase in inventions, discoveries, etc.)? Indeed, there are some compelling arguments being made against patents and other forms of intellectual property, like Boldrin and Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly, mentioned previously on Slashdot. Should we not demand that such a costly and disruptive regime as the patent system be supported by hard evidence that it actually does what it's intended to do?
You write:
"Communism removes ownership from property."
Doesn't abolishing copyright and patents remove ownership of the copyrighted or patented material? Hence, since there is no ownership of the copyrighted/patented material, anybody can use it.
"Society got along fine for thousands of years without information being property; items were property since nearly the dawn of civilization."
First, neither patents nor copyrights are "information." A patent is usually upon a product and sometimes a method. To be copyrighted, there must be a tangible embodiment. Second, the notion that "items were property since nearly the dawn of civilization" neglects the fact that many things were considered community property.
"No, because you can't remove what never existed in the first place."
Intellectual property exists in every modern nation in the world. How can you say that intellectual property never existed in the first place?
Abolishing intellectual property is taking property that belongs to one (e.g., a person, a corporation, etc.) and giving that property to everbody. How is that not communism in its purist form? Ownership becomes no ownership.
How can you say that intellectual property never existed in the first place?
What I said was that the ownership never existed, and thus can't be removed. Certainly "IP" exists as a legal concept, but that isn't the same as ownership. Even the law recognizes that there is a difference; for example, rights in actual property ("AP") don't automatically lapse after a predefined time. "IP" is an incentive system, nothing more. Abolishing it is no more "taking property" than abolishing any other kind of subsidy.
Abolishing intellectual property is taking property that belongs to one (e.g., a person, a corporation, etc.) and giving that property to everbody.
No, because (despite the name) "intellectual property" is not property at all. Property is a concept which applies only to scarce resources; initial use of the resource (homesteading) confers the right to continue use it in the same manner without interference from others, a right which can be transferred from person to person via contracts. Property rights are naturally exclusive only insofar as distinct uses are in conflict; anyone can benefit from the property provided their benefit does not interfere with the owner's use of it.
The concept of property rights exists entirely because the resource is scarce; either the resource can't be consumed at all, or someone must be in a position to decide when and how the resource will be consumed to the exclusion of any other conflicting use. Property rights specify who should make that decision; whether you agree with my views on that selection (homesteading & contracts) isn't really relevant. The point is that someone has to do it, because of scarcity.
"IP", on the other hand, has no scarcity, no natural conflict between uses. Creative labor is scarce, certainly, but that isn't "IP", and control over your own labor is already covered by self-ownership. The product of such labor is something which can be used by any number of individuals simultaneously without conflict. The concept of property rights exists to resolve conflict, but "IP" laws create conflict, not only by attempting to make "IP" scarce but also by interfering with the non-aggressive use of actual property.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat