Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors?

whoever57 writes "Patent trolls like to claim that patent laws provide a way that small inventors can create products and benefit financially from their invention. One such inventor faces selling his house, despite inventing a product that has sold tens of millions worldwide. From the article: 'Inventor Trevor Baylis says he faces having to sell his house after failing to make money from his wind up radio and is now calling for the government to step into to protect inventors. “I’ve got someone coming around in the next couple of weeks to do a valuation on my house,” says Trevor Baylis, as he walks into the sitting room of his home on Eel Pie Island, in Twickenham, south-west London. “I’m going to have to sell it or remortgage it – I’m totally broke. I’m living in poverty here.”'"

Comments

Of course it protects the small investor

[SerpentMage]

The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[SerpentMage]

Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[rtfa-troll]

The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.

You are partly right. However, in this case the problem has started earlier and it really is the inventor. If you work in a big company and you come up with an invention your idea will go into the patent but you will put it through a patent expert. That person will take your work and turn it into something you don't recognize (there have been quite a few comments like that on Slashdot). What they are doing is taking your idea and generalizing it. They will ask "why did you use a spring" you will say "to store the energy". They will now take that patent and change it to say "in the preferred embodiment then energy will be stored in a spring, however one skilled in the art can also see that other methods of energy storage such as lifting a weight could also be used". Then, when the company changes your idea to use a battery instead that will fall under "other methods of energy storage".

This is before you even get to the stage of losing out due to lack of lawyers to fight in court with.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[SerpentMage]

Ah thanks... Sorry I mistyped... And your answer is to call me a moron! Cool, good for you! Thank-you for adding to the conversation.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[ShanghaiBill]

The question here is incorrect.

The question is also misapplied. Trevor Baylis is not a good poster child for "ripped-off" inventors. First of all, he did not invent the wind up radio. He just invented a more practical way of storing the energy (using a constant force spring). But his business partners decided his spring was too expensive, and replaced it with a conventional crank and used batteries to even out the power (the article calls this a "tweak"). In other words they did not use his invention. To suggest he is being "ripped off" because he is not receiving royalties from someone not using his patent is pretty silly.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[rtfa-troll]

Actually the other point would have been more clever. The inventors themselves very rarely end up owning the patents and defending them. It's more the companies that buy the patents in off the inventors in one way or another.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Gaygirlie]

The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.

That's not the whole answer. A small-time inventor can't protect himself/herself from patent trolls and patent-hoarding entities simply because they do not have the cash or other resources to do that. As the system stands it places the entities with huge arsenals of patents in a completely unreachable position and these small-time inventors at the rock bottom, favoring the established entities and basically telling small-time inventors not to bother at all. As such the issue is two-fold: they can't protect themselves, nor can they protect their own patents, leaving them all open and vulnerable.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[gmanterry]

The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.

No. this is the problem with American society now. Unless you are wealthy you can not win if someone with more money attacks you in the legal system. Even if you are 100% in the right the opposition can use their resources to drain what little money you might have and win any legal battle by just delaying and causing you to spend more money you don't have. This is not justice but it is the way the system works.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Master Moose]

So to get full protection, patents should become more vague and theoretical?

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[fbobraga]

but it was an "insightful post", sir grammar-nazi

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't know whether there was any really nasty interpersonal knife-twisting and violatation-of-not-actually-contracts-but-verbally-they-felt-like-them in that specific case(which my account for some of the bitterness swirling around it; but I certainly wouldn't want to be 'guy with a clever mechanical power-smoothing technique' in a world where supercaps have become downright cheap, and the demands of digital electronics of various flavors have driven serious improvements in DC-DC conversion and various techniques for bludgeoning ill-mannered input power into nice clean low-voltage DC...

The question that I'm left with is whether the spring arrangement was simply too expensive in absolute terms(ie, even if the 'intellectual property' were valued at zero, is the BOM cost of the spring +simpler electronics just higher than dumb crank + more sophisticated power conditioning apparatus) or whether this is a case where the patent holder, by holding out for more than he was worth, encouraged people to 'innovate around' the patent.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[XaXXon]

Yes. You get what you patent. It needs to be as general as possible without being so general that you can find prior art.

Also, this is why there are independent and dependent claims in a patent. Basically you can have part of the claim be rejected but not other parts, as long as you properly draw the line when you're writing the patent.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[houghi]

If you work in a big company (i.e. an employee), it is not your patent.
If you work FOR a big company (i.e. a contractor or as an employee that dispatched from a subcontractor or similar), it depends on what your contact says and the specific situation. I am a lawyer and I can advice you. (Hey, I am on the Internets. I can be anything I like.)

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[icebike]

He had already licensed the technology. He wasn't holding out. It was a simple bill of materials problem as you surmised.

He failed to notice the electronics age obviated the need for a spring as an energy storage method.

Since all he actually held a patent on was the clockwork for releasing spring tension, when that method became un-necessary, he lost out.

John Hutchinson, chief technology officer at Freeplay, said Mr Baylis had voluntarily sold his shares in the company and that technology had moved on, leaving his original patent outdated.
He said: “Freeplay developed its own technology and by 2000 no more clockwork radios were made. The method was to use human power to recharge a battery.

I fail to see what his complaint in here. Competitors aren't using the ONLY thing his 40 year old patent covered.
He had stock in the company that was making radios with his invention, and sold it. Had he held on to that
he would still be making some money, or at least have a nest egg.

I see nothing to complain about here.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[theVarangian]

Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.

Precisely... lawsuits in general are something the average citizen cannot afford if they drag on for any length of time. The legal system has become an instrument of extortion for rich people people with money to burn.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"If you work in a big company (i.e. an employee), it is not your patent."

That is by no means a given in the U.S. It depends on many factors. The only time it is automatic (and not even all of those times), is if it came from work you do for the company, in the normal course of your duties as an employee, for pay, and there are no other agreements.

If it is something you did on your own time, it only belongs to the company if you have a specific agreement saying that any inventions you create while in the employ of Company X belong to Company X. (Such agreements do exist, though I would never sign one. My father got screwed over by one of those. He threw his own time and expertise into inventing a tool that is now in common use, but the company got the patent rights because he had signed that sort of agreement.)

Otherwise, if it is something you did on your own time, it is yours. But you might have to prove it in order to keep it.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"... and violatation-of-not-actually-contracts-but-verbally-they-felt-like-them in that specific case..."

Here is a little bit of Contract Law 101:

If you agreed to something in good-faith negotiation, and there is "consideration" on both sides, and it doesn't otherwise violate law, then it's a contract. It doesn't have to be on paper. That piece of paper is nothing more than evidence of your contract; it is not, in itself, the contract. (Though it must be said that it can be pretty powerful evidence.)

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"If you work in a big company (i.e. an employee), it is not your patent."

Let me give you a real example of what I was saying above. Just hypothetically:

You work for McDonald's. Your contract says you were hired as a "cook" (you flip hamburgers), and there is nothing specific in your work contract about patents.

Later, your manager somehow finds out about your degree in Mechanical Engineering, and asks you to give some thought toward improving a piece of equipment in the restaurant. He says he will pay your normal wages if you take some time during your shifts to find a way to make it better. In the process of working on that milkshake machine, you invent a gadget or process that makes it 50% more efficient (whatever that means for milkshake machines).

McDonald's does NOT own any rights to the patent, because Mechanical Engineering is not "in the normal course of your duties" as a hamburger flipper. Even though you were specifically asked to do it, for pay.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[rtfa-troll]

This has already happened. Try reading some random patents one day and you will see that you probably don't understand what they are about. This is especially true once you know that the only bit which matters, legally, is really the claims. Have a look at just the first claim (the first is normally the most general claim) of a random patent and see if you can understand what the original idea was. The original aim of the patent system was to ensure that inventions were recorded that might otherwise disappear when their inventor died. This has been subverted so that now the aim of most patents is to block competitors from a wide range of activities related to a product or even product idea.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[deimtee]

I think the company would argue that, and possibly win. Every employment contract I have ever seen has a line in there about "other duties as directed". If the manager asked you to improve it, and you did it while on the clock, it would probably come under that clause.
On the other hand, if you saw something you thought could be improved and worked on it in your own time, that is yours.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[hairyfish]

Yes. You get what you patent. It needs to be as general as possible without being so general that you can find prior art.

Can get a patent on "A thing that does stuff"? This should pretty much cover me for everything that is yet to be invented for the rest of time.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly yes but it's not novel. But it won't stop me for patenting under your patent. AKA if you patented a thing that does stuff. I could still patent a thing that heats up. So long as I list your patent and explain that my something is different or an improvement on your something as in novel in it's own right. Now if I wanted to make something that heats up I would have to get the okay from you to use your patent.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[jrumney]

The question is also misapplied. Trevor Baylis is not a good poster child for "ripped-off" inventors

He's not a particularly good poster child for someone living in poverty either, living on his island on the Thames in South West London. He's just overextended his finances, and has an overextended sense of entitlement to match.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Stormthirst]

And worse, all the major companies tend to cross license with each other. So the big boys don't sue each other as often as they should (round corners etc not withstanding). This puts the little guy at an even bigger disadvantage as they don't have a large patent portfolio to leverage.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Aserrann]

You kind of miss the point with that line about every employment contract having that line. His point was that there is no inherent patent transfer to employer. In fact, if he was wrong, why would contracts say it?

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[hazah]

If the thinking is within the expected field, then sure. If the "thinking" is taking advantage of a real trade having nothing to do with the job, I wouldn't assume so.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Runaway1956]

"He says he will pay your normal wages if you take some time during your shifts to find a way to make it better."

Accepting wages, on company time, to do a company assigned task, specifically requested by a company representative.

And, let's trash this idea of specialization. If you're a burger flipper, and all you do is spend hours each day flipping burgers, then yeah, you're going to think about ways to improve your job. People think about increasing temperatures, decreasing temperatures, using more grease, using less grease, remixing the spices, using a different bun - it goes on and on. A person who suddenly realizes that tweaking a gadget related to his grill might improve the product and/or require less effort to make the same quality product isn't working outside his field at all. Cooks invent new recipes and new methods of cooking, after all. Geeks might invent new ways to apply heat energy to things, but cooks don't use blow torches and arc welders to cook stuff. Cooks specify, design, and order the tools that work, and it's no great stretch to actually "invent" a new piece of equipment for the kitchen.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Anonymous Coward]

Meaning that the republic, in its US constitutional sense, have failed its purpose.

And would be to protect people from coercion, be it physical, mental, emotional or economic.

ovo -hoot

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Anonymous Coward]

And then you have companies that do not know what they have on their hands and let the employee keep it.

Woz lucked out on that, in a sense, when creating what became the Apple 1 while working for HP.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"And then you have companies that do not know what they have on their hands and let the employee keep it. Woz lucked out on that, in a sense, when creating what became the Apple 1 while working for HP."

Why is this "-1"? And why can't we see the moderation popup anymore? Come on, /. Stop playing Apple and removing functionality.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think the company would argue that, and possibly win."

Companies HAVE argued that, and lost. That's why I wrote it.

Admittedly, "normal course of your duties" can be a gray area. But that's why I used a pretty clear example: it cannot be reasonably argued that mechanical engineering is a "normal duty" for a burger-flipper at McDonald's.

And they've tried the "other duties as directed" bit too. Sorry, but it won't wash. Normal means normal.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"So your manager could pay you to do something, which you could then patent and sue him for using?"

Yes. Very much so. It can happen and has happened.

If you are an employer, and you want someone's expertise outside their "normal duties", it behooves you to draw up a separate contract for that, if you have any aspirations of getting a patent out of it (and there is no other agreement).

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think you defeated your own argument with "He says he will pay your normal wages if you take some time during your shifts to find a way to make it better."

You might think that, but you'd be wrong. IANAL, but this was pretty clear in my Contract Law classes at university. It has to be part of the employee's "normal duties", or else you need a separate agreement.

The courts have repeatedly ruled that mere compensation is only part of the formula. If you ask somebody to perform special skills that fall outside their normal duties as an employee, you have no claim to a patent on their invention, unless you have an agreement that specifically says so.

That is why I used the example that I did. There is no way in hell anybody could reasonably consider mechanical engineering to be a "normal duty" for a burger flipper.

Part of the reason for this rule is that it prevents companies from hiring mechanical engineers to flip burgers, then expecting to get mechanical engineering skills out of them for a burger flipper's wage.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"Accepting wages, on company time, to do a company assigned task, specifically requested by a company representative."

Doesn't matter. The courts have repeatedly enforced the rule that it has to be part of the "normal duties" reasonably expected for that job.

The reason for this -- or part of the reason, at least -- is to prevent abuse. It prevents companies from hiring mechanical engineers as burger flippers, then expecting to get mechanical engineering out of them in exchange for the wages normally paid a burger flipper.

Granted, "normal course of duty" can be a pretty gray area sometimes... but sometimes not. I think my example was a pretty clear case of not. "Justified homicide" is a pretty gray area too... but it definitely exists in the law.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"Cooks specify, design, and order the tools that work, and it's no great stretch to actually "invent" a new piece of equipment for the kitchen."

Yes. But. You're stretching my example a bit far. Sure, they improve things... people like to do that. But for one thing, you're talking about cooks working in a kitchen. There was a reason I put "cook" in quotes. A burger flipper is to a cook like a Razor scooter is to a motorcycle. And a McDonald's is not a "kitchen" in any sense that could be applied to a chef, who might actually be reasonably expected to do some of the things you say.

The question here is under what conditions an employer has a legal right to a patent. And the answer, according to the courts, is clearly "not in this case". In fact a very similar situation was one of our case studies in school.

In my example, the manager knew full well the employee had a specific technical skill that is NOT normally part of a burger flipper's job, and asked him to employ that skill for the company. It is simply NOT a "normal duty" for a burger flipper at McDonald's to be doing mechanical engineering for a burger flipper's pay.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[erroneus]

I don't suppose it would help to mention that this story is in the UK? That the inventor went into business with a partner who tweaked the invention to "charge a battery" instead of directly powering the device(s) and so they created a new patent and he lost control of his invention.

There's more than patent law at play here though I would say he would have a strong case to sue the partner as they merely made an adaptation on his patent and so he is still entitled to some of his patent claims.

But this is how the system(s) work now.. the people with the most knowledge of the system(s) and the least amount of moral integrity will win out.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

"The few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons." - Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

And, by extension, participation in the legal system.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Marxdot]

investor, inventor - SAME FUCKING THING in this context.

Absolutely not.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[dbIII]

in a world where supercaps have become downright cheap

Even if you saw that coming 15+ years ago the idea still had a bit of life before now when windup torches, solar garden lights etc are utterly trivial designs made from parts almost cheap enough to be given away with a box of cornflakes.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[DKlineburg]

Ok. So someone invented this thing called a virtual shopping cart. Another company "tweaked" the code slightly and had a shopping cart themselves. This sounds familiar. So which is right? You can tweak it? You can't Tweak it? How much Tweaking is a new design?

I think I read about this on /. actually. I think some people might have even said the person claiming to have the original idea was a patent troll? I'm not saying which side is right. I don't know if I have an answer honestly. But you have to think, isn't the exact same argument?

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[DKlineburg]

I think a school just tried to say that what a teacher comes up with on there own time they owned. I don't know who won, just saying. They try to do it.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[deimtee]

Legally, you're probably right. But I think in practice it would generally be not so clear cut, and I think who actually filed the patent would be an important factor.
If you are working on the milkshake machine and improve it, and your manager sees that and runs off and files a patent in the name of the company, then I think your would have a tough time reclaiming it.
On the other hand, if you go off and patent it in your name before you show it to the company, you would have a much better chance of claiming that it was yours and not part of your employment.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[mdielmann]

Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.

This is akin to saying, "There's nothing wrong with your car, per se, it's just a fundamental problem with the brakes." And yet my car is still wrapped around the tree. In other words, the legal process of dealing with patent disputes is part of the patent system.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[wvmarle]

Actually I have read several patents over the years, including a few as part of a literature research on some subject I was working on.

And I mostly did understand what was going on - as a GP mentioned a lot of the text will be phrases like "the preferred will be but may be within ". The "preferred" part is what is interesting, the rest you can ignore as it's there indeed just for preventing easy circumventions.

The same for the drawings, it is very often "for example, a spring", where you just ignore the "for example" part and go with the "spring" part.

The patents I've read had to do with polymers and chemical reactions and processes related to them, which is my field of expertise. For fun I've actually sometimes looked at patents in totally different fields, and then indeed I couldn't understand much of what was written.

The real trouble starts with software and business method patents as they are so vague and do not involve proper technical inventions that they indeed are quite impossible to understand. Another matter may be design patents, I've never (tried to) read one of those, that's yet a whole different category. But then design patents are supposed to be very specific actually.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[ShakaUVM]

>Can get a patent on "A thing that does stuff"?

This patent will not cover Windows 8.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Hognoxious]

I am a lawyer and I can advice you.

I think the word you're looking for is invoice.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[TheRaven64]

When I worked for a big R&D firm, their basic rule of thumb was that a patent that you care about needs between £100,000 and £1,000,000 of capital sitting around to protect it. For a big company, you can amortise this, because you are unlikely to need to defend more than a few patents at a time. If someone infringes your patent, and you don't have a million sitting around to take them to court, then your best (financial) bet is to sell the patent to a patent troll that does. The big companies know this, and so won't have a problem infringing patents owned by small companies - if it becomes a problem then they'll offer to buy the company for less than the value of the patent, knowing that the smaller company doesn't really have a choice. They'll also offer very one-sided cross-licensing agreements (license this one patent to us and we'll let you use 10 of ours. Yes, ours are all likely invalid, but it would cost you more than you can afford to get them invalidated in court...).

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[twebb72]

On the other hand, if you saw something you thought could be improved and worked on it in your own time, that is yours.

Until you realize that the court fees will bankrupt you because you're being sued by McDonald's. I think this thread has totally lost the spirit of the article.
If you patented an invention that was remotely related to McDonald's, while on the clock or off the clock, while being employed by them or not; you LOSE in court. Period.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Hognoxious]

Even though you were specifically asked to do it, for pay.

That's almost a paraphrase of A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire">"work for hire".

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Znork]

Exactly. As long as the patent system is built to be an adversarial system where one of the parties has to get screwed for it to function, well, somebody is and chances are it's the little guy.

If someone actually wanted to make inventing and patenting easier and more consistently worthwhile then the system would be reconstructed so, for example, the patent office pays the inventor when his patent gets used, while the funding would be gathered as VAT or something general. It would become just another tax/subsidise scheme (just like it is anyway) handled like every other such scheme, accounted for within state budgets and evaluated for efficiency.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[heefeneet]

The question here is incorrect.

The question is also misapplied. Trevor Baylis is not a good poster child for "ripped-off" inventors. First of all, he did not invent the wind up radio.

That did not stop him for demanding patent infringement to be made a criminal offence. BBC article

Screw him.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Hognoxious]

and lastly the World Wide Web came from the Americans.

Al Gore invented the internet, not the web.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Vintermann]

There are very few good poster children for ripped-off inventors.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Hognoxious]

Perhaps you should google "England is not the USA", "repealed", and "Law Reform (Enforcement of Contracts) Act 1954", fatty?

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[craznar]

I can't afford the $250,000 it would cost to patent ONE thing.

So no - the patent system is for the wealthy.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[nukenerd]

He's not a particularly good poster child for someone living in poverty either, living on his island on the Thames in South West London. He's just overextended his finances, and has an overextended sense of entitlement to match.

Agreed. He is living in one of the most expensive spots in London. While "He built the house ..... in the 1970s for just £20,000" might sound cheap, it is disingenuous; that figure it cannot include the land cost, which was probably 10 times that figure back then and 100 times it today.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Aceticon]

I'm sorry, but if A depends on B and B is broken, then A is broken.

If I make a car that can be bought for $100, but requires a special fuel additive that brings fuel costs to $1000 per galon to work it is in fact NOT a cheap car.

As long as the patent system depends on an uneven and unfair legal system to work (and no measures are taken to ameliorate that), then it is an uneven and unfair system. No amount of excusing and "blame it on the other guys" will make up for the system having been setup in such a way that it relies on a flawed process (and is progressivelly being made even more so).

Or to go back to the car analogy, if I made the car such that it requires ultra expensive fuel additives, it's my fault, not the fault of the maker of the fuel additive.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[ranulf]

There are several problems here that could have led to his predicament.

Firstly, he filed an overly narrow patent - the charging a battery application is an obvious extension to his original design that he should either have generalised his patent application slightly or field another patent for charging a battery via a wind up device. Whether the company he worked with came up with the later invention or another company did, he still wouldn't have made money from the second invention, because he didn't patent it.

The second problem is that it sounds as if he negotiated a bad business deal. If his original product sold millions, then a relatively low-per unit royalty should have easily cleared all his debts. I suspect he sold the idea for this product to the company as a one off so that he could carry on inventing, keeping those ideas to himself. In this case, the company has no obligation to him and they would logically do R&D to see what else they could develop. Had he negotiated differently, he could have been an employee of the company, carrying out further R&D and being named on the patents. Obviously, he made the gamble and chose wrongly on this occasion.

I feel for the guy, but it sounds like he didn't pay enough attention to the business side or had too much optimism for his future inventing potential. He should probably have involved a patent lawyer earlier on in the process. Perhaps even as a inventor and not a salesman himself, he should have hired someone to pitch the product to investors to get the best deal. But either way, knowing how to capitalise on an invention is just as important as the invention itself. It's never enough to just file a patent and hope the money rolls in.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[AK Marc]

I don't know how patents go in the UK, but in the US, derivative works are covered by the original patent and the modification. If you take velcro and improve it in a manner that is a minor tweak of the original, then the new invention is covered by both. You don't get to use your own invention without licensing the original from the original holder, and they can't use yours without licensing it from you, even if it is based on their original patent.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"Legally, you're probably right. But I think in practice it would generally be not so clear cut, and I think who actually filed the patent would be an important factor. "

What I described *IS* the actual practice. This -- or something so close to this as makes no difference -- was a case study in a college course in contract law.

While "normal duties" includes some gray area, the law itself is quite clear on this matter.

While you may be right about what is easier to do, that doesn't change who is ultimately in the right when it comes to patent ownership. Patent suits are a bitch, but that really has no bearing on the issue I mentioned.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think this thread has totally lost the spirit of the article."

This thread wasn't ABOUT the article. It was about an inaccurate statement made by somebody who was commenting on the article.

Give it a rest, man. I see whole pages of comments on /. that aren't specifically about TFA or the OP.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"If you patented an invention that was remotely related to McDonald's, while on the clock or off the clock, while being employed by them or not; you LOSE in court. Period."

Not so. And if fact that's a pretty bad attitude.

Example: you know that "burp tank" in your car? The one that catches the spillover when your radiator gets hot, then allows the cooling system to suck it back when it cools off?

The guy who invented (and patented) it took it to every major automobile in the WORLD (at the time): General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, BMW, Daimler (that was before the Chrysler merger), Toyota, Honda, etc. They all turned him down. Yet... the next model year, guess what? Amazingly, they ALL had burp tanks.

I saw him interviewed on TV. At the time of the interview he had sued 7 of those companies, and gotten a settlement every time, averaging $1,000,000 each. After his lawyer was paid. He said he had 12 more companies on his list.

Yes, it is possible to fight the big boys and win in patent court. Sure, the guy was getting settlements, not judgments, but that's only because the big auto companies KNEW they would either lose, or spend more money that it was worse defending themselves.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

s/major automobile/major automobile manufacturer

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"That's almost a paraphrase of 'work for hire'."

Maybe so but it ISN'T "work for hire". You seem to have missed the point of what I was saying. The big difference is that there is no discussion of the "normal course of your duties" context.

For example, they mention that Microsoft hired some contract workers to help build Windows. But -- and this is the important part -- THAT WAS THEIR NORMAL JOB. That's what they were hired to do. My example was specifically about someone who was hired to do one thing, then asked to do something else that was in a completely different context, and required a completely different skill set, than what he was hired for.

In my example, it wasn't [from your Wikipedia article] "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment". It was OUTSIDE any reasonable interpretation of the scope of his employment.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"[citation needed]"

I have already given my citation. This was a case study in a University course on Contract Law.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[grantspassalan]

A patent is like a treasure. You have to be able to protect it from thieves. A treasure such as a large pile of gold, is ultimately protected by force of arms. If it is an immense treasure you need a large army to defend it. The only difference is that the army defending a treasure uses guns, whereas a patent treasure is defended by an army of lawyers. In either case, if you can't afford a large army, the treasury will be stolen from you by someone who can afford such an army.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[chrismcb]

Ok. So someone invented this thing called a virtual shopping cart. Another company "tweaked" the code slightly and had a shopping cart themselves.

The FIRST problem is you are talking about "another company" and not your business partner.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[JasterBobaMereel]

He is an inventor, not a businessman ...

He should not have to "pay attention to the business side" that is what Patents are supposed to protect inventors from

So Patents protect you from people stealing your idea, unless they make minor changes, or you cannot afford to defend it, or they can afford better lawyers than you....so no protection at all really ...

This is what I hate about Dragons Den/Shark Tank they get people with good ideas who have no business sense, and they get no help ...They get other people with a very basic idea and business sense and they get help, even though they don't really need it ...

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Rogerborg]

The purpose of patents is to encourage and enable inventors to invent. If they have to spend all of their time and money dealing with lawyers and accountants and marketeers, then the system is broken.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[JasterBobaMereel]

"Contract Law 101" : The term 101 seems to indicate that you don't know anything outside the USA since this term is meaningless to anyone who did not go through the US School system .... likewise US contract Law and UK/European Contract law, although based in the same roots are very different nowadays ...

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[JasterBobaMereel]

" ...this is the problem with society now. Unless you are wealthy you can not win if someone with more money attacks you in the legal system. .." corrected that for you ...

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[MobyDobie]

I would be amazed if winding something up to charge a battery were patentable. The article is, i believe, misleading. He invented a specific device, not the idea of using wind-up to power electrical devices. Winding things to make electricity is a pretty standard technique, as is using a rechargeable battery. People have been doing both for many years. I would be amazed if this combination had not been done before many times, and would not be obvious (and therefore unpatentable) even if it had not. The reason he probably got a narrow patent (wind-up + radio) is that is all he could get or was entitled to. He is. Not entitled to wind-up to charge a battery (which in turn might be connected to anything including a radio), nor wind-up to do anything else that involves electricity. What he seems to be doing is now claiming his narrow patent should allow him to control a much broader range of devices, including unpatentable ones. He is the troll here, much like software patent trolls who invent some specific imaging technique, and then claim it allows them to control all images on the Internet or whatever.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[HornWumpus]

Crank powered radios are an old invention. Neither patent should have been issued.

This is just a bad example. This 'inventor' should go broke.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Anonymous Coward]

What you seem to have missed here is two things:
1. Baylis is a media whore who has been agitating for criminalisation of patent infringement for years, and will hold up anything he can think of that suggests patent law is too lax.
2. This is not even approximately like a case of actual patent infringement. Baylis's patent is for a "Spring operated current generator for supplying controlled electric current to a load", a device which quite simply is not needed for a mechanically powered radio thst has a battery. His invention was not the idea of the wind-up radio (these existed before he came along) but a clever way of building one so that a battery wouldn't be needed. Unfortunately his invention turned out tho be pointless... Batteries are now much cheaper and more reliable than his clockwork arrangement.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[leuk_he]

1% of a invention is inspiration
99% of a invention is transpiration... you have to spend that on the ugly business things. The workarround for that is to work for a big company that will handle the non-creative part of it, but then the big money is also going that way.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[hazah]

I'm sure you've made your point even stronger now by making it ad hominem. You get a sticker.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[MysteriousPreacher]

The purpose of patents is to encourage and enable inventors to invent. If they have to spend all of their time and money dealing with lawyers and accountants and marketeers, then the system is broken.

Agreed, and do inventors typically spend all of their time and money dealing with lawyers, accountants, and marketeers? Probably not or we wouldn't be seeing any inventions.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Fnord666]

Ok. So someone invented this thing called a virtual shopping cart. Another company "tweaked" the code slightly and had a shopping cart themselves. This sounds familiar. So which is right? You can tweak it? You can't Tweak it? How much Tweaking is a new design?

Neither is right because "inventing" X, where X is just some existing Y but on a computer should not be patentable.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[mjwalshe]

are you not sure the default in the USA is that your employer owns stuff "related" to your employment and it would be hard for an employee to have the cash to fight a claim from an employer.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[usuallylost]

He is an inventor, not a businessman ...

Sad truth is that whether we like it or not everyone is, or should be, a businessman. Even if your business is just managing your own affairs you would be well served to make sure you do it in at least a semi-professional manner. Failure to do so can have dire consequences as this man is, unfortunately, finding out. He is losing everything because the company he started and then sold has changed the design to avoid his patent. It sounds like his failure to really manage the business side of his life is what is destroying him. In the modern world you can't get away with that. Especially if you are an inventor or creator of value. There are just to many people looking to prey upon you for you to not learn the business side of it.

Failure to properly manage your affairs can have wreck your life. I know people who have suffered great losses because they didn't do simple "businessman" type things. Just a few examples, control your spending with a budget; have a lawyer look over legal documents before you sign them; do a return on investment (ROI) assessment of things like specific college majors before you embark on them and taking on debt to get them. It seems simple but I have seen so many people I know quite literally wreck their lives from failing to do these things. If you don't want to suffer that fate then you are whatever else you do / businessman. That or you are liable to end up as whatever / victim. Personally I am going to stick with businessman if it at all possible.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[DKlineburg]

Fair point.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[DKlineburg]

I was only trying to point out that to me it appeared the /. crowd was wanting it both ways. Save the software from patent trolls, yet save the poor old man from big corporations. Effectively asking for opposite things in patents. Else where on here after I posted this I read that this person is a poor example. I do think the patent stuff is messed up, but don't have a solution.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[PoolOfThought]

Patent filing fees in total are less than $1000... you can take the time to do it yourself if you wish. Plenty of people do so. It will give you one hell of a hangover just from thinking so hard about getting the wording just right, but it's very doable. Here's the USPTO fee schedule: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee100512.htm

It's not the patent that costs a lot, it's the attorney fees that get ya. But guess what - a decent attorney would have saved this guy a ton of pain. They wouldn't have let him do up a patent for a spring powered wind up product. His patent, rather than covering a windup radio with a spring in it, would have been written something along the lines of a radio including "generating energy via [generic action phrase here, 'winding' being the simplest, but why limit it to that?] and storing the energy in a reservoir (covers mechanical [spring] and chemical [battery] and any other storage way).

Oh, and your $250,000 is ridiculous. I suppose it's possible to spend that obtaining a patent, but 1/10th ($25000) of that will cover medium-high complicated patents done by an attorney to make sure it's done just right. 1/200th ($1250) of that will cover you doing it yourself which is very possible for most purely mechanical inventions (the type the average inventor could whip up in their garage).

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Larryish]

He should not have to "pay attention to the business side" that is what Patents are supposed to protect inventors from

"Supposed" requires that a supposition be made.

Who makes this supposition? Under what authority?

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[twebb72]

The landscape has complete changed since 1987 when the 'burp tank' was filed. Not exactly apples to apples.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4762244/description.html

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[AK Marc]

So many inventions are stolen from the original inventor, namely God who put these inventions into the natural realm.

You may not patent a discovery (math, or things like rubber), but you may patent a specific application (cryptography algorithm) or process (heating tree sap to make rubber).

God has never filed for a patent.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[rtfa-troll]

I guess that is the smartest thing to do if I am a lone inventor..? Show the big players a proof of concept of something I can do and let them contract / hire / buy your company if they are interested?

N.B. this isn't really the best place to get advice. Your (patent) attorney will be better.

However, some things. A fundamental rule of patents is never to tell anyone not involved in the invention without having some kind of NDA in place. So your idea won't normally work because big companies normally won't agree to an NDA in this situation.

You might be able to get something in place by starting a patent application and then, having made the first application getting them involved before it's finished.

Very often the best thing to do is simply to publish the idea. Since you will have great difficulty benefiting from a patent you might as well save the fees. Publishing will stop anyone else from patenting the idea.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[grantspassalan]

Even if he had, those patents would have expired ages ago. He also does not send us the bill for the energy that His sun sends our way every day. (-:

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"Not exactly apples to apples."

The landscape may have changed, but the law has not. I was speaking to the law.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[twebb72]

The landscape may have changed, but the law has not. I was speaking to the law.

This cuts to the core of my original ('poor attitude') comment. International royalty / licensing fees increased from US$2.8 billion in 1970 to US$27 billion in 1990, and to approximately US$180 billion in 2009 – outpacing growth in global GDP. When you have a nut that skips an order of magnitude every decade, based upon intellectual property alone, we're left with crazy disparate ownership of IP on the side of businesses.

IIRC, around 1980, only about 60% of US companies were IP based. Now its over 95%. Basically, the entire US economy now runs on IP. Its not individuals who are benefiting from this increase in business owned IP. Enforcing your patent, on a big business, is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. They would likely settle out of court, or bury you depending on how much your asking for, perhaps both. Yes, the law is on your side if you are victim of legitimate patent infringement, and in the 1980s, you might have had a shot at enforcing your patent, up to and including jury trial. But now, the court system itself is where enforcement of ownership now comes to die, instead of an reasonably affordable and speedy trial.

Its turned into a poker game, where big business holds all the chips, and individuals barely have enough for the blinds to even play.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[hazah]

At MacDonalds!? Are you insane?

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Jane Q. Public]

"Its turned into a poker game, where big business holds all the chips, and individuals barely have enough for the blinds to even play."

Even if that were true, it is still incidental to my original comments. The law hasn't changed. If enforcement of the law is defective, then certainly that should be addressed. But that is not a flaw or change in the law, it is a problem of enforcement.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[tragedy]

Sad truth is that whether we like it or not everyone is, or should be, a businessman.

Sad truth is that, by "businessman", we really mean predatory scam artist here.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[tragedy]

If that's really the case, then patents are definitely unnecessary.

Re:Of course it protects the small investor

[Common Joe]

Sad truth is that whether we like it or not everyone is, or should be, a businessman.

The sad truth is then, as good a programmer as I may be, I'm going to really by beaten over the head by others who are not programmers. I don't have time to be a programming expert, financial expert, business expert, legal expert, fitness guru, family man, good friend. It would be nice if I could focus on being a programmer, family person, and friend with time enough to stay in shape. I don't have time to deal with finances, business, and legal ramifications of my programming decisions. Society should be giving me the ability to deal with this kind of stuff without going broke. This is not happening -- certainly not in my life and I suspect many other programmers as well.

NO

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't afford a lawyer.

Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[eldavojohn]

Quick disclaimer: I am not an anything.

Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors?

No. Nor have I ever heard anyway claim that as being their primary function. Let's adjust that to say that patent laws are designed to promote innovation and invention by disproportionately reward the production of ideas compared to the actual work and creation being done. This, in theory, helps any size of inventor put in R&D monies to chase a high reward. And, yes, I do think they have been successful to some extent in doing this although there is plenty of evidence that they have gone too far as of late. They've also been applied to things that probably shouldn't be patentable like genes and software.

One such inventor faces selling his house, despite inventing a product that has sold tens of millions worldwide.

Pardon my anecdotal apathy but so what? Plenty of Americans squander money like it's nobody's business. I'd imagine there are tons of engineers out there that are brilliant inventors but either don't want to or fail to deal with money in a responsible manner. Hell, I've recently been collecting sketch card art and just totalled up my last six months spending. What the hell was I thinking?! American athletes can make millions in a single year and still end up penniless before the age of retirement!

From the article: 'Inventor Trevor Baylis says he faces having to sell his house after failing to make money from his wind up radio and is now calling for the government to step into to protect inventors. “I’ve got someone coming around in the next couple of weeks to do a valuation on my house,” says Trevor Baylis, as he walks into the sitting room of his home on Eel Pie Island, in Twickenham, south-west London. “I’m going to have to sell it or remortgage it – I’m totally broke. I’m living in poverty here.”'

Okay so this inventor is house broke -- he's got nice clothes, the article doesn't say he works three jobs. That leaves me a little curious so I inspected the article which had hilarious counter intuitive subtitles:

He built a home on Eel Pie Island in the 1970s for £20,000

Wow! That bit is interesting! So he lives on an island in the Thames in London?! Okay, I'm going to go ahead and gather that property taxes must be insane. Could he afford a house in the country? I mean, is he selling a house that he can no longer afford to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood or is he genuinely poor? Which is it?

The property also has a pool (Paul Grover)

Uh, okay so add energy and water bills to the above.

The prolific inventor earns money as an after-dinner speaker (Paul Grover)

Okay so, has he tried getting a 9 to 5 job? I hate to be a dick but I don't think you can invent a particular modification of a radio in 1991 and a shoe that charges cell phones among "250 products" and expect to coast through life smoking a pipe and getting a bennie here or there for dinner speeches. I mean, those were the two most notable inventions?

Furthermore how do his business mistakes equate to a breakdown of the patent system:

Due to the quirks of patent law, the company he went into business with to manufacture his radios were able to tweak his original design, which used a spring to generate power, so that it charged a battery instead. This caused him to lose control over the product.

Man, I wish PJ would deconstruct this so I knew what was going on. So what that tells me is that the novel part of his invention was the spring that generated power directly to the radio? And when the company found a different way to do that, they cut him out? Yeah, companies are going to try to screw you anyway they can. The problem is that this screwing could go the opposite way too. I mean, a

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[rudy_wayne]

I'll be the first to admit that the entire patent system is a horrible mess that is now doing more harm than good. But this story is about something entirely different.

Out of 250 claimed "inventions", which include such nonsense as a "self-weighing briefcase", he invented one item, 20 years ago, which took off and sold fairly well, but has now been replaced by newer technology. Apparently he seems to think that he should be able to live forever on the royalties from that single 20 year old patent.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[drinkypoo]

A self-weighing suitcase, anyway, would be a great idea. Airlines have luggage weight limits these days, and the limits vary.

On the other hand, you're right, there's no particular reason he should be set for life because of one invention, and if he didn't get a license that granted him royalties on derivatives that's a bummer, but it's his bummer.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. His invention was storing the energy from the wind up in an efficient spring design. It was not the wind-up part itself. The manufacturer changed it to a battery system and cut him out. That is it. Even under his proposed solutions, which include a novelty requirement and much longer terms to patents, he wouldn't be covered. This is because his improvement was from cruddy batteries to a clockwork type spring system; their improvement was from clockwork type spring system to modern batteries. So, for him to win, you need to argue that the switch from battery to spring was a novel change, such that it is a completely different product, but the change from spring back to battery was not, such that it is a completely different product. I don't see how a rational person could say that one is and the other isn't.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[openfrog]

From the article:

Mr Baylis has been lobbying for the patent system to become more robust and to turn the theft of intellectual property into a white-collar crime that carries a prison sentence... Currently patent infringement is considered to be a civil matter in the UK rather than a criminal matter... ...Students need to be taught about intellectual property in schools...

Mr Baylis is representing himself as the small guy (incorrectly claiming the invention of the crank radio), making the exact case that the big guys are currently lobbying the government for.

If Mr Baylis had been what he pretends he was, with the laws he is advocating for, he would have risked ending up in prison on top of losing his house.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Baylis' real problem is that he is acting as a lobbyist without getting paid for it... If he could get even a few patent trolls(sorry, sorry, 'non-practicing entities') kicking some 'consulting' fees his way, he'd be all set...

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[stephanruby]

He built a home on Eel Pie Island in the 1970s for £20,000

Wow! That bit is interesting! So he lives on an island in the Thames in London?!

Yes, here is an example of a house Eel Pie Island (It's not his, but I'm just linking to it as a reference point). Obviously, if he just sells his house, he should be able to rent something a bit more modest, and not have to work ever again for the rest of his life.

The next thing he's going to tell us is that he's selling his Rolls Royce, just to be able to afford macaroni and cheese. For someone who didn't even invent the wind-up radio originally, but only invented a derivative of that idea (which is now no longer in use), he's still in denial and still has huge feelings of entitlements. May be the patent system should be reformed, like he says, and his house should be given to the original inventor instead.

 

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[houghi]

Stoopid him. It is a patent, not a song.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[fatphil]

What Rolls Royce?

"He has also been offered £80,000 for his treasured Jaguar E Type"

Damn, I wish I was in such poverty!

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[Vintermann]

Incorrectly claiming the invention of the crank radio

Well, he did invent one kind of crank radio, the one where you get publicity for your crank "inventions".

That this guy is so obviously not what he pretends to be highlights another problem with the patent system. It's not just that non-practicing entities buy up patents and use them for barratry. Usually, the "little guy" crazy inventor types who love patents are more crazy than they are inventors.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[TheMathemagician]

Yes they are all of this grade - or worse. One of his was the 'ball-barrow' - wheelbarrow with a ball rather than a wheel at the front. About as good as it sounds.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The article actually goes out of the way to point out he's invested heavily in a company that brings inventions to market. He isn't some poor little retiree, he's reinvesting his money and it's drying up.

Still I wonder if he licensed the radio, and is now tied to a company that doesn't have to produce it.

As a side note, I bought a Freeplay radio, the spring one. It lasted a few weeks, then the plastic gears inside stripped. What cheapscares, I thought.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[Agent0013]

Yes they are all of this grade - or worse. One of his was the 'ball-barrow' - wheelbarrow with a ball rather than a wheel at the front. About as good as it sounds.

Actually, that's Dyson who invented the ball-barrow! Check out the Dyson site sometime.

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[mjwalshe]

um you would be shocked how low property taxes for say a £10-20 mill mansion in London are much much lower than the USA in Chelsea the max council tax is £2151 for any house over £320,000

Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle

[Theaetetus]

Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors?

No. Nor have I ever heard anyway claim that as being their primary function. Let's adjust that to say that patent laws are designed to promote innovation and invention by disproportionately reward the production of ideas compared to the actual work and creation being done. This, in theory, helps any size of inventor put in R&D monies to chase a high reward.

Common misconception, but not true - patents aren't a reward for anything. You want a reward, go chase a Nobel. Rather, patents are a limited monopoly grudgingly given in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. That's why there are all sorts of written description and enablement requirements on patent applications, rather than just a voting committee deciding whether your invention was sufficiently awesome to deserve a reward.
It's always been this way, too. Almost 600 years ago, Brunelleschi invented an improved ship loading/unloading system. He would have kept it secret, loading his ships only under cover of night with armed guards watching for spies, but the lords of Florence felt that this idea was something so important that the public needed access to it. So, because he "refuse[d] to make such machine available to the public" unless "he enjoyed some prerogative concerning this" they gave him a three year limited monopoly, in exchange for disclosing it.

Patents really aren't a reward, but an exchange that destroys trade secrets.

They've also been applied to things that probably shouldn't be patentable like genes and software.

Why should something be patentable if hardwired but not patentable if emulated?

Man, I wish PJ would deconstruct this so I knew what was going on. So what that tells me is that the novel part of his invention was the spring that generated power directly to the radio? And when the company found a different way to do that, they cut him out?

Not even cut him out - his patent covered a specific mechanical implementation of storing power in a tightly wound spring. They stopped using springs and started using cheap batteries, which his patent didn't cover. He also sold his shares in the company. If he was screwed by anything, it was that latter decision.

Patent reform is badly needed. To tailor it to this poor unfortunate soul's anecdotal evidence might just make the situation worse. I am suspicious of this piece because it relies on soft journalism describing how human Mr. Baylis is in his grandfatherly estate and stays away from the hard numbers or specific details of precisely just how he was wronged by the patent system.

Agreed... Also note that his suggested reform includes criminal penalties for infringing a patent. Oh, sorry, Apple has that patent on a slide to unlock mechanism, so because you used it, you're going to jail.

I can't be the only one who googled

[doctor woot]

Eel Pie Island to make sure it was a real place and not some shit Apple Maps invented.

Re:I can't be the only one who googled

[foniksonik]

It's where The Rolling Stones got their start. Wasn't quite so gentrified back in the 60s though. A bit of a hole at the time but an artsy hole where everyone went to hear crazy tunes and get snockered.

Re:I can't be the only one who googled

[anagama]

FYI, akin to bathtub girl. Click only if you wish to be grossed out.

Answer: It Depends

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends.

On one hand, it seems that a small inventor should be able to develop, market, and sell an invention without a giant corporation coming along, copying the idea, and selling the same thing for cheaper, in higher quantities.

On the other hand, it is damn near impossible to develop, market, and sell an invention today without "infringing" upon untold numbers of patents. Large corporations can play this game with their legal departments and large financial resources, but the small inventor is pretty much fucked.

The only people winning at this game are the lawyers. Follow the money.

It's a sorry and pathetic situation and I hope the western world's economy pays dearly for it in the years to come.

Patent trolling should become a crime

[cribera]

Better evaluations should be built, to differentiate real innovators from patent trolls.

The supposed inventors should leave some kind of economical guarantee, that would be collected by the state, if it's a trivial patent or a troll is detected.

Real innovators would get refunded everything, and would even get tax breaks as a plus for their efforts and the risk they took.

The economical punishment to the rejected patents, must be high enough, to fund the more strict evaluation process, and would serve as a deterrent for patent trolls.

Re:Patent trolling should become a crime

[TFAFalcon]

That would just result in corporations being founded just to register trivial patents. If the patent is then rejected the corporation goes bankrupt and no fees are paid.

Re:Patent trolling should become a crime

[cribera]

That would just result in corporations being founded just to register trivial patents. If the patent is then rejected the corporation goes bankrupt and no fees are paid.

Then the fee should be paid in advance, in a bank account, only granted patents would get the reimbursement, and a plus for the interest paid by the innovator, and all the hassle he had to suffer to issue the patent, all funded with the money of the rejected trivial attempts.

Re:Patent trolling should become a crime

[TFAFalcon]

Any fee that could deter a patent troll would also make it impossible for small inventors to ever file a patent.

Re:Patent trolling should become a crime

[cribera]

Any fee that could deter a patent troll would also make it impossible for small inventors to ever file a patent.

Any person, not being a troll, and knowing himself/herself as a truly innovative person, could get a loan to pay the fee, knowing that such fee would be reimbursed, with extra money as a prize (to pay for the interest and the hassle suffered), if the patent is approved.

Short answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but under current U.S. law, it's nearly financially prohibitive to defend against a claim.
At this first to file is utter nonsense, too. Very bad. Let's throw out prior art.

Not entirely related, but in the early 80's I was acquainted with author. He was approached by Disney to turn one of his
books into a movie - paid him cash-money up front, too. Well, he's thinking 1-2 years... Still haven't seen the movie.
There are companies stockpiling ideas out there like Real Estate - except'n they really ain't real. That's were the
current suite of laws have led us - to this incredible stagnation. Oh, it'll take some time before the wheels finally grind
to a halt, but they will....

CAPTCHA = locust - there's never just one...

Re:Short answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

First to file has nothing to do with prior art. If there's prior art, then there's no patent. All it says that is if I turn in a patent on the same thing a day after you, you get the patent, as opposed to the first-to-invent method where we both bullshit about when and where we were when inspiration struck us and how quickly we developed this completely novel idea in order to convince the USPTO that we really did invent it first.

Re:Short answer.

[ridgecritter]

AC is correct. First to file vs. first to invent has nothing to do with prior art. A big provision of the America Invents Act takes effect on March 16, when US patent law changes its primary priority criterion from FTI to FTF. In anticipation of which I'm spending nights and weekends until then getting our company's invention backlog filed so somebody doesn't beat us to an invention by filing an application at 00:01am March 16.

Re:Short answer.

[Vintermann]

He was approached by Disney to turn one of his books into a movie - paid him cash-money up front, too. Well, he's thinking 1-2 years... Still haven't seen the movie.

This isn't unusual in Hollywood, and it isn't necessarily dysfunctional - especially not when the author gets paid. Disney's current hit, Wreck-it Ralph, wasn't always a nostalgic look at arcade games. The first version of the script was made in the late 80s.

Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[Baldrson]

Patent fees are the only asset tax imposed by the Federal government -- and they fall directly on those least capable of paying them at the same time as they fall on those we should least expect to pay them.

Taxing the net liquid value of assets at modern portfolio theory's risk free interest rate, rather than taxing economic activity, is the way out of this abominable situation in which independent inventors are put through the meat-grinder.

Of course, the wealthy will oppose this in every way since they currently benefit from the protection of their property rights without having to pay for that protection, while those producing wealth pay the taxes.

This means political solutions are out of the question.

So, rather than having the corrupt, evil, stupid and/or ignorant drag down the rest of us into political economic Hell, all inventors should demand sortoracy: Sorting proponents of political theories into governments that test them.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[the eric conspiracy]

You do know that patent fees are on a sliding scale depending on the size of the patenting entity?

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee100512.htm#maintain

What kills the independents are the legal costs. They are generally 3 orders of magnitude larger.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[Baldrson]

Even if there is no legal contention of the patent, the international patent fees, alone, place an already-strapped-by-development-costs independent inventor at the mercy of concentrated wealth.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[drinkypoo]

You do know that patent fees are on a sliding scale depending on the size of the patenting entity?

That actually makes the situation worse, not better. If we have bad patents, it is because they are granted by the patent office. If they are granting bad patents, we have to look at why. The answer is obvious: they get paid for granting patents. This is, of course, patent bullshit, ha ha ha. They should get paid for patent applications, but not for refiles (maybe only if they are excessive.) That would encourage them to streamline the application process and it would remove the incentive to rubberstamp any patent that comes through the door. But also, if a larger entity pays more for their patent, then they have every incentive to find in their favor in the case of competing patents, and the result is actually less protection for actual humans.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[ChrisMaple]

Fees include application and maintenance, not just issuance. It costs money to run the patent office, and these fees bear some relation to the costs incurred, which is as it should be.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[vakuona]

I would go further than the patent office though with its discount for small entities.

I would have annual application and maintenance fees of $100,000 per patent. (This would stop companies hoarding patents, especially the like of IBM who are awarded on the order of 6000 patents per year.)

To make this easier, I would have a discount on the 1st 100 patents owned per individual or corporate entity, e.g. $100 per patent.

I would base this on beneficial ownership, so basically, if you own the patent, or license it exclusively, then you pay the fee. If companies wilfully violate this, I would take their patents of them and put them in the public domain.

Basically, companies have an incentive to patent lots of things because it is so incredibly cheap to do so, especially on the off chance that someone independently thinks of something similar enough, but more useful. COmpanies should only patent things they want to make, and having hefty fees would ensure that companies do not patent too many things speculatively.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[Theaetetus]

I would go further than the patent office though with its discount for small entities.

I would have annual application and maintenance fees of $100,000 per patent. (This would stop companies hoarding patents, especially the like of IBM who are awarded on the order of 6000 patents per year.)

To make this easier, I would have a discount on the 1st 100 patents owned per individual or corporate entity, e.g. $100 per patent.

I would base this on beneficial ownership, so basically, if you own the patent, or license it exclusively, then you pay the fee. If companies wilfully violate this, I would take their patents of them and put them in the public domain.

Basically, companies have an incentive to patent lots of things because it is so incredibly cheap to do so, especially on the off chance that someone independently thinks of something similar enough, but more useful. COmpanies should only patent things they want to make, and having hefty fees would ensure that companies do not patent too many things speculatively.

... and then companies would still invent things, but keep them internally as trade secrets, only letting them trickle out when they make something that includes the thing or when they drop a different patent and get a new one covering it, and there would be non-disclosure agreements attached to everything you purchase. Innovation would stagnate, at least as far as the public domain was concerned. Brilliant idea.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[the eric conspiracy]

There is also the odd correlation with the institution of patent laws in England and the occurrence of the industrial revolution.

While correlation != causation, it is something that needs to be considered carefully when proposing changes to patent law.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[vakuona]

If companies keep things as trade secrets, they run the risk that those same things could be "invented" and patented by another. Basically, the patent system could be tweaked so that anything that hasn't been patented and has been kept secret can be patented by another. Prior art would only count for published inventions. This way, companies can decide to keep things secret (more power to them) but anything can be reverse engineered.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[Theaetetus]

If companies keep things as trade secrets, they run the risk that those same things could be "invented" and patented by another.

"Invented" and kept as trade secrets by another - remember, you disincentivized patents. Plus, if everyone is keeping trade secrets, no one cares if someone else gets a patent - good luck proving you infringed, considering you do it in a locked-down back room with no one except a few high-level employees allowed access.

Basically, the patent system could be tweaked so that anything that hasn't been patented and has been kept secret can be patented by another. Prior art would only count for published inventions. This way, companies can decide to keep things secret (more power to them) but anything can be reverse engineered.

That's how trade secrets and patents work now, except that patents aren't disincentivized to the point that no one wants them. Trade secrets currently don't count as prior art, because they're not known to the public - or rather, they're prior art, but can't be used to invalidate the patent since no one knows about them.

And finally, there's a philosophical point - you say companies can keep things secret, and "more power to them". That's bad for the public. Trade secrets are harmful and stifle innovation, because the inventions never get published. Other inventors can't piggy-back on them or come up with improvements, and companies waste thousands of man-hours re-inventing the same things, since none of them can share or license their trade secret inventions, by definition. Sure, companies have the power to keep things secret, but we want to discourage them from doing so as much as possible.

Re:Tax net liquid value of assets not activity

[the eric conspiracy]

Reverse engineering can be prevented through the use of contracts.

I've seen it done. Ah you want to use our magic item and or software? No problem $199.95 plus you sign this no reverse engineering agreement.

The clockwork approach is obsolete.

[Animats]

Radios with a generator charger aren't new. I had one in the 1980s, and they go back at least to WWII. The problem was that no battery charging occurs unless you're cranking hard enough to get the generator voltage above the battery voltage. Then you have to have a governor or voltage limiter to prevent overvoltaging the battery. So you have to crank at just the right speed, and there has to be a mechanism to enforce this.

So this guy used a clockwork mechanism with a big spring to power a small generator, which was more convenient. You can wind fast, or you can wind slow; it doesn't matter. Then it occurred to others that DC voltage conversion isn't hard any more, and it's straightforward to build a charger that will work off whatever is coming from the generator. So you get rid of the clockwork and replace it with a crank generator, switching power supply and battery. The OLPC has a gadget like that.

Re:The clockwork approach is obsolete.

[drinkypoo]

The OLPC has a gadget like that.

Yes, they do, but they only used it for the XO-1. Their new machine won't support it. They have lost their way.

Re:The clockwork approach is obsolete.

[zippthorne]

The battery versions defeat a part of benefits, though.

The whole point of the spring was to be simple and low-tech. These are supposed to be low-maintenance radios that not only can be used in remote areas without power supply, but also can be stored away for years and still be expected to work when needed.

I'm pretty sure that in a low-technology environment, you're more likely to be able to repair or replace a spring with local materials than a battery and charge pump.

I'm kind of upset that no one makes the spring version any more.

Re:The clockwork approach is obsolete.

[ChrisMaple]

A hand crank-generator-battery system does not require care to prevent damage to the battery in most cases. The battery's IV curve takes care of all the limiting required, and you're not going to overcharge the battery because it takes one hell of a lot more cranking to overcharge the battery than it does to pump it up enough to get it to run for a few minutes.

Re:The clockwork approach is obsolete.

[wvmarle]

Assuming one uses good quality components, the ultra capacitor and crank-powered charge pump should outlast the spring solution, for the simple reason that it has less mechanical parts. And the parts that can break are the crank and the generator - and those are present in the spring version as well, so any repairs are just as hard.

What used to be high tech 40 years ago, or didn't even exist yet, is normal off-the-shelf tech now.

Re:The clockwork approach is obsolete.

[zippthorne]

Can you provide a link to on that uses ultra-caps?

Also, a reason why you expect the ultra caps to last indefinitely? It certainly isn't the case for electrolytics....

Patents are not a license to print money

[Grond]

A patent is not a substitute for a viable business model. One cannot simply receive a patent and wait for the money to roll in, especially not as technology changes around you, quite often in order to work around your patent.

In this case, in 1991 Baylis invented a generator that was based on storing energy in a spring, then using a system of gears to release that energy steadily to power various devices such as a radio. But by 1995 wind-up radios were on their way out and by 2000 they had been entirely replaced by battery-based radios. His invention was a flash in the pan.

So Baylis had a nice idea, made some decent money off of it, but failed to turn that into a sustainable career. Now he wants the entire UK patent system modified in order to rescue him from his misfortune.

Re:Patents are not a license to print money

[stenvar]

Wind-up radios have been around for a long time and will continue to be around. Baylis didn't invent them, he came up with another way of building one (using a spring for energy storage). It turned out his way wasn't as efficient as other ways (using a capacitor / battery for storage), so he didn't make much money.

Re:Patents are not a license to print money

[theVarangian]

A patent is not a substitute for a viable business model. One cannot simply receive a patent and wait for the money to roll in, especially not as technology changes around you, quite often in order to work around your patent.

In this case, in 1991 Baylis invented a generator that was based on storing energy in a spring, then using a system of gears to release that energy steadily to power various devices such as a radio. But by 1995 wind-up radios were on their way out and by 2000 they had been entirely replaced by battery-based radios. His invention was a flash in the pan.

So Baylis had a nice idea, made some decent money off of it, but failed to turn that into a sustainable career. Now he wants the entire UK patent system modified in order to rescue him from his misfortune.

His original idea was a wind up radio for areas where batteries are hard to get ahold of. Another motivation was that batteries are not exactly affordable in many poor communities in developing countries and people in the these communities have to spend a significant amount of their disposable income to buy batteries, a fact that seems to be hard to understand for 1st worlders who buy batteries by the dozen and throw them away without a second thought. At least that's what Baylis claimed in an interview I watched back in the 90s.

Patents == Waste

[Murdoch5]

A Patent doesn't protect an inventor, it protects the idea! If the inventor can't sell, market or project his idea then it's not the systems fault they go broke. Blaming the patent for not working doesn't give the inventors a sense of business. inventors can't just be tech guys, they need to also be buisness guys

he failed, not the laws

[um... Lucas]

He said it himself:

"“I was very foolish. I didn’t protect my product properly and allowed other people to take my product away."

He was foolish. Enough said. If you don't take advantage of the laws and protections that you're afforded, and then you get screwed, it's not a failing of the laws, it's a failing of the inventor.

Re:he failed, not the laws

[um... Lucas]

I'm not an inventor nor do I pretend to be.

But the guy created a hand-crank powered radio.

There wasn't much of a market for that I'm guessing, as who wants to crank a radio non-stop just to listen? So the company he worked with created a radio whose battery was powered by the hand crank, and that was the one that sold, not his design.

If HE was Microsoft and the company was him, you'd all be championing them for successfully working around the patent, and making a better product to boot. If he'd patented the hand crank to generate DC power alone, then he'd have had a defendable patent, but he patented a complicated device and someone else came along and created a different device that was similar and improved.

Again, reverse the rolls and the company in the story would be the hero and he'd be the villian for trying to apply a form of patent creep to his original invention...

Re:he failed, not the laws

[Americano]

Since you don't seem to have read the article, I'll reproduce a chunk of it here.

In 1995, following an appearance on Tomorrow’s World, he set up Baygen Power Industries before the company was renamed Freeplay Energy.
It was at this point that the design began incorporating cheap rechargeable battery technology and his involvement ceased. Freeplay has gone on to sell more than three million wind-up radios, with that number growing every day.
John Hutchinson, chief technology officer at Freeplay, said Mr Baylis had voluntarily sold his shares in the company and that technology had moved on, leaving his original patent outdated.
He said: “Freeplay developed its own technology and by 2000 no more clockwork radios were made. The method was to use human power to recharge a battery. Trevor sold his shares in the company and the now outdated patent was incorporated into Freeplay.”

So, let's recap:
1) Baylis invents hand-crank which stores energy in a spring; energy is used to provide enough energy to run the device for about 14 minutes.
2) Starts Baygen, which becomes Freeplay Energy, and licenses his new design to a company that he owns presumably a rather large stake in for production.
3) Someone at company improves clockwork/spring drive, then comes up with the idea of charging a battery, rather than storing the energy in a spring, making his original idea obsolete, as something new & better has been introduced to the market;
4) Baylis voluntarily (and unwisely) sells off his shares in the company he set up to exploit his (obsolete) patents;
5) Now complains that he doesn't make money from a device produced by this company that is "based" off of his original design from the mid-90's (how long do patents last in the UK?) - the company which he voluntarily sold his stake in.

How much protection, exactly, is the system supposed to provide him with? Is it the government's job to step in and solve this problem for him? It sounds to me like he made some very bad business decisions, and as a result, is having some financial issues. While I certainly *sympathize* with him, and hope he's able to find a way to save his home, I'm not sure I see what role the government has in fixing this problem.

Re:he failed, not the laws

[dbIII]

as who wants to crank a radio non-stop just to listen

The entire point of his invention was to avoid that. It wasn't a 1930s pedal radio transceiver but something you wind up like an old clock and then use until the spring winds down. It doesn't make as much sense now since batteries don't quite suck as much as they used to and there are enormous capacitors that are not only available but also cheap, but rewind a few years and it makes perfect sense.

Hard to enforce a patent under $100 million

[Animats]

Speaking as an inventor with six patents, it's hard to enforce a patent until you have $100 million in infringing activity. In practice, almost everybody who gets a royalty deal gets about 5%, +- 2%. (There's a whole theory of IP valuation, but it's not taken very seriously.) So 5% of $100 million is $5 million. Expect legal fees of about $2 million. So you make about $3 million, best case. It's fully taxable, so you get to keep about $2 million. The odds of winning a patent case are about 30%-40%, So the expectation is about $700K on $100,000,000 in infringement.

I've licensed two patents. One I swapped for stock in a startup, and that came out very well. There I wrote one of the startup's products. A straight licensing deal on another made me about $400K after taxes; that was partly about getting my product off the market so it didn't compete with theirs. I'm working on licensing the other patents.

Re:Hard to enforce a patent under $100 million

[jrumney]

In practice, almost everybody who gets a royalty deal gets about 5%, +- 2%. (There's a whole theory of IP valuation, but it's not taken very seriously.) So 5% of $100 million is $5 million. Expect legal fees of about $2 million. So you make about $3 million, best case. It's fully taxable, so you get to keep about $2 million. The odds of winning a patent case are about 30%-40%, So the expectation is about $700K on $100,000,000 in infringement.

Ummm, no. 30-40% of the time you net $2M, the other 60-70% of the time, you pay out $2M in legal fees with no return. The expectation is a loss in the range of 400k - 800k.

Re:No, they do not.

[maxwell demon]

Hence his request to make it a criminal offend. Because then you can answer to that "I see your one thousand lawyers and raise you a Crown Prosecutor."

And the alternative is....?

[Grayhand]

I'm sure most will be complaining about patent laws but the problem is what's the alternative? Already Chinese businesses can have a knock off on the market weeks after you launch then flood the market. The joke is if you have it made in China there's an excellent chance the knock off will come out of the same factory using your tools. What option other than surrender does a small inventor have? For years now at best you had a year before a completing product and now I'd say it's 1 to 3 months. Considering most items will have a 3 to 5 year payback before they go into profits it's almost impossible to succeed without large sums of cash.

Of course it's not for them

[David Gerard]

The purpose of the patent system in the 21st century is for big businesses to keep small competitors out of the field. If the inventor gets anywhere from it, that's nice to advertise, but it's nothing to do with what it's for.

It's like copyright. If it benefits the actual artists, that looks good in the advertising, but if it ever does happen it's strictly a side-effect - it exists to benefit the publishers.

No, Hell No, They Can't, They Won't.

[cozytom]

Lets say someone invents the best thing ever, better than anything you could imagine. This thing will make people want to be with you, or leave you alone, as your preference. It will make food taste better, and you will be happy for the rest of your life if you use this thing. This person gets a patent on it, and sets up a factory to build these things. This person has a perfect business plan, the product price includes the R&D costs, some blue sky, and he pays employees a fair wage.

Evil company X decides this product is easy to make (they read the patent, it was easy to figure out) so they set up a factory across the street, and sell the same thing at a lower price. They don't have any R&D (other than a read of the patent), they pay lower wages, and use cheaper packaging.

No big deal you say, he has a patent on it. Ok, he calls his lawyer, and says, I need an injunction, and I want an infringement suit and I want treble damages. Law being a civil profession, his lawyer calls the evil companies lawyer, and they go to lunch (which our hero is paying for). His lawyer comes back, and says evil company X wants to go to trial. Our hero believes he will win, so of course he says yes, lets do it, we will get the injunction, and treble damages, I'll borrow money from whoever to pay for this adventure.

The lawyers all have a few more lunches (not at McDonalds I can assure you), and they chat and scheme, and make a court date. Aha, in 7 months, there will be an initial trial to determine if the injunction can happen.

During the 7 months, our hero has to sell his house borrow against the factory, lay off employees and pay the rest a little less. Evil company X announces a HUGE profit, and is setting up a second factory in Europe. The evil CEO now wants to live in France to educate his daughter, so he buys a chateau.

Well the trial happens, and sure enough, our hero wins the injunction. Cool, now it is on to the civil phase, and the trial for the damages is scheduled for 9 months from now. The customers have all but forgotten our hero's products, and he doesn't have any money to advertise, or build new products, it is all tied up in lawyer fees (and lunches).

Well, dang, evil company X has also run out of money, since they could sell anything, and they have this factory, and a second one in Europe, lawyers and employees to pay. But the CEO didn't sell his chateau, or stop educating his daughter, he just let the corporation file chapter 7 sells the factories to pay the lawyers, while he kept his money separate. He has partnered with some middle eastern investors and is helping them start a lesser evil company Y that makes the same product. This lesser evil company will use a factory in France and build a new factory in India, selling all over Europe and Asia importing the product into the US.

The civil trial begins against evil company X, and no one from evil company X shows up. The judge rules in favor of our hero, awarding them 80 bazillion dollars, which becomes 240 bazillion dollars because it was willful infringement. Our hero is happy, and asks his lawyer to begin collection. The lawyer finds that evil company X has filed chapter 7 liquidation, and has no assets, so there will only be a judgment against them, but no real money will change hands. Because the liquidation happened before the civil judgement, it will be difficult to get anything.

Meanwhile lesser evil company Y is importing this wonderful product into the US advertising and selling in the same stores as our hero's product. Our hero asks his lawyer to get another injunction, but this lawyer is no fool, wants his money up front still. Our hero doesn't have the assets to get any more money.

Yes our hero was right, the patent protected him from honest people. The patent system doesn't protect anyone from a dishonest company. The legal system is slow, and painful. It can take years to be proven right, but still never see any money for being right.

Re:No, Hell No, They Can't, They Won't.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why multiple professors at law school told me that the most important thing about being a lawyer is the TRO. Sure the trial may take forever, but if you win the TRO, you stop the bleeding early and since it is decided by the judge, it is more predictable than the jury verdict.

Re:No, Hell No, They Can't, They Won't.

[darkmeridian]

This is absolutely not true, and I'm a pretty cynical guy. Law has not been a civil profession in quite some time; it's now a business. Law firms have the incentive of winning at all costs because that's how they get future business. There are no expensive lunches between opposing counsel. Rather, there are very expensive and nasty letters going back and forth about how the other guy's client is the most evil guy in the entire planet, and their claims are completely frivolous, how they're going to get stomped on if this goes to court, but for the low low price of $XX you can avoid the litigation, etc. Lawyers love to cover their asses, and they want to show their clients what complete badasses/assholes they are to the other side.

In your fantasy scenario, the patent owner gets an injunction. Do you know how big a deal that is? Once that happens, the evil corporation's business is dead in the water. Right away. Do not pass go. Also, don't you think that evil corp's clients wouldn't realize that they can buy it from the patent owner because they can't buy it from evil corp anymore?

And if you file chapter 7, you lose all the ridiculous profits that the infringing products made; you can't just take the profits, stick it into your pockets, then claim you're judgment proof as a company; that's a fraudulent transfer. The products also require assets (factories, etc) to manufacture. All that shit doesn't just go away. The bankruptcy court will absolutely take into account the current litigation between the parties, and the Trustee, who is appointed by the court and takes a percentage of the money he recovers for the creditors will absolutely hunt down every single penny because he likes money. He also hires his own law firm as counsel when unwinding all the crazy transactions, so he wins twice, but that's a scam for another day.

But if evil corp wants to import the products, you can get the court to enjoin that company as well, and believe me, courts absolutely hate it when you try to play shell games to avoid a court order. Judges have egos and they're not going to let the CEO just get away with it.

So all in all, your fantasy scenario is completely impossible and not indicative of any case that has ever happened. But hey, since when has the truth mattered?

Re:No, Hell No, They Can't, They Won't.

[cundare]

Here's the thing: You're not describing a problem unique to any characteristic of the U.S. the patent system. What you're describing is a flaw with the American system of justice. Scenarios analogous to yours could, and do, occur in most areas of the law that involve property rights (and some that involve personal rights). If you have a solution, you ought to patent that, because nobody yet has been able to crack this nut. But it's disingenuous to portray anything in your post (or even in the misleading Telegraph story referenced by the original /. article) as probative of flaws unique to the patent system.

Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Trevor Bayliss is considered something of a British hero for his inventions. He gets wheeled out on TV whenever they want to portray the classic eccentric British inventor (and whenever James Dyson is too busy). The fact that he's broke will surprise a lot of people.

But to be honest, he shouldn't be this position -- he has sufficient public image that he ought to be able to make a living on the public speaking circuits. Okay, so he wouldn't get the kind of money from it that Tony Blair is raking in, but he ought to be able to keep the wolves from the door. (for 'wolves', read 'estate agents')

Re:Hero

[tibit]

So, where's all the useful stuff he invented? Do I have any of that in my home? Do any of my neighbours do? Huh?

Re:Hero

[TheMathemagician]

He's good at manipulating the media and most people probably do think of him in that way. However I would think most British slashdotters (of which I'm one) can see past this. He erroneously believes that a Draconian patent system will help "protect British inventions" which he uses as a shorthand for "put money in my pocket". He could easily sell his property, including a vintage car worth £80,000 supposedly, and buy a small retirement home and live comfortably.

Re:My family's Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

May sound fake but I guarantee it is REAL.

My Great Uncle ended up living on Social Security. His process involved using "soaps"

To his credit ~Was THE FIRST HUMAN to scientifically discover the toxicity of plutonium. He was the lab guy, on the Manhattan project who fed Plutonium to lab rats on the order of a few parts per billion. The next day the lab rats were dead, so he then fed the dead rats to the beetles, as they would leave they bones intact so they can study how much of the heavy metal reached to bones. The Following day the beetles were dead. and he was quickly shuffled off to another lab there in Rochester.

Oh here are some of his later patent #'s 4679627 , 4648449, before he retired. at least 2 of them. He even was THE person who created teh oil eating bacteria, How? he used a high potency UV light to scramble bacteria DNA, and observed the effects. He was the first person to deliberately alter the DNA for scientific purposes and file a patent

Simple solution?

[zraider]

Why don't we amend patent laws such that a condition of being granted a patent is to have an implementing product on the market within a certain period of time (say, 6 months or a year). If the patent holder fails to come through, the patent is then voided. Same rule applies for patents transferred or sold to others.

Re:Simple solution?

[nukenerd]

I've got a great new idea that will revolutionize the commercia airline industry. Do I have to build an airplane to keep my patent.

It is extremely unlikely that you have an idea that will really "revolutionize the commercial airline industry" unless you are already so familiar with it that you will be in the aircraft industry already. Even if you do, the best thing will be to get into the industry yourself first to promote it.

There are too many "armchair inventors" who are out of touch with the field in which they believe they have revolutionary inventions, unless it is really trivial like a revolutionary clothes peg. I once worked for a railway company (London Underground) as an engineer, and among other things I had the job of assessing technical suggestions sent in by members of the public, briefing the Chief Mech. Engineer on them, and writing back to the author. Most of them were completely crackpot, based on the same sort of pseudo-science as perpetual motion machinery. Typically, they considered static stability but neglected dynamic stablity, or (like the one about blowing the trains along by filling the tunnel with compressed air) neglected the fact that we needed to run trains at close intervals. (That one also neglected the fact that it costs money to compress air - they thought compressed air was free).

During my time there, being in a "think tank" type of branch, I made some suggestions for improvements myself; but to be honest I think that the outsiders' suggestions got more attention than my own did! I was particularly peeved when one of my suggestions was rejected as "impractical", yet two years later I saw that the Japanese had introduced trains with the same idea - they had invented it quite independently. Different inventors Inventing the same thing is quite common (photography, jet engines, TV etc) when a need for it arises.

Work a day, eat for a lifetime

[fox171171]

Apparently he seems to think that he should be able to live forever on the royalties from that single 20 year old patent.

He probably has friends in the music industry.

Re:Work a day, eat for a lifetime

[PortHaven]

Why not, Disney has been doing that...

Sob story, but ultimately lacking.

[SuricouRaven]

Condense the human interest story down, and what you have isn't entirely surprising: It's the story of an inventor who has decent enough technical skills to invent, but not the business skill to successfully profit from his invention. He has a patent, yes - but the patent does him no good because it is narrow enough that an alternative technology came along.

I'm sure I'm legally simplifying the issue, but as best I can see his patent is for a mechanism that uses human power to wind up a clockwork mechanism to drive a compact dynamo. When batteries got more practical and cheaper, the 'clockwork' part was no longer needed. Now, if he were a businessman he would have made the patent as over-broad as he could and patented 'a mechanism for generating electrical energy from human input' or something like that, along with 'human powered radio,' 'human powered torch,' 'human powered general purpose charger' and so on.

People here might start looking for some middle ground: A way to legislate patents broad enough to protect lone inventors, but not so broad as to be useable. But this middle ground doesn't always exist. It doesn't in this case, because what he invented isn't really that great. All he did was take a hand-wound clockwork mechanism (Older than steam!) and connect it to a little dynamo (If Faraday patented that, it's expired). It doesn't exist in the more general case because, outside of some highly specialised areas*, most 'inventions' can be easily re-implemented using alternative designs - and the only way to stop that happening is to allow patents so broad they don't cover technology, but concepts. Putting us back in troll-friendly territory where we are today.

The problem isn't in the implimentation of patents. It's in the concept. It just doesn't work very well. A fundamentally flawed idea. Perhaps we need to get over this idea that the 'lone inventor' has a right to benefit from their work. It sounds great to our sense of fairness, but what it really comes down do is an exclusive right: There's a social cost to making patents half-way effective, and the innovation that results from giving inventors a financial incentive can be very easily outweighed by the innovation lost when small or medium entities are unable to enter the field at all because some sharp businessman realized he can file patents on things broad enough that they are impossible not to infringe** or trivial and numerous enough that they can be used to wage a financial war of attrition against any competitors***.

*Where the implementation is the invention, such as in drugs... and even then, a rival could probably find a similar molecule that shares the same or close-enough functional area.

**One of the ones in the h264 pool describes the concept of a program that accepts video input and outputs the video in encoded form. Not any internal implementation, or even clever maths. They patented the very idea of an encoder. It could probably be invalidated by prior art, but that's the point of a patent pool: There are so many, no-one could afford to fight them all.

*** Rounded corners, swipe to unlock.

It's far past when I should be sleeping on a normal night, and I was up until 5am last night playing Re-Volt with friends. I'm probably going to look over this rambling tomorrow and be unable to figure out what I was trying to say.

Re:Sob story, but ultimately lacking.

[louarnkoz]

He could not in fact patent something as broad as 'a mechanism for generating electrical energy from human input' because such mechanisms have been around for maybe 100 years. The old bicycles, for example, had a little dynamo that powered the head light and back light. It got its power from friction on the wheel, which was powered by the human cyclist...

What this story really exposes is the hubris of the inventor. Say you work a couple of months on an invention, and file a patent. Do you really expect years and years of revenue? Really?

Trevor Baylis = patent lover

[citizenr]

I remember this guy. I'v seen him ~6 years ago on Discovery channel boasting how lovely and wonderful patents are. He was some kind of inventor mentor advising young aspiring makers on how to monetize. His first advice was to Patent the shit out of everything. When they asked about his successful inventions he showed a bunch of useless (but patented) garbage and the radio. He was already kind of a joke back then.

Re:Is It An Invention?

[viperidaenz]

It is if you invented a novel clockwork mechanism that gets the most stored energy out of the spring and into the generator.

If that's your invention and they remove said mechanism and spring, you're SOL.

Re:Is It An Invention?

[GuB-42]

If it isn't an invention worthy of a patent, I don't know what it is.
The idea of tying a generator to a radio is the easy part, and like all big ideas, even earth-changing ones, it is not worthy of a patent. What deserves a patent is the hard work that transform an idea into a working prototype.
Ok, you want to tie a generator to a radio : what kind of radio do you use, what gears, what materials, how does it hold together, how to get a steady voltage, etc... ? These are the questions an inventor must answer. And this is probably the reason why M.Baylis didn't get any royalties from the battery-based design : it is not the same invention even if the idea is the same.

Patents do protect the little guy

[n2hightech]

I read an article a while back about Sandy Stein who invented a clip that held car keys in a purse so they would not disappear in the vast clutter in the bottom of the purse. It was a very simple clip with an attachment point for a decorative feature. She planned ahead and obtained a utility patent on the concept. She then got a series of design patents on each different version with the different decorative features. This product has sold very well. Because the patents were done well and the decorative features are also protected she has had no problems with ripoffs of her idea. From Article: "Such successful ideas are targets for thieves, but Sandy’s preparation paid off. One notorious knockoff specialist confided to her that he had wanted to copy her product, but “her patent was just too strong and well-written to get around.” Another copycat did try and, for his efforts, lost an infringement case. Sandy agrees that protecting her idea with a patent was the key to the Finders Key Purse staying in the market and remaining successful." http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/independent/eye/201206/sparkofgenius.jsp

Re:Patents do protect the little guy

[tibit]

They'll soon have to pay people for such stories.

Re:Patents do protect the little guy

[citizenr]

She sold a million keyrings. This is peanuts. No word on how much did she spend on litigation.

+ this is a great product .. if you are a pickpocketer.

Re:Yes, but no

[ridgecritter]

One response to this situation (which is a hazard faced by a non-wealthy individual patentholder) would be to go to the imfringing company's competitors and offer licenses. Do you know if the prof's relative tried this? Just curious.

Okay. This guy sold his shares in the company...

[Chas]

Should patent law protect stupid inventors from their own mistakes?

Re:Terrible Bias

[91degrees]

It's not about storing energy in a spring (which if it is obvious, why has nobody done so before for a radio?) but about getting the energy out of the spring without running out too quickly.

Some free advice - Retire

[nukenerd]

Sorry, I don't sympathise with this guy.

FTFA :- "Even major companies like Apple have suffered from their technology being copied by Chinese firms"

Technology like rounded corners. That is when I lost my last shred of sympathy

He invented a radio with a clockwork motor driving a dynamo. The company (of which he sold his share) subsequenty manufactured radios with batteries charged by hand-turning a dynamo. Sounds far more than a "tweak" to me. Which part of his patent does he think they infringed - the handle? The dynamo? or the radio? - I have heard of all those things before. The combination of those things? - they did not use that combination of things.

I remember this guy on TV, with Mandela who was welcoming it. Of course Mandela would, as would enable him to broadcast his spin to his remote population.

Re:There's more to this story...

[Duncan Booth]

UK patents have a maximum 20 year life and since the original wind-up radio patent was filed in 1992 it will now have expired. They also need to be renewed every year after their 4th anniversary of filing so many patents do lapse much sooner than that.

NO

[zaroastra]

Keeping it short, NO (allow me to save some bytes in this rough economy!)

I emailed Freeplay about this...

[IoQuaTiX]

It is simply not true that Trevor’s Intellectual property was ripped off or copied in any way, by Freeplay or anybody else.

* Trevor conceived the idea of a mechanically powered radio.
* Trevor formed, and was a shareholder in, a company called Baylis Generators limited.
* This company registered a patent covering Trevor’s concept of a “clockwork” radio.
* The company Baygen, later called Freeplay, was founded to develop, make and distribute the radio in 1994/5 in Cape Town South Africa.
* Baygen/Freeplay paid a royalty to Trevor’s company for the use of the patent.
* Freeplay made radios covered by Trevor’s patent until about 2000.
* In addition to receiving a royalty, Trevor received a consulting fee from Freeplay.
* Technology moved on and the spring based clockwork radio became out-dated. The new technology was to recharge a battery via a generator. A large number of Chinese manufacturers ( we are talking about 100 + different companies) entered the market and “wind-up” products using this simple method proliferated. Trevor’s patent became out-dated, and the whole market was flooded by these cheap Chinese products. These in no way contravened Trevor’s patent, or any of Freeplay’s efforts at technology development. It was a free-for-all, with new ideas, and the competition was heavy.
* Trevor sold his shares in the company that held the original patent, and this company was eventually absorbed into Freeplay.
* Trevor moved on to found another company Trevor Baylis Brands plc. Trevor sourced many different products from China, and branded them under his own name. He marketed them on his own website and through other channels. Trevor refers to this range of products in his marketing material as “Next Generation”, and Trevor became an enthusiastic, independent player in the next generation of “wind-up” products, actively endorsing the next generations’ virtues and improvements.
* Freeplay continued to develop technology, and focussed on innovation and quality products. It maintains its reputation for integrity, quality and as the premium brand in the sector.

Eh, it's just "intellectual property"

[Rogerborg]

So fuck him, right, they just "shared" it.

Patents = Fail

[PortHaven]

If patents are to encourage innovation, they are utter fail. If they are to encourage litigation, they are a perfect success.

Seriously, little fish get burned both ways. Little fish can never stop big companies. Even if they win, they never win as much as the big companies make off of the violation.

Big companies can stop little fish if its at all similar. And Big companies will often obscond with ideas that are ridiculous or long invented, and sue a little company (or even a rival Big company).

Apple's lawsuit is probably the most recent perfect example. Not a single invention, sues rival, when every single aspect existed prior.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

the original intent was to protect the inventor

[josepha48]

however this has changed as the inventor usually ends up giving up his invention to a mega corporation he works for. So at this point patents are used solely to sue someone either into large sums of money or out of business.

"90 percent of his time was spent on litigation"

[gzuckier]

"Furthermore, RCA also claimed invention of FM radio and won its own patent on the technology. A patent fight between RCA and Armstrong ensued. RCA's momentous victory in the courts left Armstrong unable to claim royalties on any FM receivers, including televisions, which were sold in the United States. The undermining of the Yankee Network and his costly legal battles brought ruin to Armstrong, by then almost penniless and emotionally distraught. Eventually, after Armstrong's death, many of the lawsuits were decided or settled in his favor, greatly enriching his estate and heirs. But the decisions came too late for Armstrong himself to enjoy his legal vindication."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong#FM_radio

"Fact–Big industry does NOT buy ideas or pat

[gzuckier]

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf

"Over the years, I have seen hundreds of examples of money machine people being severely done in by the patent system. Even murdered by it in several heart-attack-during-litigation cases. And not once did I see anyone approaching the patent system on a small scale basis and profiting from it. Ever. Once again: Unless you are well within a Fortune 500 context, any and all involvement in the patent system in any, shape, or form is absolutely certain to cause you the net loss of time, energy, money, and sanity. Besides ending up a totally useless and utterly unnecessary psychic energy sink." http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf

No, but it protects rich ones and trolls

[CuteSteveJobs]

Getting a patent is easy. The USPTO give away patents without a fight. If they frown, you just dump more paperwork on them. If you have read patent filings, they are indecipherable. Pure bullshit and gobbledygock. Seriously. You can twist them to mean anything. So the USPTO shrugs and grants it anyway.

Thing is, and this is important, the courts are the second half of the process. There is a big difference between being granted a patent and having it stand up in court. Courts are incredibly expensive. Your patent is a vanity plate unless you have $2M to sue someone for COUGH COUGH violating it. If you are a big company this is chicken feed and a nice way around anti-trust laws APPLE APPLE APPLE. If you are small patent owner then there are troll lawyers out there. They will buy a patent, troll the shit out of victims and give you a cut if they draw blood. Sounds good? Well remember they are lawyers and it will serve you right if they fuck you over too.

BTW who was the asshole founding father who put patents in the constitution?

Not an invention

[alexandre.oberlin]

This is just an obvious assembly of two existing concepts, three with the battery. Putting together existing devices or concepts does not make an invention, only a product.

[off topic] he should not have a patent

[sorin25]

I've seen this guy a few years back on Discovery Channel and I laughed my ass off.

"an invention is unpatentable if it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art"

Anyone with minimal knowledge in mechanics and electronics can think about a radio powered by a hand crank. No one has had the nerve to patent it because it's OBVIOUS it can be done, and there is no RESEARCH needed, and also there IS NO MARKET for it.

I have inherited a torch with a hand crank made in USSR from my grandfather and he died in 1984 .. and the god dam thing was old
I've seen a radio that was powered by thermocouples placed on a gas lamp (and it was a commercial product)

So there were other people to try to power small devices from something else than a battery.

His only "merit" is that he "found" the market in African countries. In my opinion he is just a patent troll who wasn't able to make it.