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USPTO Demands EFF Censor Its Comments On Patentable Subject Matter

Posted by timothy on from the adversarial-justice-system dept.

An anonymous reader sends this report from TechDirt: As you know, last year the Supreme Court made a very important ruling in the Alice v. CLS Bank case, in which it basically said that merely doing something on a general purpose computer didn't automatically make it patentable. ... However, the USPTO apparently was offended at parts of the EFF's comment submission, claiming that it was an "improper protest." Protest or not, the EFF denies in strong terms that the original comments were improper.

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Re:USPTO IS a branch of government by mellon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not a big fan of the USPTO, but I'm not convinced that they are out of line here. The EFF comment makes mention of a specific patent applicant who is known to be highly litigious, and specifically argues that the USPTO should be particularly skeptical of applications from that entity because of the enormous cost to others of patents being inappropriately granted to that specific entity.

    This is an entirely reasonable thing to say, but the PTO's point is that it's not an appropriate thing to say in the context of a request for comments on something else. The request for comments was on a new set of guidelines the PTO had issued, not on a patent application from the entity to which the EFF referred.

  2. Re:USPTO IS a branch of government by Guy+Harris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think they need to have a look at the 1st amendment to the constitution.

    They ARE, in fact, bound by that

    So are you saying that whatever law put 35 U.S. Code section 122(c):

    (c) Protest and Pre-Issuance Opposition.— The Director shall establish appropriate procedures to ensure that no protest or other form of pre-issuance opposition to the grant of a patent on an application may be initiated after publication of the application without the express written consent of the applicant.

    into the U.S. Code constitutes a "law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."?

    You can still "petition the Government for a redress of grievances", just not in the form of a "protest or other form of pre-issuance opposition to the grant of a patent"; if it is, the protest will probably be carefully filed away in the roughly-cylindrical filing cabinet on the side of the desk of the person at the Patent Office receiving it. It's not as if you're going to be taken out and shot if, for example, you write a letter to the President complaining about the patent being applied for, or publish an editorial opposing the patent, or....

    Protests against patents are discussed in more detail by 37 U.S. Code section 1.291.