Slashdot Mirror
'Unpatent' Begins Crowdfunding Challenges To Bad Patents (unpatent.co)
"Unpatent is a crowdfunding platform that eliminates bad patents," reads their web site. "We do that by crowdsourcing the prior art -- that is all the evidence that makes clear that a patent was not novel -- and filing reexamination requests to the patent office." An anonymous Slashdot reader reports:
"Everyone in the world can back the crowdfunding campaign against the patent," explains their site, which includes a special section with "Featured stupid patents". The first $16,000 raised covers the lawyers and fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and "The rest is distributed to those who find valid prior art...any evidence that a patent is not novel. We review all the prior art pieces and reward those that may invalidate a claim... Then, we file an ex partes reexamination to the USPTO."
Their team includes Lee Cheng, the legal officer at Newegg, "worldwide renowned as the patent trolls' nightmare," as well as Lus Cuende, who created his own Linux distro when he was 15 and is now CTO of Stampery, a company using the Bitcoin blockchain to notarize data.
They're currently targeting the infamous US8738435 covering "personalized content relating to offered products and services," which in February the EFF featured as their "stupid patent of the month." Its page on Unpatent.co argues that "Taking something so obvious such as personalizing content and offers...and writing the word online everywhere shouldn't grant you a monopoly over it." Unpatent's slogan? "We invalidate patents that shouldn't exist."
Their team includes Lee Cheng, the legal officer at Newegg, "worldwide renowned as the patent trolls' nightmare," as well as Lus Cuende, who created his own Linux distro when he was 15 and is now CTO of Stampery, a company using the Bitcoin blockchain to notarize data.
They're currently targeting the infamous US8738435 covering "personalized content relating to offered products and services," which in February the EFF featured as their "stupid patent of the month." Its page on Unpatent.co argues that "Taking something so obvious such as personalizing content and offers...and writing the word online everywhere shouldn't grant you a monopoly over it." Unpatent's slogan? "We invalidate patents that shouldn't exist."
The problem is that the patent system is broken. You are just treating the symptoms, not curing the disease. You are making the lawyers lot of money though I guess, which is probably why the Newegg lawyer thought of this brilliant idea.
Filing patents has both non-zero cost, and non-zero latency.
You need to make a patent that is good enough to make it past the USPTO (which is harder than people think), spend money on the filing, and hope this program is still around in 2 years when your patent is actually approved. In the grand scheme of things if you can actually write a good patent you can almost certainly make better money by just using that skill to write patents.
... and hope this program is still around in 2 years when your patent is actually approved.
Two years if you're lucky.
Agreed, this is what Slashdotters have been saying for over a decade now, but still there is no political apetite from either side of politics in just about all western countries from actually addressing this at the cause.
Meanwhile patent wars are being fought all over the world hurting consumers world wide because at the end of the day they are the ones that are paying for this nonsense. At least there is someone out there trying to fix something. Yes it's like pissing into the ocean but if a few stupid patents get squashed that's still better than none.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
There is one fact which is rarely pointed out when discussing patent trolls, but I think it's important.
Over 80% of all patent suits are filed by just four trolls.
Obviously some patent litigation has to do with legitimate disputes, so those four trolls do probably 95% of the trolling. If you put those four out business, that takes care of 95% of the problem. It also shows other potential trolls that trolls end up broke.
The people behind this initiative don't just yip yap about patents on Slashdot for a few minutes, they are professionals who have actually fought these trolls. They understand the problem better than you or I do. If they think this approach will help put the four major trolls out of business, they're probably right.
good enough to make it past the USPTO (which is harder than people think)
Which in itself is part of the problem, though Slashdotters would rather just whine about the Big Bad Gubmint.
It's traditionally been, and remains to be, difficult to get a patent. As a result, patent law is structured such that once a patent is approved, it's almost certainly some kind of groundbreaking new technology. Then if someone else end up with the same technology, they must certainly have copied the patent, and it's effectively the burden of the defendant to show that their design process excluded the duplicated patent, effectively requiring proving a negative and undermining the public good for which the patent system was created. In essence, the patent system is assumed to be infallible, so its failures have a significant impact.
I've put some consideration into a system in which the first step in any patent lawsuit is a mandatory reevaluation of the patent claims, paid for by the USPTO (and amortized into filing fees), and waivable if the reevaluation was done recently enough to remain relevant to current societal standards. Part of that evaluation would weigh whether the patent is really a specific application, or a new technology that will have wide use. In essence, once a patent is granted, it's only partially valuable until it's been tested in court, and its value as a commodity (especially for trade between NPEs) depends significantly on the likelihood of the patent to stand up to a fresh examination. On the other hand, a novel patent with specific demonstrable products would be more likely to survive a trial, so it would be more valuable to investors interested in creating products.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
What you describe is but a lesser example of the many problems with capitalism. However it seems implausible that, without immoral ownership of ideas, innovation will just grind to a halt. People were inventing things long before these badlaws were enacted, and will continue to do so in their absence.