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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.'"
I'm advocating a biological weapon that targets IP attorneys.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think after they patent Fail they shouldn't license it to anyone.
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.
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.
Argument 1: we need software patents, because otherwise the day after we publish our program, someone else will already have reverse engineered our super duper mega technique and use it in their own programs
Argument 2: you need software patents, because otherwise we will keep our super duper mega technique as a trade secret and nobody will ever be able to figure out how it works
Homework: find the cognitive dissonance.
I think after they patent Fail they shouldn't license it to anyone.
But they will get filthy rich off of infringement lawsuits.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
If you want to sift through tons of useless verbose crap to find the rare nugget.
Table-ized A.I.
If all the EFF did was raise awareness, they're worth every penny they get.
By the way, if you like the Internet, and would like to see it not become cable television, you really need to drop $10 or a double-sawbuck on them. They use every nickel they get to do good work, and I promise it will make you feel really good. Make a sandwich at home instead of going to Carl Jr a few times and it will more than cover it. And your digestive tract will thank you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately, with Apple practising predatory patent behaviour, it seems as though they were justified...
It's for the word "lawn" and against anyone who is on it.
Now, get out of my turf, will ya?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
...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.
And donating $99 gets you a really cool hat!
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
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