Congress Asks Patent Office To Consider Secret Patents

Fluffeh writes "The USPTO is considering a rather interesting request straight from lobbyists via congress: that certain 'Economically Significant' patents should be kept secret during the process (PDF Warning) of being evaluated and granted. While this does occur at the moment on a very select few patents 'due to national security' for things like nuclear energy and the like — this would allow it to go much, much further. 'By statute, patent applications are published no earlier than 18 months after the filing date, but it takes an average of about three years for a patent application to be processed. This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.'"

Comments

Blatant corruption as usual

[David Gerard]

... nothing to see here. The success of the corruption program has reached far enough they can pull blatant shit like this and it's hard to stop them.

So what are the likely consequences of this terrible, terrible idea?

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[ankhank]

.A patent for Feudalism(TM) has been issued to [not disclosed]

To preserve economic security (not yours, the patent owner's)
your social status will of necessity be adjusted accordingly.

Your new position is at the the top of the heap.
The heap is downwind of the feedlot.

Boots, shovels and pitchforks will be issued.
Gas masks may be purchased at the company store.
Credit against your and your children's future earnings is, of course, available.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Opportunist]

Capitalism called, citing prior art.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Pinky's Brain]

Obviously feudalism came first ... that said, capitalism is just feudalism with a more even distribution of ownership of productive assets.

Only exponential growth and socialism can keep capitalism from devolving back into feudalism ... and exponential growth has hit the wall of peak fucking everything.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Marx feudalism is a) a distinct and b) less progressive stage of human development compared to capitalism. And yeah, also historically it certainly came before capitalism. So one should call it neofeudalism at least; but actually most western countries have a system of corporatism which is something different.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Poorcku]

Now I know how politicians are elected. With sweeping statements like that one.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[sl4shd0rk]

So what are the likely consequences of this terrible, terrible idea?

The 1% will not only control congress and copyright, but also the patent system.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[VolciMaster]

Though I'm not intimately familiar with the business workings of Ancient Babylon (and other civilizations), the vast majority had private enterprise (ie capitalism) in place long before the feudal system

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Capitalism came first. What mechanism do you think allowed those feudal lords to accrue the power and wealth to get to their positions?

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

U$A

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Sez Zero]

Secrets lead to corruption.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[RabidReindeer]

The very word "patent" means public. If you want to keep something secret, that's what Trade Secrets are all about. Granting a Letter Patent was supposed to mean that the art in question was published in a public venue where all and sundry could see it and benefit thereby. And a monopoly on its implementation for a set period of time so that the patent grantee would not lose out on making the idea public.

What they want is a system of secret monopolies. No thanks. We have enough problems with patents these days as it is.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[s73v3r]

The cool part about Capitalism, is the elaborate parade that makes the people actually THINK they are a part of the system by allowing them to vote.

Vote? Capitalism has nothing to do with Free Elections. You can have Socialism with Free Elections, hell, you can have Communism with Free Elections too.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[shutdown -p now]

Though I'm not intimately familiar with the business workings of Ancient Babylon (and other civilizations), the vast majority had private enterprise (ie capitalism) in place long before the feudal system

Capitalism and feudalism indicate the dominant mode of private property, not the existence or absence of private enterprise per se. Did Ancient Babylon have freely transferable private property on the means of production (e.g. land)?

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Nyder]

Capitalism called, citing prior art.

History called, has a patent on people not learning from the past, will see you in court.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[DigMarx]

small-c communism is only possible with completely free and open elections and an informed, participatory electorate.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[interkin3tic]

So what are the likely consequences of this terrible, terrible idea?

It won't stop chinese knockoffs, espionage, and piracy. It will be used against legitimate startups who aren't part of the big boys' club. "You started a software company in your garage? Well, you should have invested in lawyers to find out if you were violating any patents. Which were secret. See you in court, you brought this on yourself. You can settle by giving us everything including your garage."

The ultimate goal being some licensing scheme where you can't design a new product or invent something unless you are working for a company approved by some regulatory department staffed by apple, MS, facebook, and sony investors.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[busyqth]

So in other words, it's impossible.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously asking?

The US patent system is abused daily to make absolutely retarded shit patented. Who determines what patent is innovative/important enough to remain secret? Having it remain secret also means a bogus patent can reach full fledged patent status before professionals in the field can refute it with prior art and other such things.

Besides, any patent that can be easily worked around within a couple of years isn't anywhere near as innovative or important enough to warrant secrecy.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[Opportunist]

So is a real democracy (that's also why it hasn't been tried again for a few centuries after city states went out of fashion), what's your point?

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[DigMarx]

You and busyqth are both glass-half-empty sort of folks, aren't ya? Fair enough. My intended emphasis was on the requirement of electoral progress for politico-economic progress, in contrast to the Marxist-Leninist (big-c Communist) requirement of political violence. Violence it is then.

Re:Blatant corruption as usual

[toddestan]

I have a call from some patent troll on line 2 for you. Something about a joke.

Trade secrets

[bradley13]

If you want to keep you sooper-seekrit advantage, it's called a "trade secret" and you don't patent it.

If your technology is so non-useful that someone can easily design around it and capture the market in 18 months, it is either useless, or so trivial that it shouldn't be patented in the first place.

Sound like the patent trolls are funding lobbiests.

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is cheaper to design around a patent than it is to license it, the license cost is too high. This is very common for patent that are worth next to nothing. Being awarded a patent is no guarenty that it is worth more than zero.
Interestingly, the "design around" is worth _exactly_ as much as the license cost of the original patent, and your competitor can patent and market this work-around.

Re:Trade secrets

[wbr1]

Mod parent up...
That is what trade secrets are for. To use food examples, coke has never patented it's formula.. all the copies and generics are just guesses. The same is true of General Mills. I remember watching a documentary a year or two ago, where no one was allowed in the area where they design new breakfast cereals. Simply for the fact that they are very closely held trade secrets, and to patent them would allow others to derive similar but different recipes much more easily.
If you need the protection a patent affords then it should also be something non-obvious. Unlike rounded corners or a slightly different bluetooth headset. Unfortunately, the patent offices is flooded with and routinely grants patents to obvious applications as will. Things that should have never even been submitted.
The real suggestion should be to throw out the entire USPTO and most of the paper it holds and start from scratch. Perhaps with a GIT or CVS style patent system where all similar patents are grouped and pieces owned by their contributors.

Re:Trade secrets

[cvtan]

You mean "lobbeasts".

Re:Trade secrets

[Half-pint HAL]

If you want to keep you sooper-seekrit advantage, it's called a "trade secret" and you don't patent it.

If your technology is so non-useful that someone can easily design around it and capture the market in 18 months, it is either useless, or so trivial that it shouldn't be patented in the first place.

The problem is that a new invention (patentable) is often tied to a business idea (not patentable). Disclosing the invention means implicitly disclosing at least part of the idea. The inventor is forked: either his business idea is revealed to the market before time, and can therefore be copied approximately before launch; or he keeps it secret but foregoes all legal protection and the thing can be copied almost exactly after launch.

Re:Trade secrets

[mwvdlee]

Yet these are exactly the kind of thing patents were invented for.
Patents are meant to publically disclose specific solution in exchange for a short period of exclusivity.
Ideas should not be patentable.
Problems should not be patentable.
Implementations of a solution should not be patentable (copyright applies in this case).
Any protection stretching beyond the period of commercial viability of the solution should not be allowed (IMHO, it should be less).

Patents were not meant to reward the act of inventing. They were meant to compensate for act of sharing.

Re:Trade secrets

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I remember in the good o' days when companies rushed their products to market and marked certain parts of it "patent pending". Now days venture capitalists are using these patents as collateral betting that the inventor's lack of business experience will allow the portfolio to fall into the VC's hands. Afterwards the VC will be free to profit from selling or licensing the patent to others. It seems this new "requirement' to maintain secrecy for "competitive reasons" is really a ploy to give venture capitalist more time to market the patent to others.

You'd think the patent itself would be protection enough and that this need for secrecy goes against the reasoning behind patents to begin with...

Re:Trade secrets

[Moryath]

Hate to spoil a few things for you but:

- Colonel's original recipe:chicken grease salt.
- Coca Cola recipe: right here, most likely genuine.

Now as to the USPTO, the problem is that they are no longer paid to DENY patents. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, republicans in key positions began playing games with the system, setting up metrics for the patent examiners that judged their performance not by the number of processed patents, but by the number of APPROVED patents. Examine several patents a week, deny most of them, and your "job performance" was not as good as the moron who just rubber-stamped stuff a few cubicles down.

To top that, corporations came up with the idea of "patent slamming." The idea was to overload the patent system; every time the tiniest change to a system was made, it was filed as a new patent by the giant companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, GM, GE, etc. Particularly nauseating about it have been certain software houses, where it seems every new line of code ends up farted out by some shyster in the legal department as a new patent application.

The result has been that for about the last 30 years, the USPTO has been pointless. Not to say that meaningful patents are denied, but so many meaningless patents are granted that any patent in the past 30 years is suspect.

Patents like making a rectangle. Or turning a playing card sideways, a patent so fucking stupidly absurd it should have been laughed out of the office and shipped back to the fucking morons at WOTC/Hasborg along with a copy of Hoyle's Rules for Card Games as century-old prior art.

Re:Trade secrets

[Bill_the_Engineer]

It seems slashdot has posted my reply to a different thread.... nice.

Re:Trade secrets

[Joce640k]

... except that the "rounded corners" weren't patented. Rather, the entire and specific aesthetic design of a tablet computer was patented, in a very narrow design patent.

If this is your justification for "throwing out the entire USPTO," you're going to need to work a lot harder to convince anyone.

Um, no.

Here's the actual design that Apple is basing its case on: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61944044/Community-Design-000181607-0001

Nothing about that is new, novel, or "specific".

If they were worried about the little hidden magnetic strips for attaching covers or stuff like that you might have a point. They aren't, they're arguing about the rounded corners.

Re:Trade secrets

[iPaul]

I can't mod you up more, but totally agree. The enlightenment beliefs underly to the US constitution believed that sharing scientific and industrial information would allow for greater progress.

Re:Trade secrets

[gstoddart]

Sound like the patent trolls are funding lobbiests.

The problem, of course, is that it seems to be working. With the lobbyists in turn funding Congress.

Congress is basically rubber stamping things from their 'real' constituents and letting them write drafts of laws that they never read.

American government is now basically a paid arm of corporations to help further stack the deck in their favor.

Which, of course, the American government then tries to export to the rest of the world via things like ACTA -- it won't be long before the US is demanding the rest of the world honors these secret patents so people can be sued for violating patents they're not allowed to know about.

Re:Trade secrets

[Sarten-X]

Implementations of a solution should not be patentable (copyright applies in this case).

Yes they should, and no, it doesn't.

A patent covers the mechanism of an implementation: Lever A pushes toggle B changing path C...

Copyright covers the details: Lever A (which is built of steel truss and painted royal blue, whose fulcrum is an axle mounted between two oak panels) pushes toggle B (built of brushed aluminum, and attached to a platform holding so a little statue of a German holding a full beer stein, raised to chin level as in a toast) changing path C (which is a semicircular track made from copper mesh, which carries blue marbles made of recycled glass, at a 5% incline)...

Or, to put it another absurd way, copyright covers Star Wars. A patent would cover the monomyth. You can write a different story using the same design by changing the characters and circumstances, but the underlying design is still the same.

Copyright and patents have entirely different intents. Neither one solves the other's problem.

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's still a design patent, not a utility patent. They're different things with different requirements, so trying to apply the standards of utility patents is pointless and wrong.

Also, the EU version of the design that you linked isn't actually any kind of patent at all, in name or otherwise. It's a registered design (or in EU terms, a "community design"): it covers non-functional design in a more general way than a trademark. The US happens to call it a "design patent", but it's still got more in common with a trademark than a utility patent.

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither solves any problem really... we're living so deeply entrenched in a broken system that we have no idea what daylight even looks like anymore.

Re:Trade secrets

[Theaetetus]

Patents like making a rectangle. Or turning a playing card sideways, a patent so fucking stupidly absurd it should have been laughed out of the office and shipped back to the fucking morons at WOTC/Hasborg along with a copy of Hoyle's Rules for Card Games as century-old prior art.

Your first link just goes to an article, not a patent. The second link goes to the original M:tG patent, which has many more limitations than just "turning a playing card sideways." Specifically:

1. A method of playing games involving two or more players, the method being suitable for games having rules for game play that include instructions on drawing, playing, and discarding game components, and a reservoir of multiple copies of a plurality of game components, the method comprising the steps of:

each player constructing their own library of a predetermined number of game components by examining and selecting game components from the reservoir of game components;

each player obtaining an initial hand of a predetermined number of game components by shuffling the library of game components and drawing at random game components from the player's library of game components; and

each player executing turns in sequence with other players by drawing, playing, and discarding game components in accordance with the rules until the game ends, said step of executing a turn comprises:

(a) making one or more game components from the player's hand of game components available for play by taking the one or more game components from the player's hand and placing the one or more game components on a playing surface; and

(b) bringing into play one or more of the available game components by:

(i) selecting one or more game components; and

(ii) designating the one or more game components being brought into play by rotating the one or more game components from an original orientation to a second orientation.

And, contrary to what you think, the Patent Office cannot simply laugh an application "out of the office". Patents are legal documents, and the Patent Office is an administrative entity, subject to the Constitutional requirements of due process. A judge can't simply convict someone of murder based on a gut feeling without evidence, and similarly, the Patent Office cannot simply deny a patent application based on a gut feeling without evidence. They have to find one or more pieces of prior art that, alone or in combination, teach or suggest each and every element of the claims. If they can't, then they can't deny a patent, any more than a judge can lock someone up without any evidence.

Now, being an avid card player, I've read Hoyle... I don't remember seeing anything in there about bringing cards into play from the player's hand by rotating them. Do you?

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a fucking moron. Because prior art is FUCKING EVERYWHERE.

each player constructing their own library of a predetermined number of game components by examining and selecting game components from the reservoir of game components;

Stratego.

each player obtaining an initial hand of a predetermined number of game components by shuffling the library of game components and drawing at random game components from the player's library of game components; and

Poker. Go Fish.

each player executing turns in sequence with other players by drawing, playing, and discarding game components in accordance with the rules until the game ends, said step of executing a turn comprises:

Go Fish. Or Steve Jackson's Car Wars. Or Robo Rally.

In other words, you're a fucking moron. Go step in front of a bus and die before you breed and infect the next generation.

Re:Trade secrets

[Theaetetus]

Um, no.

Here's the actual design that Apple is basing its case on: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61944044/Community-Design-000181607-0001

Nothing about that is new, novel, or "specific".

Actually, that's quite specific. In order to infringe that design, you have to copy each and every element of the design. Corners have to be the same, the bezel has to be the same, lack of logo, etc., etc. You've clearly followed the Samsung-Apple fight, so you probably know that Apple listed dozens of potential design changes that Samsung could make and not infringe. Additionally, there are dozens of competitor's models by HP and others that don't infringe. That seems pretty highly specific.

And as for new and novel, I hadn't seen anything that looked exactly like that before the iPad came out. Do you know of any? Mind you, it has to look exactly like that, which is why the Kubrick 2001 tablets don't qualify, with their legal-pad aspect ratio, 10 channel buttons, and angled control panel.

Re:Trade secrets

[mwvdlee]

Agreed. My intent of the word "implementation" would be more akin to the specific type of bricks and mortar rather than the method by which they are stacked to create a wall. We need a definition which states where an implementation ends and the description of the implementation (the mechanism) ends.

Re:Trade secrets

[Nidi62]

Hate to spoil a few things for you but:

- Coca Cola recipe: right here, most likely genuine.

Except as that snopes article says, that was the original recipe. The recipe was modified in the first 40 years of coke's existence (as, again, the article says). The current recipe probably has a significantly different flavor than the original recipe, certainly enough to tell the difference. So yes, Coke's current recipe certainly still falls under that of "trade secret".

Re:Trade secrets

[Sarten-X]

I doubt there's any definitions that will suffice.

To build a wall 100 feet high, you must use Chit's Bricks, stacked as so, and connected with Chit's Mortar. Now is that because Chit's Bricks and Mortar are made stronger, so they'll support a wall 100 feet high, or is it because they're shiny, so it'll look good? One's a patent issue, the other's copyright (or design patent, but that overlap really only exists for trivial cases)

The practical distinction is that a patent for covers only the vital components of a mechanism. Design a different mechanism that doesn't use all those vital components means you're invented a novel solution to the problem (which is really the first solution to a problem like "build a 100-foot-high wall without using Chit's Bricks"). Without knowing ahead of time all components that can be worked around or all future technology that will be invented, no component can be declared absolutely vital or not, so a perfect minimal patent is impossible.

Now we're getting into mathematical theories, so I'm going to need some more coffee...

Re:Trade secrets

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Or trivial in hindsight.

What? Just because it's inconvenient to your argument, doesn't mean it can't be the case.

Re:Trade secrets

[slippyblade]

...that Apple listed dozens of potential design changes that Samsung could make and not infringe.

You mean the things they listed like "non-rectangular screen"?
Or maybe the bit about "exagerated bezel width"

The stuff they listed was nonsensical and ridiculous. They basically said that Samsung could have made a tablet as long as it looked nothing like a tablet.

Re:Trade secrets

[Theaetetus]

...that Apple listed dozens of potential design changes that Samsung could make and not infringe.

You mean the things they listed like "non-rectangular screen"?
Or maybe the bit about "exagerated bezel width"

Yep, that's the one. Changing any of those things would mean that the design would not infringe their patent.

The stuff they listed was nonsensical and ridiculous. They basically said that Samsung could have made a tablet as long as it looked nothing like a tablet.

Actually, they basically said that Samsung could have made a tablet as long as it didn't look like an iPad. HP had no problem doing that. ASUS had no problem doing that. Archos had no problem doing that. Motorola had no problem doing that. Toshiba had no problem doing that.

... unless, of course, you're saying that their offerings don't look anything like tablets?

Re:Trade secrets

[ljw1004]

That's not right. Copyright doesn't apply to "details" of an invention. It applies to original creative/artistic/literary WORKS expressed in some medium (usually written and artistic).

Re:Trade secrets

[rmstar]

The problem is that a new invention (patentable) is often tied to a business idea (not patentable). Disclosing the invention means implicitly disclosing at least part of the idea. The inventor is forked: either his business idea is revealed to the market before time, and can therefore be copied approximately before launch; or he keeps it secret but foregoes all legal protection and the thing can be copied almost exactly after launch.

And then there is me, wondering why the hell I should care about mister "inventor". And, more importantly, why this "inventor" deserves to be granted harassing rights at the expense of everybody else in order to solve this particular problem of him.

Re:Trade secrets

[s73v3r]

Coca Cola recipe: right here [snopes.com], most likely genuine.

Possibly, but we can't really verify that because Coke isn't talking.

Re:Trade secrets

[green1]

or maybe samsung was just the low hanging fruit, sue them first, sue the others later if you win?

Re:Trade secrets

[thetoadwarrior]

Yeah but we want the best of both worlds. Having something no one knows about and then being able to sue others out of existence for copying the thing they didn't know about.

Re:Trade secrets

[Theaetetus]

or maybe samsung was just the low hanging fruit, sue them first, sue the others later if you win?

Unlikely... Apple was primarily concerned about losing market share and diluting the distinctiveness of the iPad, which is why they were more concerned about getting injunctions. That doesn't really apply to the other devices. Basically, no one is going to confuse a Motorola Xoom with an iPad, but they may well confuse a Galaxy with an iPad (and in fact, Samsung's lawyers couldn't tell them apart at a glance). Since a large portion of Apple's success in the marketplace is built on prestige and distinctiveness - see, e.g. the white headphones of the iPhone, the distinctive look of the Macbook Air and the old TiBooks, the crazy design of the sunflower iMac, etc. - they really want to keep anyone else from making designs that look similar.

Compare it to a luxury car dealer, like Bugati... A lot of their value is in their exclusivity. They would jump immediately to sue anyone who made a Bugati look-alike, but there's little point in them suing, say, Ford.

Re:Trade secrets

[Half-pint HAL]

And then there is me, wondering why the hell I should care about mister "inventor". And, more importantly, why this "inventor" deserves to be granted harassing rights at the expense of everybody else in order to solve this particular problem of him.

It's a valid question. But everyone's answer changes very dramatically when they come up with a new idea....

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

Lobby
Lobbier
Lobbiest

I don't want to be a Lobbiest.. I just want to be a Lobbier.

Re:Trade secrets

[rmstar]

It's a valid question. But everyone's answer changes very dramatically when they come up with a new idea....

What a mindset you have. Nothing but egoism rules your world.

Re:Trade secrets

[green1]

I love how you use a car analogy, and yet when exactly the same thing happens in the car world, nobody gets sued!
Think the Chrysler 300, widely known to be a Bently knockoff, and people sell kits to make them even more so, and yet no lawsuit. Similarly most of the recent Hyundais try to look like Mercedes.
Of course if Apple were in the auto market they'd sue anyone who used 4 round tires. (they'd have a separate lawsuit going against anyone using a steering wheel)

Re:Trade secrets

[Half-pint HAL]

I'm not supplying a right answer. I'm not supplying any answer at all. I'm just pointing out that there are multiple points of view. Understand the other person's point of view and you can start a debate. Stand up and deny the other person any validity and you get nowhere.

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

The current recipe probably has a significantly different flavor than the original recipe, certainly enough to tell the difference.

More so in the USA, dating to when they switched to using high fructose corn syrup. It tastes significantly different from Coca Cola in Canada or other countries where they used sugar refined from other sources (usually sugar beets or sugar cane). I can't stand US Coke and know of a few expatriates who brink back flats when they visit Canada.

Re:Trade secrets

[Theaetetus]

I love how you use a car analogy, and yet when exactly the same thing happens in the car world, nobody gets sued!
Think the Chrysler 300, widely known to be a Bently knockoff, and people sell kits to make them even more so, and yet no lawsuit. Similarly most of the recent Hyundais try to look like Mercedes.

Lawsuit.

The whole of the evidence in this case preponderates in favor of finding that Roberts chose for his automobiles the exterior shapes and features of the Daytona Spyder and Testarossa with the intent of deriving benefit from the reputation of Ferrari.

Note that, although that case is trade dress related, design patents and trade dress protections are highly similar, and the distinctions are irrelevant to this discussion.

Re:Trade secrets

[Meeni]

Coke taste changes with regions, time, and price of commodities, as the formula is far from invariant, especially when it comes to juicing one more dime a gallon by replacing something expensive with something cheap (or local to the target market, hence cheap).

Re:Trade secrets

[Meeni]

If you have the occasion, go taste European coke. Corn is not as heavily subsidized there, but beet is. As a consequence, european Coke is made with real sugar, not HFCS. It taste significantly different, less sweet, lighter on the tongue, and more citrussy.

Re:Trade secrets

[Nidi62]

I have tried it. Preferred it to Sprite, which is what I normally drink in the States.

Re:Trade secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspect ratio cant matter; because the samsung pad had a different aspect ratio.

As long as they don't specify the aspect ratio in the design patent, Samsung are still infringing right?

Design Patents that aren't basically a photo of the product are a fucking joke.

Re:Trade secrets

[green1]

Actually it IS relevant as there is a huge difference between trademark and patent protection. If the iPad/galaxy tablet bit were about trademark then Samsung could simply have changed the bezel colour or something else that visually differentiates. Apple doesn't want that, they want Samsung to quit making a tablet that people want to use.

Re:Trade secrets

[Theaetetus]

Actually it IS relevant as there is a huge difference between trademark and patent protection.

Respectfully, you may be confused between utility patents, which are very different, and design patents, which are very similar to trade dress. And design patents were the issue here.

If the iPad/galaxy tablet bit were about trademark then Samsung could simply have changed the bezel colour or something else that visually differentiates. Apple doesn't want that, they want Samsung to quit making a tablet that people want to use.

Nope, as noted above, if Samsung changed any of the visual features to visually differentiate, they wouldn't infringe the design patent anymore. And in fact, in their brief, Apple mentioned a number of ways Samsung could have been different - including changing the bezel color!

No, the differences between design patents and trade dress primarily have to do with statutory damages provisions, term length, cost of applications, requirements of absolute novelty vs. just distinctiveness, and commercial use. The test for infringement, however, is almost identical.

"National security"

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how they can just throw that out there to excuse anything they do. Sorry we murdered that innocent US citizen, but it was a matter of national security!

Re:"National security"

[hackula]

Are you commenting on this article? I think you must be lost.

Sickening!

[busyqth]

All this beating around the bush just makes me sick.

We just need to start declaring war on any country which hosts terrorist corporations, by which I mean specifically foreign corporations that seek to undermine the American way of life by doing "end runs" around American inventors and by "seizing marketshare" from the rightful American owners of said market share.

Re:Sickening!

[Dr_Barnowl]

All corporations are foreign now - multinationals have no allegiance to you or your nation, regardless of the origins, or the country that their CEO comes from.

How about not making a silly workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

...and fixing the apparent actual problem instead? The USPTO should make the process faster and/or the US should become more innovative in general, if they don't want to be overtaken by "non-US" competitors.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[busyqth]

I always have fun time going out with friends and my girlfriend and we do so pretty much every night. USA is a country of artificial limits and non-social people.

Look, you are not going to get any sympathy around here if you keep going on about nonsense like a "girlfriend" and a "fun time".
We are not going to let you trick us into weirdo "socializing". We prefer to live our lives within reasonable, although perhaps somewhat artificial, self-imposed restraints.

Trying to slow

[Anonymous Coward]

down progress to the speed of money.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[betterunixthanunix]

How else are we expected to subjugate other countries? What, did you expect us to have people make our toys domestically, where there are laws forbidding child labor, where there is a minimum wage, where workers cannot be locked in their factories? Now that is just crazy talk. Of course we need copyrights and patents -- we need to be able to trade our ideas for the physical labor of other nations.

Just Say No

[shawnhcorey]

An excellent example of why patents should be eliminated. The main problem with patents is that they are relatively easy to get but very, very hard to get rid of. This means they will expand and encroach into very corner of business. Look at the illegal patents we have so far: software patents and genome patents. It's time to get rid of them completely.

Re:Just Say No

[Lorien_the_first_one]

The only way that is going to happen is through jury nullification of patent law. http://fija.org/

Re:Just Say No

[Sarten-X]

...which is like using a wrench to nail a door closed so it won't squeak when someone opens it. It's the wrong tool to do a job that's the wrong solution to a relatively minor problem.

Re:Just Say No

[Lorien_the_first_one]

I can understand your sentiments, but what tool would you suggest?

Re:Just Say No

[Sarten-X]

A bit of oil, applied repeatedly and worked into the hinge over many cycles of opening and closing the door. You might also need a plane to trim down the frame to compensate for warping and a screwdriver to remount the hinge.

Also letters, protests, and lobbyists. They aren't as self-gratifying as jury nullification, but they're more effective in the long run.

Re:Just Say No

[CanHasDIY]

Letters get you a generic, auto-generated response (i.e., ignored).

Protests get you maced and arrested for "resisting arrest."

Lobbyists belong to the wealthy and powerful, not we proles.

Not that I agree with the other suggestion, merely pointing out reality.

Re:Just Say No

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Jury nullification would drive the point home without any violence and do so in a way that is completely legitimate. In fact, it would be hard to overcome without pulling the iron fist from within the velvet glove. It is, after all, intended as the last resort if the legislative and executive branches won't listen to the will of the people.

Re:Just Say No

[CanHasDIY]

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with either of you, I'm merely pointing out the issues reality causes for the suggestions.

Speaking of which, in order for jury nullification to occur, wouldn't one first have to get the issue before a (n honest) judge? Or am I way off base on your premise?

Re:Just Say No

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Yes, getting the issue before a judge would have to come first.

Re:Just Say No

[Sarten-X]

Letters get counted, and you are represented by your portion of the constituency. One person gets one small part of the representative's decision.

Well-organized protests don't get people arrested, don't break laws, and don't make news outside the jurisdiction concerned. They also certainly don't involve trespassing and erecting tents and structures on private property, but that's another large rant I don't have time for today...

Lobbyists belong to anybody who can convince (by plea or payment) them to use their connections. There's an activist group for every cause, and that group usually has lobbyists.

One more for your list: jury nullification doesn't establish precedent.

Re:Just Say No

[harlows_monkeys]

Patent infringement cases are civil cases, not criminal cases.

Re:Just Say No

[Lorien_the_first_one]

That's true, they are. But if you noticed in Oracle v Google, there's a jury sitting for both copyright and patent infringement.

Playing into the hands of the patent trolls

[loren]

Sounds like they're playing right into the hands of the patent trolls... The whole point seems to be to hope someone accidentally infringes so they can go after them later. I thought the goal of the patent system was to foster innovation. How does this do anything but impede it?

Re:Playing into the hands of the patent trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do you think the "lobbyists" in this case are?!

Re:Playing into the hands of the patent trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, one could make a deal: The patents may be kept secret until granted, but then everything done during that period of secrecy which would otherwise violate the patent is instead automatically considered prior art and thus invalidates the patent.

Re:Playing into the hands of the patent trolls

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Venture capitalists who wants the patents to remain secret as long as possible so they may have a chance to market the patent after their initial investment defaults.

How can they decide?

[jenningsthecat]

Totally aside from the gob-smacking, appalling stupidity of this proposal, if they did implement this cosmically bad idea, how in hell would they determine which patents are 'economically significant'? And if some patents are secret from the outset, what's to prevent the government from falsely claiming to a new patent applicant "Sorry, that one's already in the pipeline", and then backdating an application and stealing some poor schmuck's idea?

If there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that we now have 'government by the corporate sector, for the corporate sector, and individual citizens' rights be damned', this ought to dispel them.

Re:How can they decide?

[xtal]

There's no deciding. There's just some new paperwork on my desk, as I describe to the legal staff what the far-reaching economic impacts of whatever it is I'm patenting.

In short, just about every patent will fit under this new proposed scheme.

If you don't want to benefit from patent protection, it's called a trade secret.

Any 'Economically Significant' Patent

[Wdi]

will be filed simultaneously (*) in Europe, Japan, and increasingly in BRIC countries to protect world-wide market potential.

So what is to be gained if the US text is kept secret, but the essentially identical application is in the open in three dozen other countries?

(*) especially after the recent changes in the US patent system to use the same principles as the rest of the world

Re:Any 'Economically Significant' Patent

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up!!!!!

Re:Any 'Economically Significant' Patent

[uvajed_ekil]

So what is to be gained if the US text is kept secret, but the essentially identical application is in the open in three dozen other countries?

The gain for the patent holder is magnified if competitors waste their time developing technologies that they will later be unable to use once the secret patents pop up. Prior art is no longer a cut and dried topic, and patents become even more significant. And this while patent trolls and the biggest corporations are already speculatively amassing ridiculous numbers of patents that they really have no intention of putting into production. In time this will only further stifle innovation in the USA, where it is clearly already hard enough.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[apk1]

where there are laws forbidding child labor

Just to take out this part out of the comment, what is wrong with "child labor"? I'm not talking about forcing kids to work in unsafe conditions or things they are not capable to do, but for example around here many family-owned businesses have their kids to do some work too. For example cleaning, or other simple things. It's good thing to teach your children about working, responsibility and how to take care of things, even at young age. This way those kids don't become lazy and losers later. Maybe this is one of the reasons USA is falling - the people have been taught to be lazy.

Trap

[glorybe]

If secret patents are in the works how are others with similar product ideas protected? To not be able to discover that a patent or art work exists for an invention and then be forced to pay for violating the patent seems like an outrage to me.

Re:Trap

[djmurdoch]

It's not an outrage, it's a business model. The submarine patent industry needs to increase its profits.

Re:Trap

[jeti]

We only need to combine this with another initiative to make patent infringement a crime. Then finally people will realize the value of patents and the US will become a leader in innovation again.

Re:Trap

[uvajed_ekil]

If secret patents are in the works how are others with similar product ideas protected?

How? They aren't. They waste their time and resources working on technologies for which someone else will be granted a patent, without being able to know that they are driving at full speed down a dead-end street. This feeds the patent trolls, and discourages innovators by raising the stakes. Great idea, just what the US needs!

Re:Trap

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse than that.. You cannot review the patent to mark it as prior art or something. The patent would be granted before anyone can stop it. I predict a lot of prior art and non-sense patents granted, and as a result they are very hard or impossible to revoke.

I think a very grim situation is starting to rise. Prepare for a very destructive situation ahead.

At the other hand - if this is only happening in America it will speed up the decline of innovation in that country. America would becoming totally insignificant as innovator to the rest of the world at a greater speed than everyone could anticipate only a few months ago.

Dean Wormer to head up USPTO

[pbrooks100]

I will only submit after the creation of a "double-secret patent application" becomes available. Darn, I just gave away my patent idea...

Interesting framing of the argument

[bazmail]

They make it seem like its helping the US vs the rest of the world. Much like the loftily titled "The Patriot Act!!!", how could that possibly be bad?
FTA: "In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market"


In reality it will be used to stifle commentary of the sheer ridiculousness of the current patent system.

Re:Interesting framing of the argument

[CanHasDIY]

Not to mention, how is an inventor supposed to "raise financing and secure a market" when the details of their invention are secret?

Inventor: "You really should invest in my design, it's the next big thing!"
Guy With Money: "Cool, what is it?"
Inventor: "Sorry, can't tell you that, might compromise my ability to raise financing... "
GwM: "Yea, looks like it just did." *walks away*

Wrong Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is not 'Secret Patents'.

It's to fully staff the US Patent Office with sufficient qualified researches that granting patents does not have an average three-year schedule.

'Secret Patents' are one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. You thought the NPE problem was bad -before-?

Re:Wrong Solution

[Spy Handler]

I agree that secret patents are a stupid idea. However,

fully staff the US Patent Office with sufficient qualified researches that granting patents does not have an average three-year schedule

This is also the wrong solution. We could do without yet even more federal employees.

The correct solution is to not allow stupid shit like software patents and one-click business model patents in the first place. Then BAM, watch the number of patent applications plummet.

AFAIK, all of the software patent insanity stemmed from *one* activist judge in the early 80's who interpreted existing patent laws to encompass software. Again AFAIK, patent laws do not (yet) explicitly state whether computer software is patentable or not... it was a court ruling that said it is.

Re:Wrong Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for that, Software Patents and Business Method patents tend to be....asinine. Especially since a lot of the examiners aren't particularly qualified in dealing with it.

But, y'know, can you leave the "Federal Employee = Needless Waste" angle? It really makes me cringe. There are individual sects, agencies, and teams in the government that are wasteful, and we REALLY need a top-down cleaning out of the deadwood. My sister has been working as a prison shrink, and sees coworkers who are counting down to retirment but haven't done a damn thing in 14 years.

Meanwhile, their computers and IT teams are horribly underfunded and frankly don't have what they need to do their jobs. They use a lot of paper records because they can't rely on electronic records, eating up more time and money.

So just because we have too many defense contractors and mid-level bureaucrats (We sure as hell do), doesn't mean we can't use more patent examiners. Two totally different schticks. Lumping them together as 'federal employees' just doesn't work.

Re:Wrong Solution

[hackula]

How about remove all the staff. Never feed the trolls.

Re:Wrong Solution

[caseih]

Without a full staff of patent examiners, how is the patent office to know whether a patent filed is a stupid software patent or not? Bad patents were being filed before the court ruling. Having an overworked and understaffed patent office isn't helping in this regard. So whether we allow software patents or not, we do in fact need more federal employees in the patent office who are well qualified.

Patent office is the problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

My claims:
1. The problem is the patent office takes 18 months to evaluate a patent,
2. It takes that long because the patent office is swamped with spam patent requests from non-inventors.
3. It's swamped with spam patent requests because it made patents so easy to get that every patent troll files patents on existing inventions.
4. Thus real inventors are outnumbered by the spam competitors, who often clone their ideas knowing the patent office gives patents for everything.

The fix therefore:
1. Reject more patents for obviousness
2. Reject patents if the inventor doesn't actually make the thing they claim to have invented, because if they haven't physically made it, they haven't physically solved the real world problems with their invention. Anyone can draw a flying car, but an inventor is the one who actually MAKES the car fly.
3. Reapplication requires repeat fees, you want to waste the patent office time with an obvious idea, then pay and pay again.
4. That will dissuade the trolls for swamping the patent office with spam patents for inventions they haven't made. Reducing the delay.
5. Thus the patent will be approved before the publish date and the inventor will have had the chance to obtain financing to go into production.

Whereas:
1. Hiding patents makes it impossible for others to show prior art at an early stage.
2. It makes the submarining problem worse. Where a troll files a vague patent, then watches as technology is developed, and tweaks the wording to be more like the devices the real inventors are inventing.
3. It encourages trolls to set traps around genuinely inventive companies. e.g. flying car used for school trips, flying car with shopping trolly attached etc. etc.

Re:Patent office is the problem here

[O('_')O_Bush]

As to fix 1, clearly you've never read or seen a patent before. There is nothing obvious in the legalese and obscure terminology used to describe potential inventions. It isnt as easy as waving your hands at a document to determine originality. Besides that, there is the Columbus egg problem.

A typical patent, where i work costs somewhere around twenty thousand dollars to file when legal fees are taken into account. Pennies for ACME Corp, but a lot for average Joe patent troll.

Re:Patent office is the problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

Better idea...

Patents by companies cost alot.

Patents by individuals are cheap and are non-transferable.

To register a patent you pay double price.

If it is awarded, you receive the "extra" that you paid. If is rejected you receive niet, nicles, nada, rien, nothing!

So the incentive would be to reject patents, not to award them.

Allow for resubmission with the offending parts adapted acording to the rejection recomendations for free.

Simple.

Then take names

[Anonymous Coward]

Who exactly is asking for it ? not some "lobby" but an individual, get a name and then call them out on their bullshit

Landmines?

[Robert Zenz]

So, basically those are Patent-Landmines, easily usable for Trolls? Slogan: "They'll not know what him 'em!"

All about "parity"

[TimTucker]

- Bring US patent law in line with other countries
- Emphasize just how much easier we're making it for inventors in other countries to file in the US
- Add a little more to US patent law
- Put pressure on other countries to follow our lead
- Wake up and all the world has adopted our model

Re:All about "parity"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bring US patent law in line with other countries" -- which countries exactly?

Congress for sale

[Anonymous Coward]

The lobbyists could instead have asked for a competent USPTO, or at least a reasonably quick one. Instead they ask to formalise submarining. Tells you how honest these people are.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

LOBIEST are pushing this?
"certain 'Economically Significant' patents "?

Everything about this indicates that it has nothing to do with some poor guy who invented something in his garage, and has to do with what big corporations want.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up on a farm in the uk in the 80's, we were climbing in grain silos to shovel them flat whilst filling from the age of 7 or 8 - also climbing in the combine to help grease it daily and even from the age of 10 or 11 driving tractors around the farm tracks ferrying grain from field to dryer.

For small holdings - child labour is a matter of economic neccessity

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[dark12222000]

You should look into what the common definition of "Child Labor" is. You clearly don't know it.

Patents are useless?

[sureshot007]

Doesn't this just go to illustrate that patents are now useless?

Rip off

[X10]

The patent office just wants to make more money. Currently, I don't apply for a patent if I can see that someone else has applied recently. When they keep the applications secret, dozens of people will apply for patents that in the end, are replaced by the one who was first. It's kind of a rip off.

We should abandon the idea of patents altoghether.

Re:Rip off

[zippthorne]

If you apply for a patent for something that already has a "secret" patent pending, your patent should not be simply rejected, either they both ought to be (as the solution must be at least somewhat obvious as multiple people came to it), or you should get a stub patent that protects you from having to license the "original" patent that you never had the opportunity to see.

Neither of these things will probably happen, though....

Re:Rip off

[X10]

If you apply for a patent for something that already has a "secret" patent pending, your patent should not be simply rejected, either they both ought to be (as the solution must be at least somewhat obvious as multiple people came to it), or you should get a stub patent that protects you from having to license the "original" patent that you never had the opportunity to see.

They can't give you a stub patent, because then you know that someone else applied before you, and the original application is not secret any more. In order for the first application to be secret, all following applications should be treated as if they're new. Also, if the original application gets rejected after two years, your application may still be accepted. If you're tenth in line, will they make you wait 20 years? Or will they do the work on all ten applications, knowing that only one will be granted? And what do they tell you, after they kept you waiting - and paying - for two years, like "sorry, we knew that someone else was first, but we kept you waiting anyway"?

The whole thing is just stupid.

Catch 22

[roman_mir]

-Sir, you are being accused of violating a patent.
-What patent?
-We cannot tell you that, catch 22.
-But don't you have to tell me what I am violating?
-No, it's the law.

Re:Catch 22

[vandon]

-Sir, you are being accused of violating a patent.
-What patent?
-We cannot tell you that, catch 22.
-But don't you have to tell me what I am violating?
-No, it's the law.

I know this post was just /s, but you realize, there are already secret laws in place from Homeland security that we can be arrested, charged with, and found guilty all in secret without anything being disclosed to you or a jury.
So, I wouldn't say it's far fetched to have this happen sometime soon.

Re:Catch 22

[Creepy]

I still don't see what the point is. At my company we have patents and we have trade secrets. If someone figures out our trade secret on their own and patents it and sues us, we claim and prove prior art (trade secrets are written up just like patents but filed with corporate lawyers instead - I don't know what they do with them, but I suspect they are dated and notarized). Sure you don't get 20 years of protection with a trade secret, but sometimes that is more valuable than a patent since other people that try to do the same thing may do it in a bad way like one of our competitors did copying one of our features (the one I'm referring to works, it just performs poorly compared to ours, and how we get that performance is a trade secret).

Re:Catch 22

[Zordak]

This summary and the article it's based on are both dismal failures. They are rabid, uninformed rantings of anti-patent morons.

The only thing you have to do to have a patent not get published until it issues is file a non-publication request, and not file in foreign countries. I do it for my clients all the time. And it's not quite what you're saying above. Until the patent issues, you can't sue somebody on it. The best you can do is inform them that they might possibly infringe your patent if and when it issues in the future. This is a regular practice, and depending on a lot of factors, may or may not accomplish something. Either way, you can't sue and your damages don't run until the day your patent issues.

But if you publish your application, you actually have a legally stronger threat, because you may get provisional rights that will date back to your publication if your patent issues substantially unchanged from when it published. That means you can send your published application to somebody and tell them, "I think this patent will issue substantially unchanged. If it does, I will be seeking a reasonable royalty starting from the day I informed you of this publication." You still can't sue until the patent issues, but you might get some money for the period between when it was published and when it issues.

That is not what the attached request is about. There are certain applications that are prevented from being published or issued until the government decrees that they no longer have to be classified. This is generally not a good thing for an inventor. It means there is very limited opportunity to exploit his invention. It means that his patent can sit in limbo for years. This request relates to whether similar "protection" should be extended to some patents that are "economically important."

It may or may not be a good idea. But it is not the doom and gloom scenario that the stupid article makes it sound like. This is the equivalent to some rube on the street hearing that Linus Torvalds is a famous "hacker" and demanding that Linus be jailed immediately for his heinous crimes.

Re:Catch 22

[HiThere]

And while that is clearly unconstitutional, that is dealt with by making it impossible to challenge in court, so you can't appeal.

Not that with our current supreme court that would offer much hope. But you can't even try.

Re:Catch 22

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC for those laws to apply to a citizen, you would have to be captured abroad fighting against our troops and thus get labelled as an enemy combatant.

Re:Catch 22

[rtb61]

Here's the difference. Patent application, 'Hey you idiots at the USPTO here's prior art' cost to submitter near zero. Secret patent, patent approved, now prove it's prior art in court, cost to submitter 100 thousand dollars in court fees.

Lets' not forget straight from the release, "allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies". So you spend millions of dollars designing and implementing the same technology only 1 month after the secret patent being filed, only to find your investment is shit and your company can be be bankrupted by a secret patent or abandon the investment or pay extortion.

Straight up US political corruption, basically legalised lying, cheating and stealing.

Re:Catch 22

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not criminal to violate a patent. It's a civil issue. The owner of the patent would sue violator. Perhaps the court case would be behind closed doors or something if it was really serious, but by the time the court case came around (after mediation, trying to settle, etc.) the patent would likely be published anyways.

Re:Catch 22

[cundare]

This summary and the article it's based on are both dismal failures. They are rabid, uninformed rantings of anti-patent morons.

The only thing you have to do to have a patent not get published until it issues is file a non-publication request

You just saved me a posting, Zordak. It should have been obvious that nobody here was talking about "keeping patents secret." The proposal was instead to provide a new ground for applicants to circumvent pre-1990s-era pre-issuance publication requirement. Even under the most willfully ignorant reading of the proposal, there's no suggestion that issued "patents be kept secret."

That's not to say that I don't have my own problems with the proposal. I don't like the idea of using economic value as a justification for deferential treatment (if that's an accurate way to characterize non-publication). OTOH, I do understand that economic considerations crop up in other areas of the patent system, such as when awarding special priority to apps that are facing imminent infringement. Here, though, economic value might be too vague a parameter to be fair. It's all in the implementation.

The other potential issue I see is that the pre-issuance publication requirement was closely tied to changes in patent term (which now begins from filing date, not date of issuance). Arbitrarily decoupling the two IMO throws the policies that underlie them out of sync and makes it easier to do so again in the future

As for your opening remark about the Slashdot poster and source article being "dismal failures," jeez, that's harsh, guy. "Anti-patent morons"?? Whew! Not nice. The sad thing, though, is that those comments are pretty accurate. Not only did the article (yes, I read it) have an extraordinarily high density of misinformation and truly ignorant conclusive statements, but far too many of the reader comments that followed it were, um, yes, moronic.

You know, enabling technologies can be great. But when it comes to IP law, Slashdot seems to follow the Rush Limbo rule: "If you have the education or experience to discuss an issue intelligently, you can't be trusted because you're part of the system. Only those who have no idea what they're talking about can be trusted." To paraphrase Garry Trudeau, anybody who gets their news about intellectual property from Slashdot is deep merde indeed.

One posting from an obvious practitioner like Zordak helps make up for a dozen self-important pieces of gibberish from the "the patent system is broke, dude!" Peanut Gallery. (You know who you are.)

Re:Catch 22

[psxndc]

Thank you, thank you, 1000 times thank you.

Right on all accounts.

IAAL.

Must stress this again

[roman_mir]

Must stress this again and again, just like in all those previous cases there will be people opposing to the idea that all patents and copyrights must be abolished and government must be explicitly prohibited from issuing them and from dealing with them.

Well, that, and government must be prohibited from meddling with business, money, economy, it must be prohibited from collecting income taxes, starting illegal wars.

But thats not a patent.

[Anonymous Coward]

A patent is a 'limited monopoly right' in exchange for the filing of the patent details with the patent office to which to the public has access inorder to encourage the exchange of ideas.

Take away the access to the filed patent and for what is the 'limited monopoly right' given.

Yes, with one addition, if someone else sends in..

[Fallen Kell]

I would be all for this as long as if someone else sends in a patent application for the same/similar invention both are then considered "obvious for those practicing the art", and thus, unpatentable.

As much as id like to ash the patent office....

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

This is a valid point. For example, let say I, myself not being affiliated with any mulit-billion dollar company come up with a great idea and file a patent. In the time it would take me to find investors , create prototypes, test prototypes, create alpha , beta and a final release of the product, some one with massive amounts of cash on hand can hire an army of people to do all this is a quick turnaround time and send it to market. Or even release a very crappy version of my idea an thus giving the public a bad example of the technology and not wanting to try something new.

Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

... nothing to see here. Period.

Likely consequences are absolutely nothing, in the grand scheme of information freedom. Patent protection remains the same, but there's less risk in patenting technologies that are likely to be copied outright by other companies.

Currently, if you file a major patent for a Widget that will change the world, it'll take three years for that patent to be approved. During those three years, a smart businessman will be gathering funding to produce Widgets (or license them off to someone who can) to recoup the research investment. In 18 months, an evil company will likely see the patent application, and start preparing legal battles to screw with the inventor while producing their own FooBarBaz. If the inventor is financially weaker than the aggressor, there's a good chance FooBarBaz will be able to enter production faster and penetrate the market better, defeating the whole point of the patent process in the first place.

By allowing patents to be secret until they're protected, the inventor doesn't need to rush into license and production negotiations, because the cloning company can't sprint past them. When they do start negotiations, the inventor has a bit more leverage, because their technology is patented, rather than just pending.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[h4rr4r]

By allowing secret patents people could be infringing and have no way of knowing. A applies for a patent, B produces the item not knowing of A's pending patent has good sales for two years and then is sued into the ground.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Baloroth]

Then the legal process around enforcing the patent itself should be reformed, not the patenting process. In the example you just gave, the inventor could (or should be able to) sue the maker of FooBarBaz and be awarded not only the money from the sales of the device, but also block all further sales. That means the evil company loses all the money from making and selling the device, plus being unable to sell it anymore. That is the point of the patent process. If the inventor can't do that under the current legal climate, then it is the legal system, not the patent system, that is broken.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[ATMAvatar]

And inevitably: A applies for patent without secret protection, B notices the item after 18 months when the patent is revealed, slips some money under the table and declares that they now have a secret patent that was applied 3 years prior.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Then company B walks into a courtroom, says "the patent was secret. We had no way of knowing the patented technology. Unless A can prove espionage, the patent should be re-examined and thrown out as being obvious, since our researchers were clearly able to produce the same technology from simply the current state of the art."

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[zalas]

I'm pretty sure this already happens without secret patents. For example, companies will tell software engineers to never read anything about patents so that if they do infringe, it won't be wilful.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Then company B walks into a courtroom, says "the patent was secret. We had no way of knowing the patented technology. Unless A can prove espionage, the patent should be re-examined and thrown out as being obvious, since our researchers were clearly able to produce the same technology from simply the current state of the art."

Ah, we fixed that with First to File.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

By allowing patents to be secret until they're protected, the inventor doesn't need to rush into license and production negotiations, because the cloning company can't sprint past them. When they do start negotiations, the inventor has a bit more leverage, because their technology is patented, rather than just pending.

As far as I am concerned, that is a bad thing. I want cloning companies to sprint past "inventors", so that they can keep single players from holding back progress. If sprinting past them is even possible, then the "inventor" has no business getting a patent. Period.

What you want is further empowerment of trolls. This is downright evil, and I have no choice but assuming that you work for a patent troll or are one yourself.

Further, I reject the notion that making things more convenient for "inventors" is a good thing. As it stands, it is possible to corner huge markets with pretty minor contributions by just being shrewd in ways that have nothing to do with the technology itself. This type of privilege is something that has to be taken away sooner rather than later, not made more convenient for the budding patent troll.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

I'm in favor of both.

Currently, suing against FooBarBaz is only feasible if the Widget inventor has enough money to start the legal process. Of course, this isn't restricted to just patent lawsuits, so the entire legal climate will need to change to reduce the starting cost of a suit, which also means better means to expedite frivolous lawsuits, etc...

As a stopgap measure until we revamp the entire American legal system, this helps.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[tnk1]

The patents aren't secret here, the approval process for one is. Yes, there may be a company that somehow goes from zero to patentable process in the 3 years of the secret process and when they go to patent it, it gets denied due to a secret patent application.

On the other hand, there could be a requirement that the simple fact that the process has been discovered is public, but the details are secret. That way no one knows to bother with investing in it.

There is a real concern that companies in places like China, where patents are blatantly ignored, jump ahead of the actual people who put the investments into research and development by simply learning the details of the process and copying it for minimal investment.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Dishevel]

Kill the Lawyers.
They only take from society.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

I want cloning companies to sprint past "inventors", so that they can keep single players from holding back progress.

So you're saying you don't want patents at all. Okay. "Survival of the most-connected" is a valid theory, though I personally don't think it's best for most people.

If sprinting past them is even possible, then the "inventor" has no business getting a patent.

"I've spent 5 years inventing this Widget, but I'm not a shrewd businessman who's well-connected to suppliers and fabricators. I guess I shouldn't be inventing."

What you want is further empowerment of trolls. This is downright evil, and I have no choice but assuming that you work for a patent troll or are one yourself.

I want empowerment of people who invest their time and money inventing things. I'm one myself, and so's my uncle, my father, great-grandfather, and more of my inlaws than I can recall. Not one of our patents have ever been trollish, or done anything but contribute to their field (though the portable chiropractic table is debatable). You must be right though... since I disagree with you, I'm clearly a paid shill working for a patent troll. Funny how it looks like the IT department of a financial service company...

As it stands, it is possible to corner huge markets with pretty minor contributions by just being shrewd in ways that have nothing to do with the technology itself

Congratulations, you've discovered marketing. Welcome to the last millennium.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, good, you actually read the summary rather than just the first sentence, let alone the actual article.

Blatant ignorance is right. I've noticed a growing trend on Slashdot of commenters not even reading past the first sentence of the summary. I know it's a bit much to expect them to actually read the article, but they could at least try to finish the summary before showing their ignorance to the world...

Allowing the patent to remain confidential until it's approved may actually be very good in the long run.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Not seeing a problem here.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does this to promote the advance of sciences and progress is something that i would like to find somewhere.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Lumpy]

"Survival of the most-connected" is a valid theory, though I personally don't think it's best for most people.

it's the one we are currently running on, contrary to the fairy tales told to you in school.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Contrary to the horror stories told to you by the hivemind, it's also what the patent system helps reduce. The patent protection (should, and often does) keep the well-connected people and companies at bay while you have a chance to build your own connections so you can compete in the real world. Patents do not guarantee profit or even breaking even... they give the inventor a chance.

One of those patents I'm connected to is for a particular type of gravimetric feeder. The inventor's day job was shoveling coal, and his connections were about what you'd expect for a coal-shoveler. After filing for a patent, he turned his own employer into his first customer, founding a company that eventually made him a small fortune engineering solids-handling machines. Bearing in mind that these were pre-union, post-industrial-revolution days, the patent was the biggest thing preventing his employer from firing him and building the feeder themselves.

Despite the pervasive paranoia of Slashdot, that's the kind of story the patent system is actually pretty good at creating. I've personally seen it happen about a half-dozen times. Making it easier for an average person to build connections before getting screwed is a good thing, in my opinion.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

First-to-file is irrelevant. It only clarifies who legally invented something first. Here, we know that A invented first, and we know that B didn't know it was already invented.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

A similar argument can be constructed that if the patent was not secret, and in the 3 yr period it took to get the patent granted someone created a way to dodge the patent, the patent was worthless and shouldn't be granted.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[devent]

How about Plan B, reform the justice system so your scenario will become more unlikly? But of course, the solution is to make new laws that will benefit only a few big companies, instead of making it more fairer for everyone.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

I also know people who won the lottery.

Pretty much the exact same thing. your "client" won the patent lottery. his story is a 1 in a 1,000,000 with 999,999 failing.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Let's try your reading comprehension again:

I've personally seen it happen about a half-dozen times.

One of those patents I'm connected to...

...people who invest their time and money inventing things. I'm one myself, and so's my uncle, my father, great-grandfather, and more of my inlaws than I can recall.

So he's not a client in any way, and his story isn't rare, in my experience.

Now that you mention it, I do know several folks who've won various lotteries and casino games, too... their average win is somewhere under $20.

Patents do not guarantee profit or even breaking even... they give the inventor a chance.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[slippyblade]

To bad that doesn't happen these days. Today, your amazing inventor would get litigated into the ground by an arsenal of vaguely worded, most likely obvious, and barely related patent war chests. Or, even more likely, since the "invention" was obviously related to his day job work environment, by laws in many states and many many employment agreements, it already belongs to his employing company.

The patent system is broken and tilted towards he who can employ the most lawyers. Your "Once upon a time" story is quaint and may have been the case at one point, it no longer is.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

It happened in the 80's for my uncle, the 90's for one of my in-laws, and the 2000s for a friend of mine. They got patents, licensed them off to recoup the investment (that friend even made a profit!), and effectively improved the world for very little expense.

Feel free to continue your quaint "underdog fighting the big bad corporations and corrupt government" story, though. It's charming.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

"I've spent 5 years inventing this Widget, but I'm not a shrewd businessman who's well-connected to suppliers and fabricators. I guess I shouldn't be inventing."

As things stand nowadays, I have no problem agreeing with that sentence. You know why? Because the way this actually plays out outside of fairy tales is that some moron that doesn't know anything about a field "invents" and patents some old and well known stuff to those skilled in the art. Armed with a patent and his sense of entitlement, this "inventor" is just going to be a parasite, a nuisance, and a general net negative for everybody except himself. Just look at all the madness related to software patents, where courts keep ruling in favor of the sociopaths with patents and against those creating real value.

Before you answer, ask a patent lawyer whether "prior art" is a good defense or not (hint: it almost never works, even when it is blatantly true).

I want empowerment of people who invest their time and money inventing things. I'm one myself, and so's my uncle, my father, great-grandfather, and more of my inlaws than I can recall. Not one of our patents have ever been trollish, or done anything but contribute to their field (though the portable chiropractic table is debatable).

People who want a patent are well empowered as it is. Actually, well beyond what is sane. Look at all the absurd patents and all the patents on trivial stuff.

Beyond that: I do not agree with the notion that people deserve to be rich just by having an idea. I do not agree with the notion that, just by having an idea, "inventors" deserve the right to harass people left and right that had the same idea because it actually was easy and obvious, as most ideas, and the vast majority of patents, are.

As it stands, it is possible to corner huge markets with pretty minor contributions by just being shrewd in ways that have nothing to do with the technology itself

Congratulations, you've discovered marketing. Welcome to the last millennium.

Of course I was meaning things like patents that are central in standards. I guess it says something about you that you deliberately chose to misunderstand that.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[SteveFoerster]

I have no choice but assuming that you work for a patent troll or are one yourself.

I basically agreed with everything else you said, but this was pretty over-the-top ridiculous.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[aztracker1]

When the final goods are being produced *IN* China, it doesn't really matter. The *PURPOSE* behind patents is *TO EXPAND* the useful arts and sciences. Not to constrict them... IMHO if the patent process is secret, than anyone also filing for a similar patent, or exercising a similar process during that time should be protected, and said patent permanently rejected.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

First-to-file is irrelevant. It only clarifies who legally invented something first. Here, we know that A invented first, and we know that B didn't know it was already invented.

Yes, and then B is hosed. How is this supposed to be just? And of course first to file is relevant here.

What I understand is that you want your family to be rich at the expense of society, and that patents is how you envision this to come true. Thank you for making again a compelling case against patents in general.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[dgatwood]

First to file doesn't preclude the obviousness defense.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[s73v3r]

First to File doesn't have anything to do with declaring something obvious, or anything having to do with prior art. First to File is simply a solution to the situation you get when two people claim to have invented the same thing at the same time, and both file patents on it.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[s73v3r]

. I want cloning companies to sprint past "inventors"

Often, that doesn't happen. What usually happens is the cloning company clones the invention just cheaply enough to offer a lower cost knock off. That isn't necessarily a good thing.

And while the other guy has problems with his scenario, your scenario has huge fucking problems with it as well. For instance, your scenario would make it so that only those with huge amounts of money would be able to do anything. Otherwise, how are you going to compete against a larger company being able to manufacture shit cheaper than you?

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[s73v3r]

Sadly, today, that employee would have been forced to sign an agreement saying that anything he invents is property of the company, and not his.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[s73v3r]

As things stand nowadays, I have no problem agreeing with that sentence. You know why?

Because you're an asshole who believes that only the rich deserve to get things?

Because the way this actually plays out outside of fairy tales is that some moron that doesn't know anything about a field "invents" and patents some old and well known stuff to those skilled in the art. Armed with a patent and his sense of entitlement, this "inventor" is just going to be a parasite, a nuisance, and a general net negative for everybody except himself. Just look at all the madness related to software patents, where courts keep ruling in favor of the sociopaths with patents and against those creating real value.

I call horseshit on that statement.

Beyond that: I do not agree with the notion that people deserve to be rich just by having an idea. I do not agree with the notion that, just by having an idea, "inventors" deserve the right to harass people left and right that had the same idea because it actually was easy and obvious, as most ideas, and the vast majority of patents, are.

Then why didn't you come up with it?

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Because the way this actually plays out outside of fairy tales is that some moron that doesn't know anything about a field "invents" and patents some old and well known stuff to those skilled in the art.

It's obvious just how much of your knowledge of the patent system comes from being involved in it, and how much comes from reading Slashdot. The "morons" inventing software algorithms are software engineers, who know the state of the art and know that there's a key detail distinguishing their algorithm from the obvious one, just like the morons inventing techniques for metallurgy are usually metallurgists, the morons inventing theatrical lights are theatre technicians, and the moron inventing a gravimetric feeder for feeding coal is a coal-shoveller.

People who want a patent are well empowered as it is. Actually, well beyond what is sane.

I'm insanely well-empowered? This is news to me. Let me just call the President and see what he says... No, he says that's a sweeping generalization based on a stereotype.

...easy and obvious, as most ideas, and the vast majority of patents, are.

[citation needed]. No, really... show me any study that actually counts the number of easy and obvious patents, compared to the ones that are aren't and never make it onto Slashdot's front page.

Of course I was meaning things like patents that are central in standards.

Oh, yes, of course using a technology has "nothing to do with the technology"! Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that's how things were sometime around the late 19th century. These days, however, the justice system is completely screwed up, and any giant corporation that wants your patent will simply hammer you with lawsuits until, even if you somehow win, you have to sell them your patent anyway just to cover your legal expenses. The result being that the lawyers and trolls win, and the inventors lose. 'Patent protection' is no longer for patents, it's for those who can afford the protection (whether they own the patent or not).

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys, he has *three* anecdotes so this must be how the world works.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

I'm insanely well-empowered? This is news to me.

Because you are a sociopath that things he should have no end of rights.

Oh, yes, of course using a technology has "nothing to do with the technology"! Sorry for the misunderstanding.

And here is why. You think that comming up with something minor, and then smuggling it into a standard, is actually a legit way of becoming insanely rich and powerful.

That is just insane.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". The singular is "counter-example".

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

You think that comming up with something minor, and then smuggling it into a standard,

Again, [citation needed]. Please enlighten me as to any case where a patented technology was actually a minor part of a standard, yet still so vital as to make the standard unusable without it. Please show me how the rest of the standards body was so blind as to miss the unfair advantage this gave one company, at the expense of the others. Please show me how any person or company became rich and powerful through a standard.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

What lawsuits could they hammer you with? While trying to license your patent, they have no grounds to stop you - by being awarded a patent, the government says it thinks you have the rights to it. If you're trying to produce a product, you have no more nor less legal vulnerability that if you didn't have the patent - if you come close to one of theirs, they can sue.

Compared to the late 19th century, there are now more available and affordable lawyers for an average person, so legal troubles are more easily mitigated. Getting an appointment with legal counsel doesn't require being one of the white-collar good old boys. It might require borrowing money and gambling on your future financial security (and that sucks in its own right), but it's not as bad as the late 19th century, by a long shot.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[hawkinspeter]

If someone can easily re-implement the patent without seeing the details, then surely the patent is worthless as it must be reasonably obvious.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[HiThere]

That there is a real concern doesn't justify this step. If a country ignores patents, then they will ignore patents whether issued or not. So just ban importation of those items. You can't do anything more anyway. This one has too many bones in it.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[HiThere]

The legal system is, indeed, broken, but that doesn't mean the patent system isn't broken.

OTOH, this proposed fix is worse than the current problems.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[HiThere]

No. This "solution" is worse than the problem it attempts to solve. (And it wouldn't solve the problem it claims to anyway.)

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[HiThere]

You proposal is also something that would be a bad idea. Better than the current patent system is faint praise indeed.

Patents should not be grants of monopoly. There should be compulsory licensing as "reasonable" rates. And they last too long. The cost of licensing should be based on the cost of preliminary research, and decrease to nominal once twice the initial investment has been recovered. Or perhaps three times. Certainly no more than ten times. And, of course, both expenses and repayment need to be figured on an after tax basis. And false starts count as part of the expenses of development.

Additionally, certain kinds of patents should just never be issued. I'm thinking of:
1) Software patents. (Use copyrights instead.)
2) Business method patents
3) Patents on things found in nature (e.g., genes or molecules, but also animals & trees). N.B.: This doesn't prevent patents on artificially created animals with custom genes.

N.B.: Saying that patent law is badly broken doesn't imply that, e.g., copyright law isn't. But that's a separate discussion.

FWIW, I'm on record as saying that the current patent system is so bad that we would be best served by repealing all existing patents laws and starting from scratch. This doesn't mean I consider that a good approach, just better than what we've got.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

I call horseshit on that statement.

Horseshit, or worse, is what you have between your ears.

Then why didn't you come up with it?

The subtlety is probably lost on you, but here it goes anyway. Comming up with something, and deciding to patent something, are completely different things.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

You don't read news, don't you?

Anyway, someone who thinks that patents like push email and one click are legit is an enemy of thought and of humanity. Since push email was upheld, as well as one click, it is clear that the system as a whole is broken. Any set of rules that permits that kind of thing is simply sick.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[CrimsonAvenger]

By allowing secret patents people could be infringing and have no way of knowing.

Umm, no.

The "secret" part is just until the patent is actually issued. And you can't infringe a patent until it is issued.

So it will be impossible to infringe a "secret patent", since the patent won't be secret once issued, and you can't infringe upon it before that.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[bl968]

But we already have secret patents they are called trade secrets.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

You only read news, don't you?

Since push email was upheld, as well as one click, it is clear that the system as a whole is broken.

Or, it's clear that you have no idea what's actually involved in patents. Push email and one-click purchasing both describe a particular back-end system to reduce the overhead of making such a system work. The one-click purchasing patent in particular covered such things as keeping payment information readily available (yet separate enough to avoid insecurity) and the system for initiating order processing immediately while still allowing it to be canceled without excessive cost. Upon re-examination, some parts of the patent were clarified, some were rejected, and some were kept.

In the case of push email, several patents were involved, and many were overturned (though after RIM and NTP had settled). The remaining ones describe a clearly-defined system that RIM knew about when it designed BlackBerry's push email service.

Since both cases were clarified to include only clearly-defined utilities, the system is working as intended. Any set of rules that would reject clear patents is simply sick.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

Push email and one-click purchasing both describe a particular back-end system to reduce the overhead of making such a system work. The one-click purchasing patent in particular covered such things as keeping payment information readily available (yet separate enough to avoid insecurity) and the system for initiating order processing immediately while still allowing it to be canceled without excessive cost. Upon re-examination, some parts of the patent were clarified, some were rejected, and some were kept.

Which shows that the system is broken. Nobody that comes come up with the same process independently should be forbidden from using it at will.

Any set of rules that would reject clear patents is simply sick.

It is you who is sick.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Gnavpot]

Then company B walks into a courtroom, says "the patent was secret. We had no way of knowing the patented technology. Unless A can prove espionage, the patent should be re-examined and thrown out as being obvious, since our researchers were clearly able to produce the same technology from simply the current state of the art."

Ah, we fixed that with First to File.

First-to-file is irrelevant. It only clarifies who legally invented something first. Here, we know that A invented first, and we know that B didn't know it was already invented.

First-to-file means that the patent system actually accepts that the same invention can be made independently by two companies without being obvious. Otherwise there would not be any reason for having First-to-file.

So yes, the mere existence of First-to-file must mean that the GGP's defence of "it must be obvious if we could invent it too without knowing about the secret patent application" is invalid.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Except that they're totally different and are intended for and accomplish totally different things.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Nobody that comes come up with the same process independently should be forbidden from using it at will.

That's rather the point... the court found that they did NOT come up with it independently. They willfully infringed, knowing that the process was patented and using the patent in their designs.

It is you who is sick.

You have yet to show any evidence of this claim.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

That would get them off of paying for infringement, not invalidate the patent. Company B's product would be dead though.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

That's rather the point... the court found that they did NOT come up with it independently. They willfully infringed, knowing that the process was patented and using the patent in their designs.

You keep making the argument that if I disagree with the patent system, it must be because I do not understand it. What the courts found is irrelevant, because these are judgements in the context of broken and inmoral laws. It is as if your reaction to beheadings in Saudi Arabia was saying that they were ordered by a court and so everything is OK.

And I sincerely believe that you are sick and evil.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

You keep making the argument that if I disagree with the patent system, it must be because I do not understand it.

That's because you keep saying things that show complete ignorance of how the patent system works.

It is as if your reaction to beheadings in Saudi Arabia was saying that they were ordered by a court and so everything is OK.

No, it's as if I think the death penalty's okay for a confessed serial killer (which I do, by the way). Morality and legality are separate issues. Here, I think it's moral that someone who invests time and effort in working out an idea should get a chance to make it a business, without getting screwed by the fast-moving predatory companies out there. The legal system currently aligns with that.

And I sincerely believe that you are sick and evil.

And I sincerely believe that's irrelevant to the conversation, yet you keep bringing it up. I believe you're a self-absorbed asshole who hasn't bothered to learn about the patent system more than read Slashdot, see lawsuits, and declare it broken and bad. I believe you're so arrogant in your assumption that you know everything that you can't even condescend to make a logical argument in your favor. I believe that, instead of logic, you resort to ad hominem attacks right from the start, claiming that anyone disagreeing with you must be evil. I believe that you're a Ron Paul supporter, because you share his believe that any imperfect system should be scrapped, and somehow magically the Free Market God will fix everything.

But again, that sort of thing's irrelevant.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

That's because you keep saying things that show complete ignorance of how the patent system works.

Bullshit. What happens is that you see many of its bugs as features, most likely because you profit from the current (broken and immoral) state of affairs.

Here, I think it's moral that someone who invests time and effort in working out an idea should get a chance to make it a business, without getting screwed by the fast-moving predatory companies out there. The legal system currently aligns with that.

No, the legal system currently aligns with that even trivial ideas that do not take more than a couple of hours to come up with, and that would occur to anyone faced with the same technical problems, are worthy of making people rich at the expense of others. The legal system currenlty aligns with vague and broad patents being a legitimate weapon for extortion and harrassment. This is obviously inmoral to me.

Some of the worst predatory companies out there are precisely the ones with the big patent portfolios, and these patents are their biggest weapon. One of the most damaging aspect of the current patent system is the huge legal risk that it presents to anyone that actually wants to do something.

I believe you're a self-absorbed asshole who hasn't bothered to learn about the patent system more than read Slashdot, see lawsuits, and declare it broken and bad.

The lawsuits alone are enough to see that the system is broken and bad. Why you do not accept that simple fact is beyond me.

Also, It is you who is the self-absorbed asshole that thinks the system must be right because of your brother-in-laws.

But again, that sort of thing's irrelevant.

Indeed. You feel entitled to be rich for doing very little at the expense of other people, on the basis of nothing in particular, and don't even think that this is evil. For some reason you believe that your argument (which argument?) is based on logic (of all things!). Wow.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[Sarten-X]

Oh, good... a whole post where every sentence is either a fallacy or insult. This means that under my doctrine of "debate anything where facts are valued" I can ignore you now.

Goodbye, you fucking moron.

Re:Blatant ignorance as usual

[rmstar]

Oh, good... a whole post where every sentence is either a fallacy or insult. This means that under my doctrine of "debate anything where facts are valued" I can ignore you now.

You do well then to ignore yourself.

Goodbye, you fucking moron.

You certainly leave in style.

RIP FTA

[Anonymous Coward]

Its time Australia tore up its free trade agreement with the United States... as we've seen with copyright, trademarks, patents and more recently price gouging (been going on for a long time - but only recently put in the spotlight).

Can anyone actually point to anything substantially beneficial that Australia's Free Trade Agreement with the US brings to Australians?

Re:RIP FTA

[Malenx]

Hey Australia, it's not all about you.

Now keep buying our stuff and be quiet.

Re:RIP FTA

[green1]

Dear Australia:

It's not just you

Sincerely,
Canada

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

[fantomas]

"This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.'"

As James Boswell noted of Samuel Johnson in his Life"(1791):" Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest."(p.253).

Secret patent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's ponder that for a second, shall we?

Suppose it exists, is it secret or patent (since patent means evident)?

As an aside, is it not already working that way? I mean, sometimes people even advise against reading patents to make a legal case that one didn't know about it...

Actually, it's naive of me to suppose the USPTO wouldn't be biased... that's why it has the "US" before the "PTO".

I believe an international organization should be in charge of patents, much like the WTO allows other nations to kick US' ass now and then. Someone please correct me if I'm misinformed, but is there a way to invalidate a patent globally, from the outside of the United States?

PDF Warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Probably one of the most accepted formats of documents today and someone really feels the need to state "PDF Warning"? Get real.

Re:PDF Warning?

[geminidomino]

Considering that the main provider of PDF software has yet to provide a stable and lightweight reader, yet still insists on tying it into the browser to fuck things up in new and fascinating ways, combined with the fact that the selfsame company is pushing uses PDFs were never intended for (that is, anything besides printing), yes, it's still good etiquette to warn one's readers about it.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that sort of work is in fact exempt from child labor laws. As long as they're YOUR kids you can do that. I knew a kid in elementary school who used to handle the register for his parent's burger stand. I've also heard similiar stories from people in the US who were raised on farms. Hell most of the kids I've known on welfare did whatever odd jobs were needed to help their family get by. Strictly speaking the only group in the US being hindered by child labor laws at this point is the middle class law abiding citizen. If you're not law abiding you've 'working' regardless of the labor laws and if you ARE law abiding, unless you have some supernatural talent that can be leveraged for millions of dollars (or to sell drugs) then you're going to find the opportunities to get work before you're 16 slim to nil (there are exceptions, but the paperwork for it is a huge pain and most employers want it filled out beforehand, and the state/feds want it filled out afterward. A catch 22 for juvenile employment, even in high school.)

If I seem bitter, this particular limitation led to my NEET-ness. Now like japanese, british, and some of my fellow americans I've succeeded in making it to 30 without any signs of future self-improvement/employment.

Patent trolls cost US $80 billion per year

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/documents/Bessen-Ford-Meurer-no-11-45rev.pdf

Patent trolls cost real companies making real exportable goods and services $80 billion. Each true R&D company needs to earn significantly more per invention to make it viable in order to pay these trolls.

The patent is protection for an invention, not a *concept* for an invention. The patent is the DESCRIPTION of the invention. You can't describe something that does not exist. If you haven't made the invention then the patent is a work of fiction describing a fictional invention.

So when the patent office started handing out patents for everything they really created the problem. It's not unusual that a parasitic industry lobbies in its own interests, but they need to realize that parasite is killing the host.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[roman_mir]

"your reason for living is to provide us with money. You don't get decisions. Get us money."

- so why are these laws enforced against employers rather than against parents? This is fucked up nonsense, the reason child labour was stopped wasn't laws, same with slavery. Slavery didn't stop because of laws. Women got rights not because of laws.

All of those things, and more (gays, whatever), have to do with social changes. So child labour stopped being profitable and society stopped using it by the time capitalism made it increasingly necessary for the workers to have special knowledge and skills that are acquired over a long period of training, so children are not good as labourers without all that knowledge. Free market capitalism stopped child labour, not any amount of laws.

Invisible legal landmines? Why that's brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

What a wonderful collection of invisible legal landmines to place in front of anyone else who dares to try to independently innovate in the same area as a company that already holds these sorts of patents.

Idiots. The patent process needs to be more open, not less, so that people can point out how obvious the patent is and so they can help patent examiners find prior art during the review process, rather than years later as a patent troll decides to come out from under their bridge. Part of the problem is how closed the process is currently. More ways to hide what is going on are not needed.

Can I get a patent on political corruption?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't even have to be secret. Then I can just license it widely and rake it in.

Slashdot approves secret comments

[iPaul]

The contents of this comment are secret for national security purposes.

Useless for world wide policies

[aglider]

There's still a bunch of countries that are not members of the WIPO.
And then I ask myself: what if I ask for a patent and the answer that it's already patented but I'm not allowed to know the details?
From that point on I do know at least a part of the details of the secret patent!

It the last "thing" of the US... and the cheapest

[erroneus]

Ideas and even great ideas are a part of our humanity. They are born from the ideas that came before them partnered with need or want of something better than we have now. With or without the patent system in place, they will happen just as music and the various arts do.

The problem is and always has been that there are people who think they should be able to take ideas and horde and control them as they do physical resources. Worse still, lots of people in all walks of life think it's a great idea. "I worked hard coming up with..." No you didn't. If you did, you're doing it wrong and it's probably not all that great and even if it were, it's till built on and born of ideas that came before yours and you are simply failing to credit them. The people who are good at inventing things do it for the joy of having done it. Profiting from it is just nice, but the people who love working and doing that sort of work would die sooner if they stopped working.

But here we are, at the beginning of the end of US dominance. We've sold off and farmed out all the tangible things that made us great. They are too expensive to maintain, after all, we have quarterly gains to measure! We've industrialized food production and we import our fresh fruits and vegetables from other parts of the world now. Manufacturing was a short-lived career because the unions forced business to pay a fair wage to workers in the US. We have to Sell More and spend less. The people of the US are demanding lower prices for everything. [Mostly because they can't afford as much any longer because of the afore mentioned cuts from increasing quarterly gains.]

We are in imbalance. The wealth and cash flows are flowing mostly in one direction. This cannot last forever even if the Fed prints more money. Somehow the "markets" seem to believe they create money from thin air and create value through the magical practice of buying and selling things at carefully timed moments.

This has been going on a LOT longer than most people realize. We would have seen it long, long ago but people were told "you have to have credit! You aren't a real person unless you have credit! And you can't have credit unless you are in debt are carrying a balance!" (And you're a complete idiot if you think paying off the balance every month gives you a good credit score. Want a better score? Don't pay it all off.... run a balance. Your "score" is what you are worth to them. You aren't worth as much if you aren't paying them interest.) So now we're all living on debt financing instead of using a savings account. And we don't feel the sting as because "credit" is bottomless while savings are always finite. But here's a clue to measure how badly you are actually doing: Account for your total debt today. If you tried to pay it off now, would you be able to? Could you liquidate and come out with money in your pocket? If not, you have to admit to yourself that you and pretty much every "commoner" has been living in the red for decades and for many, their whole lives.

And what does it all mean? The original idea which I seem to have moved away from is "The last 'thing' of the US." We're exporting intangible things -- patents and copyrights and we're exporting our laws to support our failing business models to the world in hopes of indebting the rest of the world the way they have done the population of the US. By controlling ideas and creativity, they control production. Production: where the real work and costs of goods sold are found.

The world is resisting this push with everything it can. Their governments are being bought and we all see it happening anyway. But eventually, those few countries that can't be bought will be destroyed through violence. This is imperialism.

Welcome to the new world... same as the old world...

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Joe_Dragon]

family-owned businesses is on thing.

foxconn china is a other and they have unpiad internships where you work the the factory floor same hours as other works with no pay.

You have no f'n idea what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting a patent is hard and expensive. If you think it is so easy to do, go ahead and try to file a patent on an existing invention. Once you disclose that the invention is preexisting, your attorney will throw you out the door.

"because if they haven't physically made it, they haven't physically solved the real world problems with their invention"
I create a new design for (or improvement to) an airplane/ship/jet engine, why do I have to build it and spend hundreds of millions of dollars doing so? What a stupid idea.

"Anyone can draw a flying car, but an inventor is the one who actually MAKES the car fly."
Another comment that evidences you have no idea what you are talking about. The law already requires that the inventor enable one skilled in the art to make and use the invention.

"It makes the submarining problem worse. Where a troll files a vague patent, then watches as technology is developed, and tweaks the wording to be more like the devices the real inventors are inventing."
No. Publishing patent applications doesn't solve that -- it can easily be done with a published application. Setting the term for patents from 20 years from filing (as opposed to 17 years from issuance) solved the problem of submarine patents.

"Reapplication requires repeat fees, you want to waste the patent office time with an obvious idea, then pay and pay again."
Reapplication??? What the F is that?

"It encourages trolls to set traps around genuinely inventive companies. e.g. flying car used for school trips, flying car with shopping trolly attached etc. etc."
Just try to get an invention on any of that -- all that will get rejected at the patent office.

Listening to geeks talk about patent law is like listening to someone who studied philosophy in college discuss the specifics of Maxwell's Equations. I don't care how smart they are -- they still sound really stupid talking about things they don't know.

They are called: Submarine Patents

[Cassini2]

Submarines patents are when a patent is deliberately kept hidden until the competitors develop competing products. They are particularly effective when they allow a company to patent an industry standard, as in the Rambus lawsuit against DDR-RAM.

This proposal would allow lawyers to easily create submarine patents. Because of the secrecy, it could even happen that more than one company has submarine patents on the same industry standard technology.

Submarine patents block industry standards and free software.

Your ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry ... a jury cannot "nullify" a power of Congress (to set up a Patent and Copyright regime) that as specifically enumerated in the US Constitution.

Your only chance of getting patent law overturned is through an amendment to the US Constitution. Good luck with that. The only people who dislike patents are people who are more into copying other peoples ideas than creating their own (e.g., many writers of software) and downloading content (e.g., songs/movies/games) that they did not purchase. I know this is the slashdot demographic but society, as a whole, tends to like inventors and dislikes thieves.

The Chinese would love for the US to abolish patents. No intellectual property favors the copiers and the Chinese are the biggest copiers out there.

Re:Your ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a jury *can* 'nullify' a law simply by deciding that, regardless of the behavior of the accused, the law itself is unjust and refusing to convict on it. Now, to effectively 'nullify' a law, multiple juries must do this consistently, but that is the only hurdle to overcome in that case. The Constitution doesn't say that Congress must create any *particular* laws relating to patents, or even that they must create *any* such laws at all, only that they are *allowed* to do so.

The biggest problem with patents currently is that, due to badly designed incentives, too many junk patents are submitted and approved.

Re:Your ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Coward]

a jury cannot "nullify" a power of Congress

I can’t comment on the US situation, but in Canada so many juries refused to convict Dr Henry Morgantaler of performing illegal abortions that the government finally gave up charging him and parliament changed the law. And yes, he really was guilty under the law as it existed at the time.

Re:It the last "thing" of the US... and the cheape

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree but most people don't see it that way.

Compare Apple to Samsung. Apples creates ideas and concepts. They buy the core components ordered to spec and some other compaines assemble final product. Apple sells the end product and gets the most profit from that end product. Samsung actually makes products, has large factories, owns lots of real estate and employees, R&D in developing new desings and core components, they have large inventories and distribution channels and owns a significant amount of real estate and factories for the entire wide range of products they make (phones are one of dozens of things they make). They make much less money than Apple does. The US wants the Apple model where US companies can design and reap or skim profits from those ideas. The US needs to have it that way because the US can not maintain factories and the raw material sources without lossing money. Eventually people will realize that actually having the ability to produce something will be more valuable than the idea behind producing something and the scales will tip. The US is trying to prevent that from happening with patents and copyrights.

Design vs. utility patents

[dtmos]

Are we confusing design patents and utility patents? From the link, "A design consists of the visual ornamental characteristics embodied in, or applied to, an article of manufacture. Since a design is manifested in appearance, the subject matter of a design patent application may relate to the configuration or shape of an article, to the surface ornamentation applied to an article, or to the combination of configuration and surface ornamentation."

"In general terms, a “utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171)."

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[dkf]

Free market capitalism stopped child labour, not any amount of laws.

My god, you are so full of bullshit. In the 19th century, free market capitalists were all for child labour precisely because the children could get underneath the weaving and spinning machines to clean up without the machine having to be stopped or slowed down. It was wonderful for the capitalist, especially as they had to wash the cloth afterwards anyway, so the blood and mashed up body parts from when there were accidents wouldn't add significantly to the overall cost of production, and you didn't have to pay nearly as much to children either (though of course it helped a lot that you also owned the only store in town and all the accommodation too, so you could be sure to get all those irritating "wages" back anyway).

Free market capitalists have demonstrated beyond all shadow of a doubt that they are the scum of the earth. We have laws and regulations that prevent the worst excesses, but you seem to think that according everyone some rights is a Bad Thing. That's so fucked up an attitude that I really have nothing polite to say about it at all.

Prior art notices

[msobkow]

I would have thought publishing the proposed patents was being done intentionally to allow submission of prior art notices so bad patents can be blocked before it costs someone millions of dollars to defend against it in court.

Once approved, the new patent holder can go against everyone who copied the patent. And if the only way they can make money off the idea is to license the patent, then they haven't INVENTED something, have they? You need to be able to develop PRODUCTS for a patent to be useful or valid.

Not just bullshit like the fact that one click on a button does something (Amazon) -- exactly like the UI specs for buttons intended in the first place!

Shocked!

[fmachado]

I'm shocked!

Someone really understand what a patent is for even with all this media lobby-paid propaganda trying to blur the real intent of patents.

It's taking the less of two evils (monopoly vs not advancing the science), with some action from the State in conceding a monopoly (temporary), against all indications that a monopoly is bad for the society, in exchange for the precise explanation of a meaningful advance of the science, so all the society will benefit from that technology later, which would not be the case without the disclosure.

Congratulations for a concise, clear, dispassionate and correct view of patents.

Flavio

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[roman_mir]

The parents of those children are the ones SENDING their kids to work. Those are the same children who would have had to work with their parents farming for subsistence. It is not the LAWS that change the circumstance.

Gov't could have passed all the laws in 15th they wanted to outlaw child labour, it would have been just as effective as passing a law in 15th century that people should be moving cargo by FLYING IT.

Free market capitalists have demonstrated beyond all shadow of a doubt that they are the scum of the earth.

- oh yea? AFAIC it's the socialists, the Marxists but also the fascists who have proven that exact point about themselves. Given any amount of choice, I choose free market every time.

you seem to think that according everyone some rights is a Bad Thing

- because it's bullshit and not a 'right' in any way. The rights are being stolen - taken away, with every single bill that passes that has the word 'right' in it.

The so called 'Civil Rights Act' was an entitlement and obligation act in reality, which worsened the situation of the black workers, who had only 15% unemployment among youth before then and now they are have 50% in the same category (16-25y.o.) It's not a right for somebody to be given an entitlement for a LAWSUIT against somebody else, when that somebody else exercises their right to do business as they wish on their own private fucking property, you douche.

You can already do this - but...

[XNormal]

There is a little known form you can find on the USPTO that lets you ask for your patent not to be published until granted, just like in the old system. If not granted you can still try to keep it a trade secret.

The catch is that you can't use the filing date as the priority date for international patents. The reason patents are normally published after 18 months is because of international patent treaties.

IIUC, this proposed change is meaningless - you can already get it now if you are willing to give up international priority and keeping patents secret and still getting priority is impossible without renegotiating those treaties.

IANAL
IANAPA

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Some free market capitalists.

That's a bullshit example.

[Anonymous Coward]

'due to national security' for things like nuclear energy and the like

So, what, are you going to sue other countries for making nukes?
Somehow, I think their response to a lawyer would just be firing off one of their nukes.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

- oh yea? AFAIC it's the socialists, the Marxists but also the fascists who have proven that exact point about themselves. Given any amount of choice, I choose free market every time.

Me too, because under socialism or fascism, you have to pretend that you care for other people ("I'm screwing you over because it helps society!"). Under capitalism, you don't ("I'm screwing you over for my benefit. If you don't like it, you can sue... that is, if you can afford it")

Easy question

[Anonymous Coward]

What mechanism do you think allowed those feudal lords to accrue the power and wealth to get to their positions?

The sword.

Re:Easy question

[Anonymous Coward]

So the feudal lords individually killed anybody who disagreed with them? Or did they maybe have some followers that they gave wealth in exchange for their service? In an arrangement that we'll call "employment"?

Re:Easy question

[ankhank]

"None dare call it treason, because if it succeeds, it's not treason."

Similarly, none dare call it brigandage, because if it succeeds, it's a new empire, corporate or feudal.

Re:Easy question

[mhajicek]

My kingdom for a mod point!

Re:Easy question

[Creepy]

Feudalism started mainly because the Carolingan (Frankish Empire associated with Charlemagne) bureaucracy couldn't afford cavalry, so manors started to foot the bill on taxes they collected on their land and made the cavalry hereditary (which is how we got knights). Peasants would voluntarily subject themselves to serfdom in exchange for protection and a plot of land and maybe a cottage, so in a way the sword is correct (they offered military protection), but it was really more about cavalry.

Re:Easy question

[shutdown -p now]

The original feudal arrangement was granting a fief to own for the duration of the service - i.e. it was not perpetual, and it was not transferable. It's not capitalism (merely exchanging money for goods or services does not make capitalism).

Re:Easy question

[HiThere]

Sir John Harington:
"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

Re:Easy question

[Anonymous Coward]

And whom did he pay to make the sword?

Re:Easy question

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to stop posting, and pick up a history book, before you embarrass yourself further.

Re:Easy question

[Anonymous Coward]

How's this for history: The earliest recorded activity of long-distance profit-seeking merchants can be traced back to the Old Assyrian merchants active in the 2nd millennium BC.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who can hit 30 without having found any employment has probably more to blame than laws preventing home from working as a child. To be honest I see my cousin going the same way, and the guy on benefits lives in a better place than I did back in my early working days. Instead of bitterness, consider a post mortem of your life. Identify your mistakes, and real cases where society failed you (not just scapegoats). Once done, use the results to try to fix your life. If unable or unwilling to fix yourself, you could at least provide a cautionary tale for others.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Lumpy]

Ladies and gentlemen... The above is the typical thought pattern of the Tea Party and the Republicans currently trying like hell to steal the party from the rest of us that have been standing here going , "What the hell happened?"

Next up from roman_mir, how allowing women to vote has caused them harm.

What About National Security?

[Slicker]

I have worked on three patents that I feel might have substantial impact on national security, if released to the world. I am curious if a mechanism exists to apply and acquire a patent kept in secret. I understand that the patent process is about sharing our inventions while still being able to maintain exclusive profitability over an initial period of time. However, not having a way to protect the invention and simultaneously prevent other governments (such as potential enemies) from acquiring the technology doesn't seem possible. It puts me in the tongue-in-cheek position of considering publishing this to the world and seeking less ideal secondary methods of protection (in the sense of national security). For example, I might engineering a less capable design that includes some but not all key components. Or, I could merely rely on the superiority of existing U.S. military capabilities over the manufacturing advantageous of countries like China (quality of quantity). I suppose that is what keeps us safe today. For example, the untappable and unjammable nature of frequency hop radio communications, longer range and smarter target acquisitioning, longer range and faster air-to-air missiles. If North Korea's 13,000 pieces of artillery augmented with frequency hop radio technology, that alone would enable them a target acquisitioning capability multiplying their forces far in excess of being able to storm over the South. Once done, they would be able to aim NBC capable missiles within range of Osaka (Japan) and sue for peace to retain their holdings. Frequency hop radio technology was sold and bought by the Department of Defense as a very difficult technology to develop--another grand example of our fat-headed defense contractors vastly exaggerating their wears. This one capability has an absolutely pivotal influence in warfare: first on C3 (Command, Control, and Communications); and second, on target acquisitioning. To safe guard us, we rely on the fact that our potential and current adversary's level of incompetence far exceeding our own. And luckily so far, it does.

Re:What About National Security?

[Criton]

Frequency hop is old tech dating back as far as the late 1970s and it is not untappable or unjammable. Once you know the specs what frequencies are used and how channel changes are handled it can be both jammed and tapped. China already manufactures this technology. Cell phones use a basic version of it as it was one of the key technologies that made cellphones possible. NK's artillery would need more then that to be that accurate they'd also need better guidance and navigation for the platforms, better quality control in the shells and possibly smart shells with the ability to steer.

Re:What About National Security?

[Overzeetop]

Form a corporation, offer the device (or have your senator ask the DOD to RFP the device or technology) and apply for the job. You'll agree on terms, they'll set you all up with TS-SCI, and you'll develop the information as a secret project.

Pretty much all of the people you are worried about acquiring this information have three characteristics which make a patent useless:
    (1) They are governments who disagree with your government, and they don't give a shit about using your IP uncompensated
    (2) They control the court system in their country, so when they violate your IP, they can do it with impunity
    (3) They probably have a significant standing military, against which IP lawyers will do very poorly in actual combat*

As a result, you can either go for it all in government contracting or publish and likely get very little. Your area of innovation provides a fairly narrow path to fulfillment. Are you sure you aren't interested in coding social games targeted at women?

*Though if you get the chance, I would highly recommend this as a way to reduce the surplus population in the profession

So what happens when...

[Anonymous Coward]

When government files a secret patent and then someone else comes along and patents the same thing? Does the PO say "sorry you cant patent that because the gov has a secret patent on that" or does the gov file suit against that person for infringing on their patent and thus revealing their secret patent?

Or what if someone patents something the gov wants. Do they just take them to court and say "Hey we have a secret patent on that, you have to give it to us. No you cant see our patent, its a secret duh! You just have to take our word for it".

This can be a good thing

[subanark]

If the patent is secret (and not juts by the USPTO), then anyone who ends up "infringing" on said patent during its approval process has just shown that the patent is obvious, or at least not too complex.

I would see it as being fine if the patent office ruled that, yes you can have secret patents, but you wouldn't be able to enforce it if someone else invented something similar before it became public. In this case an inventor could simply request that the patent that is current in review and secret be revealed (while still in review) when they plan on releasing the product, so that their competitors cannot reverse engineer it before the patent becomes valid.

Re:It the last "thing" of the US... and the cheape

[erroneus]

What you're looking at is something slightly different. Apple doesn't do much "original" stuff either. Many of the things they are currently suing over are design or bought from another company that develops technology.

But let's look at TV shows and movies for a moment. Haven't you noticed that as far as new movies and TV shows, the big houses are really scared of putting out anything "new"? They keep remaking old things, sequels and borrowing from the success of our childhoods where comic books and other sources are being made into large productions and all that. There is risk in putting a lot of money behind the new and the bigger businesses are all pretty much risk averse... even and especially the ones who seem to be putting out the coolest "new stuff."

There's no question that Apple is a very different business from most. But to mark the behavior of others as "shameless copycats" is to ignore the reality of the situation. Most companies are just fine with doing the same things over and over and over again so long as the cash flow isn't interrupted. And they will even take out ridiculous patents on things which future competitors might develop in order to keep them down or to keep them from getting ahead.

Most of the real inventing and R&D isn't being done by large US companies. R&D is the first thing to go when times are hard after all. But when big companies see some things they want, they have no trouble skipping over to buy it. You know, kinda like the way Apple bought the name "iPhone" from some Chinese company through a Taiwan subsidiary... the name may have been obvious, but lots of other people came up with it before Apple did, didn't they?

My point is that it would be inaccurate to characterize one or a few companies as being "creative genius which deserves to be rewarded with exclusive rights to an idea." I say "no." Hard work and good quality are still king, I say.

economically SIGNIFICANT ....

[3seas]

....If there ever was a huge billboard sign that says "We intend to rip you off" this is it.
for this goes totally against the genuine idea of free enterprise and fair competition.
The key word here is competition and think for a moment, what sort of patent can possible be granted that hiding its patent protests it?
There is only one type of patent this could apply to... products line that are kept off the market via patent trolling with "what ever we don't like we'll claim there is a patent for it but you cannot see the patent proof".

Defeats the very purpose of the patent system.

[zzyzyx]

The whole purpose of the patent system is that in exchange for a temporary protection of their invention, inventors release them publicly so that they can be examined and others learn from them. That's why a patent application is not only a declaration but must include sufficiently detailed descriptions of the invention to be able to duplicate it. This proposal is just absurd.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

If USA cannot compete without artificial limits on copyright and patents then they deserve to lose.

Perhaps, but without the US, those copying the US also lose out, since they'd actually have to pull their heads out of their asses and create something for themselves. You know, like they're supposed to be doing now.

You can already do this!

[sillivalley]

Publication after 18 months was done to put the U.S. patent system more on par with the rest of the world, such as the EC, where patent applications are published after 18 months.

While that change was made, inventors still have the option to keep the entire proceeding secret, without the 18 month publication. This decision must be made at filing -- it can't be done afterwards. And if you request no publication when you file your U.S. Patent application, then that application can not be filed outside the U.S.

So you (or your employer) have a choice -- allow publication at 18 months and also be able to file in Estonia (and the rest of the world), or request no publication, and be satisfied with only a U.S. patent.

The USPTO also has a fast track system which allows you to pay an extra fee (currently around $4k, if I remember correctly) which is supposed to get you a final determination on your application within one year. So if your application is so important, put your money where your mouth is!

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

roman_mir's a libertarian. Libertarians are at odds with everybody else, including republicans. Of course, according to Libertarians, that's perfectly ok because everybody else is wrong

The crazy thing is that according to libertarians, their favorite candidate Ron Paul is going to win, thanks to all the delegates that weren't being reported by the media (or even the official GOP site)

Evidence of disconnect

[Anonymous Coward]

This is clear evidence of the level of disconnect that exists between the congress-idiots and lobbist-idiots and the real world.

A US inventor, if he/she does not wish his/her patent application to be published at the 18 month point, simply has to request non-publication of that same patent application.

I.e., if this is even a problem, the system already has a built in work around. But, the inventor has to actually pay attention and do something.

Bullshit

[Criton]

This is pure bull shit if there ever was. Just farther proof congress and their lobbyists are completely disconnected from the real world.

Bletchley patents lost to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this just the USA wanting to ensure that they can produce patents that don't actually do what patents are meant to (disclose methods) and not have it lost to another country that doesn't give a fig about their work?

Gravy Train!

[bodland]

I have a patent on secret patents.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[s73v3r]

Just to take out this part out of the comment, what is wrong with "child labor"?

It's dangerous as fuck? And at that age, children should be in school, learning shit, instead of toiling away on an assembly line. Not to mention that many children were seriously taken advantage of as their wages were paid to their parents, not to the children themselves.

And yes, your cute little example is nice, but that's not banned here. So why don't you take your worthless USA bashing and go fuck yourself? I'm sure we could find plenty of stuff that's wrong with your shithole of a country.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[s73v3r]

I'm sorry, but your story is full of crap. There is plenty that you could have done while younger that would provide employability when you reached 30 without working as a kid.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[s73v3r]

- so why are these laws enforced against employers rather than against parents?

Because the employer is the one benefiting from the labor. Although I'd think it'd be just peachy to hold parents responsible, too.

Tell me, why should an employer who is benefiting from this get off scott free?

This is fucked up nonsense, the reason child labour was stopped wasn't laws, same with slavery. Slavery didn't stop because of laws. Women got rights not because of laws.

That's a large part of why they got those rights, and why those rights were recognized. Despite what your delusions tell you, government did facilitate this shit happening.

Free market capitalism stopped child labour, not any amount of laws.

No, it didn't.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[s73v3r]

The parents of those children are the ones SENDING their kids to work

And the Free Market Capitalist is the one benefiting from their labor, creating a market for those children's labor, and forcing them to do the dangerous work. Why the fuck should they not be held responsible as well?

because it's bullshit and not a 'right' in any way.

Because it makes you feel less special? Only an idiot would say it's "not right".

The rights are being stolen - taken away, with every single bill that passes that has the word 'right' in it.

No, they aren't. Only assholes who would seek to deny those rights to other people would think that. And you know what? I really don't care what they think, because their opinion isn't worth shit.

The so called 'Civil Rights Act' was an entitlement and obligation act in reality

Yes, those entitled assholes! Thinking that they should be treated like people!

It's not a right for somebody to be given an entitlement for a LAWSUIT against somebody else, when that somebody else exercises their right to do business as they wish on their own private fucking property, you douche.

Yes, it is, if that person is conducting business in a way that harms other people.

For some reason, you have this completely retarded notion that business owners are the highest class of people, and should be given all the rights, while we should be forced to subsist on their table scraps. Get this out of your head. That is not a recipe for a successful society.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Pubstar]

14 is the lowest legal age you can be hired in CA, and there is no other paperwork required from the school besides a permit to work from the school. Only difference is that 14-15 year olds can only work 4 hours a day after school, grand total of 20 hours per week. 16-18 year olds can work up to 32 hours, no restriction on hours per day, but you cant stay past 10PM on school nights (or something like that)

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[green1]

While I don't condone what foxconn does, unpaid internships are pretty common in many many different fields in most first world countries. In most of those internships the unpaid person works HARDER than those getting paid, and at least the same, if not more, hours.

Now you could argue that this is a bad idea all around, but you can hardly use that as the example of what makes foxconn different and worse than companies operating in major western countries.

Sinking pretty low in the mud

[chicago_scott]

A bill like this would be an admission by the United States what we can no longer compete in the same manner that we've done for the past 236 years. Everyone all the way back to our great, great, great, great, great grandparents have been able to compete in the world using what was more or less the current patenting system (and build one of the most prosperous counties in the world during that time, by the way).

But now we're admitting that our generation can't do it.

Congress Doesn't Get It

[ZombieBraintrust]

The majority of patents are never read. 382,679 patents were granted in 2011. Most of those are effectivily sercret simply because they are a needle in haystack of 400,000 things.

non-publication request (37 C.F.R. 1.213)

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want your patent application to be published before it actually issues as a patent, you simply make a non-publication request upon filing it. The catch is you can only file for a patent in the US. This is with the existing patent system. No changes required:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxr_1_213.htm#cfr37s1.213

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Free market capitalism stopped child labour, not any amount of laws.

How did the demand for cheap labour save children? No-one cared about 3 year-olds crawling through chimneys. Labour laws were created by the political correctness of the day: Avoiding a prick-teasing level of undress. (Look at women's clothes today!).

Suddenly Victorian England realised one effect of Industrialisation: 15 year-olds working in coal mines, without underwear, in those dark tunnels, indulging their natural urges. Oh, the horror! Someone, think of the children!

That drove the general law, that children should be protected from the pain and danger of the workplace.

Once again Congress doesn't understand...

[Patent Lover]

... the purpose of patents. The applicant gets limited exclusivity. The public gets disclosure.

suing

[Anonymous Coward]

company a: you are infringing on our patents!
company b: which patent?
a: i can't tell you that
b: why not?
a: it's a secret; if i told you, id have to kill you
EPILOUGE: 1 month later, company b goes bankrupt for the patent of having a company, just before b was about to release a cure to cancer. Patent law sucks.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I already secretly patented that Idea

Actually this isn't too revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Prior to November 29, 2000, no patent applications in the United States were published until they issued as patents. Applications that were held up under secrecy orders (technology that a branch of the military indicated should be kept as a secret) would not issue until the secrecy order was removed...which could take a VERY long time.

The 1999 AIPA added 35 U.S.C. 122, which provided for regular publication under 122(b) at 18 months after the date of earliest priority. But there's nothing requiring publication at 18 months. Under 122(b)(2)(B), applicants could for free opt not to have their application published. In exchange for no publication, the applicant must give up filing applications internationally, and if they do file internationally (PCT) or in a foreign office, they must rescind the non-publication request. But under 122(b)(2)(B), these applications stay under wraps until they issue, and no one knows they're pending until they issue as a patent, if they ever do.

My experience is that very few applicants when I was a patent examiner requested non publication of their patent application (can't give details). Sometimes you notice that the application in question is very important, but a lot of times, particular assignees just prefer to go that way. Most assignees don't care, even if they have no plans to file internationally and non publication is free. Sometimes they deliberately publish in order to send a message to their competitors.

Section 122 grants the Director the authority to determine how applications publish. The Director also maintains authority not to publish certain applications; e.g. applications that are intended to be offensive or of inventions whose purpose is to break the law, etc. While I can imagine they might try to get this through the rulemaking process, I would be concerned that this exceeds the Director's rulemaking authority.

One other concern with this change is that if more applications, especially in important and fast moving areas, don't publish at 18 months, prior art to reject applications will be impinged. Currently, the way to deal with applications that can only be rejected by secret prior art is to suspend the application briefly if the older application will issue soon, or to issue first application and then to declare an interference when the second application is ready to issue. But under the AIA, interferences are no longer available, so even if the first application is the junior party, it will have already issued and gone out the door.

Your patent was my patent, or is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ideas might just be in those secret patents.

Has anyone seen DARL lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course everything should be secret until after you pay the money for infringing my secret patent, in fact even the settling amount should be secret you let it blank for me to fill the sum, and you will see it in your next bank report. The places where you source code infringes my secret patent will of course remain secret, to prevent other infringing companies to "design around" and wrongfully escape my upcoming lawsuits.

Publishing is fundamental in how patents work.

[giorgist]

Publishing is fundamental in how patents work.

If you invent something, and you keep it a secret and sombody else invents it as well,
then you might have a hard time proving that your invemtion is novel.

Once you publish it, the next inventor will have a hard time proving that they did not copy you.

I am all for this secret business. If nobody else comes up with your idea in the two years following your invention,
then you have invented somthing novel.

BRILLIANT, we have fixed the patent system.

Do patents promote sharing of new technologies?

[nick_urbanik]

Through the preservation, classification, and dissemination of patent information, the Office promotes the industrial and technological progress of the nation and strengthens the economy.

The USPTO also disseminates patent and trademark information that promotes an understanding of intellectual property protection and facilitates the development and sharing of new technologies worldwide.

uspto.gov

I've been told patents support innovation. I see that, in relation to software, they are used more like nuclear arsenals. Their true purpose becomes plainer.

Re:If USA cannot compete without artificial limits

[LienRag]

Indeed. Child labor was challenged when the military discovered that a generation that lost its health toiling in unhealthy condition before puberty couldn't provide enough canon fodder for the next war when they grow up (even if they live long enough to be of enlisted age).

Raging hypocrasy

[saveferrousoxide]

LET THE FREE MARKET DICTATE! NO REGULATIONS!

unless of course we're losing, then we clearly need to change the rules to work in our favor again.
Stop illegal immigration because their cheap labor is taking away American jobs...
Raise tariffs on imports that are cheaper than the stuff we make here...
Change our patent system to further reduce competition with our ideas...

OTHER THAN THAT: LET THE FREE MARKET DICTATE!