Slashdot Mirror
Why There Are Too Many Patents In America
whitroth writes "The judge who just dismissed the lawsuit between Apple and Motorola writes a column explaining what he considers to be reasonable uses of patents, and unreasonable ones. One of his thoughts would be to require a patent holder to produce the patented item within a certain time, to cut out patent trolls."
who worked for a company that got sued by a patent troll for some really insane email to fax patent from the 1990s that would NEVER have been a commercial product, I concur.
Make it, sell it, or the patent is tossed. Give them 3 years.
Why are there too many patents in the USA? because the country is owned by lawyers?
Something doesn't work: find somebody to sue! Not sure if whether to sue? A lawyer will recommend you do! Got an idea which might be worth a couple of dollars, keep you fed for a couple of months? patent it and claim anybody using the idea is putting you out of the equivalent of the GDP of an average European country!
Where do these people get the figures from?
Maybe that's not the case but it looks like it from outside ;-)
I do not find many people that disagree with the idea of patents: Namely, that you publish how something works, and then for a limited period of time, you are allowed exclusive rights to sell that something. Then everyone is allowed to do it. When the patent system was first invented (pre-industrial era), new inventions came out every few years. The steam engine, which became the locomotive, which became the combustion engine, which became the car, etc. Technological progress from decade to decade wasn't that fast. Ford created the assembly line, and 14 years later, it was still a novel concept. Today, much of the equipment and processes we had a decade ago isn't worth much more than scrap. 10 years is a very long time. But patents still have the same timeframe; 7 to 14 years. 14 years ago, broadband internet was a luxury item only the rich and a few people lucky enough to be in the right neighborhoods could get... Today, it's just assumed you'll have access to it, and at a reasonable price.
The patent system needs to take into account the industry in which the patent's primary use is: Metallurgy, for example... not exactly a fast-moving industry. Software design... very fast moving industry. It's stupid that the time limits are the same for a new computer algorithm, or a new metal deposition technique.
The other part of this is the originality of the invention; A hundred years ago, every invention was novel, because few people had the resources to research, prototype, develop, and market something new. Today, there are hacker spaces in most metropolitan areas. Anyone with an idea for a new idea, process, or concept, can plunk down a few thousand and develop a new invention. A lot of it isn't even original; it's repurposing technology designed for a different use. And that's where the patent system fails miserably -- today, they take a patent for encoding binary data over copper wires (original idea), and when it expires, they submit a new patent for encoding data over the internet. Same tech. Same concept. Slightly different application. New patent. BZZZZT! No. No new patent should be given. Only truly original, game-changing technology, something that advances the state of the art, should be awarded a patent. Otherwise, it's just re-engineering... anyone with a basic grasp of the concepts could do it.
Fix those two problems, fix most of what's wrong with the patent system today. Most.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
If you stopped producing the object what good does it do society if you're allowed to keep the patent? Other companies should be able to make use of the patent if you don't make use of your government granted monopoly.
So a troll would just need to have a coder write a proof of concept implementation
fair enough, at least that's far more effort than they currently have to go to. Once they've done that though, you have a defence that you are not infringing - if you perform your task in a different way.
See, there are thousands of mousetrap patents in the US patent files, but in software terms, 'catching a mouse using a device utilising mechanical or electronic or other means' is what is patented, which stops anything remotely related to the vague idea that is part of the patent.
So making the patent holder create a working version would help a lot. Patenting GSM radio networks, for example, would be valid. Patenting a way of sliding an icon to unlock a screen would also be valid - but you could create your own slide-to-unlock as long as it used a different mechanism, just like people can continue to patent their own ways of catching mice.
How about this concept. Currently, the default assumption is that anything can be patented. Devices, processes, visual styles, anything. There are a few things that explicitly aren't allowed to be patented (such as mathematical algorithms - yes, laugh everyone), but as long as something doesn't fall into one of those categories, and meets some very minimal requirements (being original, useful, and non-obvious to a patent lawyer), it's patentable.
Let's reverse it. By default, things cannot be patented. The government shouldn't give out monopolies by default. Then we should consider specific categories and decide whether there's an overwhelming social interest in letting that type of invention - and only that type - be patented. And we should use a very high standard for making that decision. If there's any uncertainty in whether patents for a category of invention would really help society, we should err against giving out monopolies.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
What's with the term "Big Pharma"? Is there some sort of mom-and-pop pharmaceutical company that is the alternative to Glaxo-Smith-Kline? Aren't they all big? Isn't there just "Pharma"?
There are a lot of researchers who don't work for those companies. Trying to do things like develop a cure for cancer, HIV, diabetes... things Big Pharma won't do because the cocktails of medications to treat the aforementioned diseases bring in a lot of money. And that money would go away if there was a way to cure those people, instead of just treat them. I can show you stacks of internal memos and documentation showing that the major pharmaceutical companies purposefully stall and delay research into cures, and there have been several cases where they've sued to prevent universities and private researchers from pursuing testing of certain chemical compounds because they infringed on a patent -- after research showed dramatic and sustained improvements in a patient's health that reduced or eliminated their dependancy on already-existing drugs.
It's called Big Pharma because they're not about making sick people better, they're about making money off of sick people -- as long as they stay sick, Big Pharma stays profitable. None of this nonsense about making lightbulbs that last a hundred years... we all know what happened to the company that solved the problem too well.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
And agree with it?
Posner's suggestion of having different patent terms for different industries is not news, that idea has been circulating for decades, and probably longer. It's something that he's actually endorsing it in public, I guess.
Someone on slashdot recently linked a great TED talk about the general lack of IP protection in the fashion industry, and how it has actually worked out really well for them. Trademarks protect your profit margin, but you can't prevent anyone from making a shoe.
I see software as being somewhat similar. I should be able to make an online store without violating someone's IP, but I shouldn't be able to call it "Amazon".
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
Wrong!
Duplicating existing drugs is easy. It's not completely trivial, but usually doable by a small lab in a short amount of time. And most of synthesis steps are so generic that they can't be patented in themselves. Their combination can be patented, but it would be trivial to work around it. Oh, and effective patent protection for a drug is about 10 years if you consider the time for clinical trials and regulatory approval.
I can show you stacks of internal memos and documentation showing that the major pharmaceutical companies purposefully stall and delay research into cures
Please do. The biggest known case was the use of antibiotics to treat ulcers. But that was about 50 years ago.