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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.
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!
"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".