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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.'"
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.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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.
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?
Loren Osborn
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
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.
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.
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-?
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.
... 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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
-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.
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.
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