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White House Takes Steps Against Patent Trolls
itwbennett writes "The Obama administration on Thursday launched a website with information to assist people and businesses targeted in patent lawsuits or receiving patent demand letters. The White House also announced that it would launch a new crowdsourcing initiative focused on identifying prior art (evidence of existing inventions) that the USPTO can use to reject bad patent claims and will expand a USPTO patent examiner technical training program by allowing outside technologists to help with the training."
You mean something like patents.stackexchange.com?
S he does good things, and the you bitch?
And then you wrap it up with what is clearly a lack of understanding about the trade agreements.
It's not him, it's you. You are stupid, and you are just looking fore excuses.
The fact that nearly every thing people complain about him is false tells me he must be doing something right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why "nope"? Stackexchange seems like a great (crowdsourced) medium for exactly this. Already a patent application has been struck down thanks to prior art discovered via that site.
On the one hand we have patent trolls, and on the other we have a large fleet of drones armed with hellfire missiles. Seems like somewhere in the middle should be a solution!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ask Patents was created at the behest of the USPTO. Presumably they get some financial support in exchange but the USPTO is self-funded so no slush fund adventures are needed.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Originally patents were for 13 years with one renewal by the original Person that applies and copyright was for 17 years with one renewal by the original Person that applies.
Go back to that and all the problems disappear.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's a bureaucratic problem. What are you suggesting, a military solution?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/patents
Of course the USPTO is aware of this as mentioned in their 2012 press release...
Here's an excerpt from the WH press release...
Today, the USPTO is announcing that it is exploring a series of measures to make it easier for the public to provide information about relevant prior art in patent applications, including by refining its third-party submission program, exploring other ways for the public to submit prior art to the agency, and updating its guidance and training to empower examiners to more effectively use crowd-sourced prior art.
The mere collection of this information, although important, is not what is being addressed here. The USPTO has a complex procedure in place to insert 3rd party information into a patent file for consideration by the examiner. Basically you can only submit other patents or papers (no explanations, analysis, comments, instructions, protest or wild-ass-diatribes allowed). There is also a time window, specific forms and a submission fee and a requirement that the submission be directed at a specific pending patent and limited to 10 items.
Of course the examiner is somewhat free to consider third party resources (like AskPatents), but they are often leery of doing so as third-party participation in the examining process is strictly regulated by statute. AFAIK, this is because examiners aren't supposed to consider pre-publication protests or other opposition in determining the validity of a patent application, only technical information, not opinions of others (like competitor companies or people with axes to grind).
Hopefully, this initiative will streamline the process of getting them relevant technical information w/o the inevitable chaff that tends to go along with crowdsourcing sites. Just because a document gets uploaded to a crowdsourcing site doesn't mean it's a legitimate document. Some people have an agenda, ya know...
He does good things, and the you bitch?
Obama could buy everyone in America free donuts and this site would find a way to complain about it.
I can't decide if that's a great point or off the mark.
The patent office bureaucracy has approved a bunch of bad patents.Improving
that bureaucratic process may well improve the results. On the other hand:
We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
Albert Einstein
Perhaps a bold, strong new leader at the patent office who did a lot of new things, including soliciting public comment, could make a big difference. Someone like Robert Gates, for example, could probably greatly improve things without any fundamental changes to the underlying law. Just ACTUALLY deny patents where there is prior art, etc.
Nope. Maybe you should take a look before opening your yap?
Kindly put down your ideological/political biases for a moment... as sibling mentioned, the site is a perfect analog for what Obama is proposing.
From what I see, I find it strange that the President would have his staff put out a website, instead of, you know, trying to talk to the Senate about putting something forward to rectify the patent mess. After all, his party does dominate the Senate side of Congress, and I bet it wouldn't be that hard to get folks from among the opposition to join in. What, you ask? Glad you asked: For instance, there was once a rule that you had to present a working physical model of your idea to the USPTO before it could be patented... so why not reinstate that?
Hell - he doesn't even need to involve Congress: Why not issue an executive order to have the USPTO define a patentable idea as something with a physical basis as a critical portion of the proposed patent. Why not have the USPTO put an automatic 18-24 month hold on all inbound software patents? Lots of options open to him... but a website that someone else has already implemented to do the same thing? Makes no sense, and has a danger of diluting the whole reason for having such a website in the first place.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Isn't the first lady's big thing getting sweets banned?
No. That would be the Rush Limbaugh version of what she's been doing. In reality, she promotes exercise for kids.
Yes it would be a diabolical communistic liberal plot to give every god fearing red blooded American diabetes to make them dependent on the government and make government larger.
That's all Obama ever does, that is make government bigger. Obama is responsible for the massive increase in Federal spending, even under the Bush years. He's especially responsible for the financial meltdown started during the second Bush term that was triggered by financial deregulation passed by a veto proof margin of a completely republican controlled congress during the Clinton years.And he's liberal, and we all know Liberal is bad bad bad. And he's so liberal he's just one step from being Karl Marx himself. And the lead singer of Korn told me he single handily wrote legislation that gives him the power to kill any american he wants and no republican was involved in the passage of that bill. And before I forget, he created (and only he created) the TSA to make sure he can personally fondle grannies and little kids and he plans to use the TSA to seize permanent control of the US!
I was joking obviously, but no, that's simply incorrect. She outlines her agenda in a document about 20 pages long entitled "summary of recommendations". You'll notice the word "food" appears four times as often as the word "exercise". In fact, she mentions "screen time" as often as she mentions exercise.
Her agenda items include "the federal government should pursue actionable items [to create] food boards ... set food policy". Whether you agree with her or not, her stated mission is to have the federal government decide what you eat and what you don't, see to it that you eat healthly food. Maybe that's what Washington should be doing, maybe it's not. It's absolutely what Mrs. Obama is seeking to have Washington do. Go read her web site.
"the federal government should pursue actionable items [to create] food boards ... set food policy"
That means things like "Public schools shouldn't serve pizza and french fries every day". Mine did. It does not mean "Pizza should be banned from existence".
It's not just right wing trolls. Moms, Dads, the Postman, the old lady down the block, everyone hates the Democrats. Don't feel bad though, they hate the Republicans and don't trust the Libertarians and righteously so.
Where the hell do you live, that your family and neighbors are all so keenly aware? Everywhere I've been, you have one big group of drooling idiots who treat their party like a friggin' sports team and never put any thought beyond what some PR drone tells them to think. I want to live where you live.