It's been tried. Shortly after the USPTO was opened, they went through a period of just registering inventions and granting the patent protection requested.
The idea was that the bad patents would get weeded out when they were enforced in court. Well, the bad news was that the bad patents had to be enforced in court to be weeded out. You think that's a problem now with the current system? Let's not kid ourselves, a non-examination system would quickly implode into an economy where any innovation or competitive edge is meaningless, hence no competition, and would devolve into something resembling the command economies of the former Soviet Union. That worked for awhile, but remember that they had the best technology they could steal from the West, what with our fancy pants IP protections and patents.
If you understand the USPTO mentality, there's no patent that you can't get through, they are simply that inept. I was once in an R&D position, after a having a few patents under my sleeve, I was able to pass just about anything without the help of a lawyer, true, they reject everything outright, but they simply don't understand what they reject, and are used to being corrected, after a few rounds of bogus rejections, some meaningless concessions on your part, and making them feel stupid enough (refuting their bogus rejections), they'll accept anything. I don't think I ever got a USPTO comment or rejection that was relevant to the invention in question. Knowing that, the temptation to broaden the patent is huge, because you want to leave room for said meaningless concessions, and because employer's greed does play a part once they find out what they can get away with. It's a good thing patent litigation is so expensive, because even the few patents I personally wrote for my employer could be used to wreck havoc on a lot of companies if they were actually used.
Christ alive, is it true you could have several patents and still suffer such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works?
35 USC 102 says "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless" the USPTO can prove otherwise. While that's nice, you have the right to appeal the USPTO's decisions based on sound evidence, sheer lunacy, or a funamental misunderstanding of how the system works, should you so desire. A patent application is never REALLY rejected (in the every day meaning of the term) unless it's been through appeal to the federal court in D.C. Everything else is abandoned. If you (and the 350,000 other applications submitted annually) refuse to abandon, guess what? Then you are the root of the problem. You cannot expect this Federal agency to expand and shrink exponentially at the drop of a hat because you insist that your dialog box is the best thing in the world. Like every other entity on the planet since the dawn of time, the USPTO must pick its fights. If you throw a temper tantrum you'll get a weak patent - the fastest way to invalidate a weak patent is to use it in court. Enjoy!
Knowing that, the temptation to broaden the patent is huge, because you want to leave room for said meaningless concessions, and because employer's greed does play a part once they find out what they can get away with.
Seriously, if I were you, I'd be ashamed to make such statements. The freaking Constitution, as it regards patents, was specifically worded to grant you the broadest patent protection you can secure. You can call it greed or whatever you like, some people would call it "what the law says". Again, I'm just saying, I'd be ashamed if I were spouting this stuff in light of reality.
Seriously, a person who works in R&D for a company and submits some patents is probably not the type of person who is highly qualified to be an expert about the system. Hell, when I was a kid, the mother of this guy I knew was sent to jail for embezzling a couple million from her employer - but you don't see me running around depicting myself as an expert at corporate espionage or forensic accounting. Just have some self respect is all I'm saying.
I can tell that you don't like being criticized for being a just cog in that system, but if you really saw a problem with it, you wouldn't participate. So you tacitly approve, and I criticize.
Well, that's a fair observation, but if I might suggest an improvement in accuracy, I don't like being unfairly criticized. I wouldn't say the system is perfect - it would be foolish to do so. However, the actual problem will not be solved unless it is properly understood so I took it upon myself to point out some inaccuracies in your comments.
Who the hell cares if it's fun or easy? If the patent examiner sees evidence that there's prior art on of a website, then its his civic duty to investigate further before yanking a chunk of knowledge out of the public domain for 20 years.
First, civic duty is something enjoyed (suffered?) by elected officials, and patent examiners are not elected. They do not have a civic duty. Second, the problem is that Joe Awesome's Homepage is NOT the type of reference an examiner can cite to reject a patent claim. If that goes to the board of appeals and it turns out that the highly reliable Joe Awesome's Homepage was full of crap, the examiner's career will be basically over. If he's not fired, you can bet his promotion schedule will be cut very short. So by "fun and easy", I meant "possible to do without ending your career".
Of course, as a software developer, you could just rip off some open source code, claim it's your own work, stick it in your company's product, and hope nobody questions it. While this isn't strictly analogous, the risk/reward/potential for disaster are largely the same.
Any appeals process can only handle so many cases. If more applications were rejected, appeals would back up or be summarilly dismissed.
You'd think that, but it'll take about 30-48 months to get your application examined, rejected, appealed, and considered by the board. As far as I know, the right to appeal is enjoyed by the applicants and it is only not exercised if they believe it's a waste of time.
That would be mainly pushed by the feds headquartered in the same city as the USPTO.
The USPTO campus is in Alexandria, just for your curiosity.
Sure I am. I've been through the process many times. All it takes is ca$h, a good attorney and some technical jargon. My employers have patented some of my brilliant ideas, and some of my less-than mediocre ideas, depending mainly on how many patents they wanted to get that year. I've never noticed any correlation between the quality of the idea and the difficulty of obtaining a patent. (BTW, have you ever noticed that one of the main jobs of an attorney is to simply reformat technical documentation into double-spaced courier font for $200/hr, changing every 's' ending on a plural noun to the phrase "a plurality of". How can you read that monospaced crap all day?)
Yes! Like I said, 35 USC 102 says that "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." and this is what you are expressing. The fact is that basically ANYTHING can be patented, but the devil is in the details - how it's claimed. The worse the idea, the easier it is to patent (people rarely publish their bad ideas, thus less prior art) and the better the idea, the more competition for patent protection. The hook is that you could get a patent for a toaster oven so long as the scope of your claims were SO SMALL that no prior art or existing toaster ovens would infringe. Heck, make the front door out of flammable cardboard - I doubt there's prior art for that.
By the way, adding "a plurality of" is one of the more complicated things the attorneys can charge you for;)
My point about the bad laws is that our government likes to separate the people who make the laws from the people who use the laws. That idea has a lot of weight, in my opinion. The whole system falls back on the idea that "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless" the USPTO can prove they don'
If the USPTO had a vested interest in not granting patents,
The USPTO is primarily paid to examine patents, not issue them or except maintenance fees. The USPTO receives roughly 350,000 applications per year (7000 per week) and issues about 1000-1500 per week.
it could probably reduce the number of granted patents by a factor of 10 just by interpreting the letter of the law
Interpreting law is what judges do. Most people seem to like it that way. I suppose police you suggest that police officers interpret the law as well? It's never been their job before, but I bet they could realize lots of "results".
never giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt
And this is how patents have been examined for over one hundred years. Good idea, unfortunately it's not new.
doing exhaustive prior art searches
Can you define prior art? I am talking about the legal definition. Have you ever debated prior art with an attorney? Have you ever signed your name and submitted papers to a federal court where your entire argument depends on a date you found on a website? Do think that's a fun or easy thing to do?
and generally making it a royal pain in the ass to get any patent.
The USPTO receives more than 7000 applications per week and issues about 1250 per week. It has also expanded to address the growing backlog and break even (the backlog is no longer increasing in almost every department.) I'm curious where you establish "royal pain in the ass", since more than 80% of patent applications are abandoned in the current system.
However, the USPTO has a vested interest in encouraging as many patents as possible, since more patent applications == more income, and a bigger patent office is a bigger kingdom for the people in charge. Plus, it's just plain easier to rubber-stamp the stuff coming in without checking it thoroughly. That's why we see the exact opposite of the approach I described above.
I guess you're just being funny now. If there were the slightest shred of truth to your hyperbole, then why does the USPTO issue about 1250 patents per week but we read about maybe 1 or 5 per month at most? Why do people always fall back on the "swinging sideways on a swing" or the "one click purchase" patents? If reality and facts were on your side, then wouldn't we be reading about hundreds or thousands of "rubber stamped" patents per month? Per year?
Of course, it's not really your fault. You probably aren't aware that when a patent ends up on the front page, the examiner's entire career is in jeopardy. You probably aren't aware that the examining process takes 12-48 months and involves 10-200 pages of correspondence between the attorneys and the examiners. You probably aren't aware that having a high issue percentage is taboo among examiners and definitely not something to talk about. Finally, you probably aren't aware that 35 U.S.C. 102 states "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." which means that ultimately, the attorney can push the application to a board of appeals, in which case the decision to issue is largely out of the examiner's hands yet the examiner's name is still on the issued patent.
Basically, if a law is really bad, the local police often don't bother enforcing it. They've got better things to do.
What, like prohibition? I guess you never heard of the war on drugs? I guess you haven't seen police officers enforcing segregation? You have a seriously deficient understanding of the difference between interpreting law and executing law. If you combine those powers, you have bad results. They are kept separate for very important reasons.
The USPTO doesn't have anything better to do, and it enforces the bad laws that it oversees with great enthusiasm.
Once again, the USPTO doesn't "oversee" anything. Interpretation of the law is done by judges. The USPTO issues a patent if it fails to enforce the application - "a per
Just as we currently have Tax Havens, how much longer before we have the "Patent Haven"? It works like this:...
Wow, great idea. Why don't we call it "basically the 3rd world plus China" and we can have this huge economy where nobody has a right to profit from their ideas and everybody can "share" everyone else's ideas. It'll be super.
You can have a boot factory, and when you come up with a dirty, filthy piece of intellectual property - we'll call it a "competitive edge" - then everyone ELSE can "share" your "competitive edge" - for the good of society. Sweet. Then we'll all have the same competitive edge - production at your boot factory will improve. Of course, the government (which owns your boot factory, naturally) will know this and simply raise your production quotas! Awesome. Plus, all your fellow boot factory managers will know that you're responsible for raising THEIR quotas, which they now have to meet or fear being reprimanded by The Party, so all of your comrades will hate you. (Of course, I mean "comrades" in the friendly way - haha, not like those wonderful Communists.)
So what you end up with is this huge economic machines where individual achievement would be immediately obliterated by the sharing of your competitive edge. Wonderful. Utopia is just around the corner. Of course, some people would realize that developing a competitive edge is therefore pretty useless, since it is no longer the path to personal advancement or realizing your own individual destiny (but who wants that, right comrades? Who's with me?) so the issue of intellectual property is even more meaningless because nobody would give a rat's ass about research & development. Who wants a higher boot quota? Just keep your head down and turn out enough boots each month.
Of course, I could be wrong. I don't know much about the former Soviet patent system, and they had all the best technology they could steal from the West. Innovation wasn't really their bag. I wonder why? How about those Chinese? Their patent system isn't nearly as juicy to criticize as ours and I hear they've got a space program - only 40 years after the US. Hey, that isn't even five tiny decades late - it's practically another space race. You know, for all the 1000 or so different brands and models of DVD players, once you open the case, there are only about 25 different models. Those come from a handful of factories in NW China, where they enjoy a "patent haven" by dumping unlicensed DVD players on the world market (and less money paying license fees on rebranded players that go to America.) Why don't you enter the NW Chinese DVD player industry? Oh yeah, of course! Because they've already got their claws in that market, they'll steal your intellectual property, technological innovations, and competitive edge, and dump your product on the market before your factory pays its first electric bill. What problem could a patent haven NOT solve?
The patent system has its flaws, but a "Patent Haven" has been tried. It's called a "command economy", and while you might have the ticket to perfect the concept, historically they don't fare too well.
I foresee countries which don't kowtow to our notion of Intellectual Property, even if they aren't allowed to export their creations to the US, will now be able to outrun us simply because they don't have to deal with the over-regulation.
Oh really? THAT's the cause of it these days? It's not because of the huge disparity in expected wages? It's not because educated American workers demand health care? It's not because that health care is absurdly expensive? It's not because foreign workers are often struggling to overcome poverty while Americans are often struggling to not work too hard? It's not because of trade agreements that do too little to preserve the local standards of living while opening up huge labor markets to corporations? It's not because copyright holders in the US have gone apeshit (RIAA, MPAA) but their powers basically end at the American borders?
But it IS because of this heavily cliched hyperbole about nooses and over-regulation? Ok. Gosh, you convinced me. Would you like to sell me a toothbrush? How about something herbal? Would you like me to vote for a particular candidate?
It's scary. Each passing year seems to move us inexorably closer to an Orwellian society. Soon it won't be possible to have an original idea any more without the system crying foul and demanding you hand over cash for a part of it.
I call bullshit. You've got an excellent premise for a fictional fairy tale, but I strongly doubt you would make such statements if you were well informed about patent law. You do claim "there needs to be a change in the law," so I'll presume you know which sections of federal law govern the patent system and have at least read the critical sections (it's only about 4-5 pages), so I ask you why is it you believe that this change is necessary?
You must be well aware that in order to protect yourself from an existing patent, you merely need to differentiate your invention from the existing patents. That means some improvement in function, some reduction in cost, some improvement in efficiency, some different process, or even a decrease in efficiency, etc., will make your invention patentably distinct over the prior art. All that matters is that your attorney goes on the official record and says, "Our invention is NOT taught by the prior because blah blah, blah blah." This establishes that your licensing deal does not create a patent infringement suit based on some other patent. Once that fact is clear and in ink, you're pretty much home free.
Why is this relavent? Well, if someone patents something and doesn't take it to market (something which was never even suggested, hinted at, required, or implied by the Constitution, mind you) whether it's 3 years later, 15 years later, or 3 days later, you and your company are perfectly free to improve upon the existing prior art and be protected from infringement. Hell, you don't even need to wait until it's patented - applications are published and searchable on the internet. You don't need to receive a patent yourselves to establish that protection, but it makes it easier if you end up in court.
So really, if you ask me (and you haven't, but I'll toss this out there for free) there doesn't necessarily need to be a Constitutional amendment to meddle with a legal concept which already exists with sufficient strength to achieve what you're proposing; there needs to be a change in public awareness and education of what patent law actually says as opposed to the pedagoguery, FUD, and fantasy fiction that is spouted, reread, and regurgitated around the internet and Slashdot in particular.
By the way, if your response to that is "But what about 'overly broad' patents," I would once again question the legitimacy of your knowledge. "Overly broad" patents are a fantasy that lives in popular media and anti-patent groupthink, not in law. The truth is that the broader a patent is, the easier it is to invalidate it in court. What about "overly broad" patents? If it's "overly broad", you won't have trouble proving so in an infringement suit. Of course, I'm sure you wouldn't bring up the idea of "overly broad" patents, because like I said, that's an idea based on media fiction rather than the law.
While you're thanking the USPTO, why not rub a few brain cells together and thank the people responsible for the problem?
Here's a quick question for you. If the local police are enforcing a bad law, whom do you blame? If you blame the police officers, then you are entirely ignorant of how criminal law is written and amended. That observation is not irrelevant to your comment about the USPTO. Rub a few together and you'll see my point.
realize that I'm not saying that Microsoft should be awarded a trademark for Excel. (I think it's too general a term, plus they waited 19 years, blah blah blah.)
Uh, alright. While your opinion is that Microsoft shouldn't get a trademark for the reasons you've listed, my understanding is that the law holds an opinion quite different from yours. I know, I know, that's an insignificant detail around here, but it is peculiar that you would trash the author for failing to point out the release date of TurboExcel while completely steamrolling the quaint notions of law and how a trademark is actually issued.
Of course. You need merely read 35 USC 102 and 103 (they're short) to know what can qualify as prior art.
It would be ridiculously easy to write claims for those exhibits while disqualifying them as suitable prior art. That fact has to do with the level of "enablement" present in a fluff-journalism paragraph. The very basic concepts are taught, but throw in 5,000 details of implementation and you have yourself a completely different animal.
If the patent is issued, it's valid until proven otherwise in court.
I think what you're trying to ask is whether it matters that the feature was never publicly released, despite being patented. The answer to that is it makes no difference. It will affect the duration of the patent, for if they release the feature 10 years later, they cannot "refresh" the patent's lifetime (35 USC 102 and related material makes that clear.) More interestingly, if they develop the feature, presumably with dated documentation, but never apply for a patent, those dated documents can be used to defeat a future patent application if they can be discovered by the examiner. Technically the applicant is legally bound to submit all known pertinent material, but that's not something that can be enforced regarding whether or not the patent issues, but it is in the applicant's best interest to comply if he wants a strong patent that is less likely to be challenged in court.
Sorry but no, more than likely something Indymedia did, or some funding source attached to them did something to raise some red flags. Indymedia PRIDES itself on being subversive and doing tangential things with groups that are on the fringes to begin with. Why would this be any different? It probably is not different.
What are you saying here? If they support things that are unpopular, then they deserve what they got? You've already convicted them of whatever the FBI thinks they've done - and you don't even know what the FBI thinks they've done. Cuff'em boys, they must have done what you won't tell me they did because they like unpopular things.
Now, if there exists hard evidence that they were sending money to Al Aqsa et al., there might be some merit in the "they got what was coming" attitude. Unfortunately, the FBI hasn't made any charges public, and unless you've got the inside scoop on what they were up to (you should be talking to the FBI about it) you've won the award for the most anti-American, anti-Constitutional demagoguery I've read all week.
Wrong. There's more than 1.5 million primes up to 24,036,583 (the largest Mersenne exponent known), and only 41 of these are Mersenne exponents.
Read what I typed, then read what you typed.
If I were wrong, then most of the Mersenne numbers would be composite. You have suggested that most of the large prime numbers are not Mersenne numbers, which is an unrelated concept, and substantiates my original post.
Aren't most of the really large prime numbers only Mersenne primes?
Rather, most of the Mersenne numbers are prime, and most of them are large. That doesn't begin to scratch the surface of most large prime numbers though.
Consumer McMonkey, you are hereby notified that the voice of democracy has been heard at all levels of American government. America has spoken in favor of moral values across this great nation.
This is your final warning before you will be apprehended for thought adjustment.
The appropriate, patriotic, American phrase is, "Well, at least dirty fags can't marry."
Be offended if you must, but at least realize that it's satire.
I wish I had mod points. I'm not a Christian and these days, I'm apparently not a Conservative (not trying to be flippant, I just wish we could stick to the Constitution) but it's nice to hear a self-identified Christian Conservative recognize the dissonance between that political stance and certain aspects of the Bush administration.
You're buying about 97 sq ft per dollar and I'm buying 0.77 sq ft per dollar. I'd prefer to live in the country, but I'd prefer to be gainfully employed with ample opportunity for advancement, like I currently am.
So, 97 sq ft per dollar. Wow, is that what your in-laws charge for you to put a trailer on your wife's dowrie -cough- to put a trailer on their land?
I was in a Best Buy in Rockville, MD (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) when some winner on the sales staff was telling a white collar dad that his IBM laptop was wearing out. You see, the processor has lots of little filaments in it, and when you use the computer, they heat up and expand, then cool down and shrink. Over time, this just causes the processor to wear out. Even though it's still running at 600MHz, it's really not in very good shape. That's why white collar dad needs to buy a new computer to store photos from his digital camera.
I stood about 10 feet away from this guy and seriously laughed out loud at him. He was visibly annoyed, but white collar dad was entranced. Oh well, it's not my job to save people from making dumb purchases. In this case, he suckered that guy into buying a computer, and all I can say is God bless him.
That's pretty good advice. I wear Bostonians and Italian shirts depending on the day of the week, unfortunately the nitwits selling Monster Cables don't seem to be up to speed on clothing that doesn't have a gaudy logo...
Would they look at me, and decide, "Here is a young person. He doesn't have a lot of money, so we're not going to waste time helping him find what he wants, since he probably couldn't afford it anyway."
Yes. Put them in your shoes. Now that I'm 24 and make twice the average family income whatever this is worth I find it almost impossible to shop unless I know exactly what I want. I guess there aren't too many single guys in their young 20s shopping for really nice vacuum cleaners or $1500 mattress sets. Who knew?
Computers are apparently good enough to control our power grids, nuclear generators, water supplies, Space Shuttles and XBoxes, but can't be trusted to count votes.
Power grids - everyone is screwed if the computer malfunctions. This is a tool.
Nuclear generators - see above.
Water supplies - see above.
Space shuttles - everyone involved has a legitimate interest in seeing these computers perform accurately.
XBoxes - entertainment devices are not critical.
This is in direct contrast to an electronic voting machine, where election ethics demand that voters retain their anonymity while trusting the computers to perform appropriately. This is not a situation where the nature of the problem demands that the computers perform as expected - there is something to gain by "malfunctioning" computers and the nature of the problem interferes with correcting the problem.
You realize that there is no difference between a human putting a record into a database and a computer putting a record into a database, except that the human may decide to do it because he doesn't like your skin color.
This would be true, except the part about "there is no difference". The difference is that a human putting the record in the database takes legal responsibility and accountability for that action. When a computer screws up, who takes the blame? If you lose an email, who cares? If you go to jail, hell, who cares? How are you going to address that problem? You're clearly a criminal now - all criminals claim to be innocent. Even if this supposed "mistake" took place, how could you explain it? No person exists to take the blame for the "mistake".
A computer will make errors in patterns. A human will make errors randomly; or worse, very specifically and thus much harder to catch and correct.
An introduction to mathematical logic and reasoning will present the observation that the sun has risen every day for billions of years. While that's poetic, it does not prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. How about you volunteer to be the first person wrongly fired or convicted by a computer? We'll get the problem all sorted out in a couple decades, so don't worry about it.
Even if you want to talk about elections, where the "pattern" would presumably be discovered amongst the millions of votes counted for a single event, explain to me again where this is any better than voting on paper? Once we enter the realm of recounting votes, nothing surpasses voters creating marked paper ballots in the first place (problems with hanging chads notwithstanding.)
I heard an anecdote from some retired military officer (cannot possibly recall who) and he said, "Yeah, I know the difference. When I'm talking about power plants and research, I say nuclear. When I'm talking about weapons, I say nukuler. I figure, when you actually have nukuler weapons at your disposal, you can pronounce it however you damn well please."
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The idea was that the bad patents would get weeded out when they were enforced in court. Well, the bad news was that the bad patents had to be enforced in court to be weeded out. You think that's a problem now with the current system? Let's not kid ourselves, a non-examination system would quickly implode into an economy where any innovation or competitive edge is meaningless, hence no competition, and would devolve into something resembling the command economies of the former Soviet Union. That worked for awhile, but remember that they had the best technology they could steal from the West, what with our fancy pants IP protections and patents.
Christ alive, is it true you could have several patents and still suffer such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works?
35 USC 102 says "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless" the USPTO can prove otherwise. While that's nice, you have the right to appeal the USPTO's decisions based on sound evidence, sheer lunacy, or a funamental misunderstanding of how the system works, should you so desire. A patent application is never REALLY rejected (in the every day meaning of the term) unless it's been through appeal to the federal court in D.C. Everything else is abandoned. If you (and the 350,000 other applications submitted annually) refuse to abandon, guess what? Then you are the root of the problem. You cannot expect this Federal agency to expand and shrink exponentially at the drop of a hat because you insist that your dialog box is the best thing in the world. Like every other entity on the planet since the dawn of time, the USPTO must pick its fights. If you throw a temper tantrum you'll get a weak patent - the fastest way to invalidate a weak patent is to use it in court. Enjoy!
Knowing that, the temptation to broaden the patent is huge, because you want to leave room for said meaningless concessions, and because employer's greed does play a part once they find out what they can get away with.
Seriously, if I were you, I'd be ashamed to make such statements. The freaking Constitution, as it regards patents, was specifically worded to grant you the broadest patent protection you can secure. You can call it greed or whatever you like, some people would call it "what the law says". Again, I'm just saying, I'd be ashamed if I were spouting this stuff in light of reality.
Seriously, a person who works in R&D for a company and submits some patents is probably not the type of person who is highly qualified to be an expert about the system. Hell, when I was a kid, the mother of this guy I knew was sent to jail for embezzling a couple million from her employer - but you don't see me running around depicting myself as an expert at corporate espionage or forensic accounting. Just have some self respect is all I'm saying.
Well, that's a fair observation, but if I might suggest an improvement in accuracy, I don't like being unfairly criticized. I wouldn't say the system is perfect - it would be foolish to do so. However, the actual problem will not be solved unless it is properly understood so I took it upon myself to point out some inaccuracies in your comments.
Who the hell cares if it's fun or easy? If the patent examiner sees evidence that there's prior art on of a website, then its his civic duty to investigate further before yanking a chunk of knowledge out of the public domain for 20 years.
First, civic duty is something enjoyed (suffered?) by elected officials, and patent examiners are not elected. They do not have a civic duty. Second, the problem is that Joe Awesome's Homepage is NOT the type of reference an examiner can cite to reject a patent claim. If that goes to the board of appeals and it turns out that the highly reliable Joe Awesome's Homepage was full of crap, the examiner's career will be basically over. If he's not fired, you can bet his promotion schedule will be cut very short. So by "fun and easy", I meant "possible to do without ending your career".
Of course, as a software developer, you could just rip off some open source code, claim it's your own work, stick it in your company's product, and hope nobody questions it. While this isn't strictly analogous, the risk/reward/potential for disaster are largely the same.
Any appeals process can only handle so many cases. If more applications were rejected, appeals would back up or be summarilly dismissed.
You'd think that, but it'll take about 30-48 months to get your application examined, rejected, appealed, and considered by the board. As far as I know, the right to appeal is enjoyed by the applicants and it is only not exercised if they believe it's a waste of time.
That would be mainly pushed by the feds headquartered in the same city as the USPTO.
The USPTO campus is in Alexandria, just for your curiosity. Sure I am. I've been through the process many times. All it takes is ca$h, a good attorney and some technical jargon. My employers have patented some of my brilliant ideas, and some of my less-than mediocre ideas, depending mainly on how many patents they wanted to get that year. I've never noticed any correlation between the quality of the idea and the difficulty of obtaining a patent. (BTW, have you ever noticed that one of the main jobs of an attorney is to simply reformat technical documentation into double-spaced courier font for $200/hr, changing every 's' ending on a plural noun to the phrase "a plurality of". How can you read that monospaced crap all day?)
Yes! Like I said, 35 USC 102 says that "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." and this is what you are expressing. The fact is that basically ANYTHING can be patented, but the devil is in the details - how it's claimed. The worse the idea, the easier it is to patent (people rarely publish their bad ideas, thus less prior art) and the better the idea, the more competition for patent protection. The hook is that you could get a patent for a toaster oven so long as the scope of your claims were SO SMALL that no prior art or existing toaster ovens would infringe. Heck, make the front door out of flammable cardboard - I doubt there's prior art for that.
By the way, adding "a plurality of" is one of the more complicated things the attorneys can charge you for ;)
My point about the bad laws is that our government likes to separate the people who make the laws from the people who use the laws. That idea has a lot of weight, in my opinion. The whole system falls back on the idea that "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless" the USPTO can prove they don'
The USPTO is primarily paid to examine patents, not issue them or except maintenance fees. The USPTO receives roughly 350,000 applications per year (7000 per week) and issues about 1000-1500 per week.
it could probably reduce the number of granted patents by a factor of 10 just by interpreting the letter of the law
Interpreting law is what judges do. Most people seem to like it that way. I suppose police you suggest that police officers interpret the law as well? It's never been their job before, but I bet they could realize lots of "results".
never giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt
And this is how patents have been examined for over one hundred years. Good idea, unfortunately it's not new.
doing exhaustive prior art searches
Can you define prior art? I am talking about the legal definition. Have you ever debated prior art with an attorney? Have you ever signed your name and submitted papers to a federal court where your entire argument depends on a date you found on a website? Do think that's a fun or easy thing to do?
and generally making it a royal pain in the ass to get any patent.
The USPTO receives more than 7000 applications per week and issues about 1250 per week. It has also expanded to address the growing backlog and break even (the backlog is no longer increasing in almost every department.) I'm curious where you establish "royal pain in the ass", since more than 80% of patent applications are abandoned in the current system.
However, the USPTO has a vested interest in encouraging as many patents as possible, since more patent applications == more income, and a bigger patent office is a bigger kingdom for the people in charge. Plus, it's just plain easier to rubber-stamp the stuff coming in without checking it thoroughly. That's why we see the exact opposite of the approach I described above.
I guess you're just being funny now. If there were the slightest shred of truth to your hyperbole, then why does the USPTO issue about 1250 patents per week but we read about maybe 1 or 5 per month at most? Why do people always fall back on the "swinging sideways on a swing" or the "one click purchase" patents? If reality and facts were on your side, then wouldn't we be reading about hundreds or thousands of "rubber stamped" patents per month? Per year?
Of course, it's not really your fault. You probably aren't aware that when a patent ends up on the front page, the examiner's entire career is in jeopardy. You probably aren't aware that the examining process takes 12-48 months and involves 10-200 pages of correspondence between the attorneys and the examiners. You probably aren't aware that having a high issue percentage is taboo among examiners and definitely not something to talk about. Finally, you probably aren't aware that 35 U.S.C. 102 states "a person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." which means that ultimately, the attorney can push the application to a board of appeals, in which case the decision to issue is largely out of the examiner's hands yet the examiner's name is still on the issued patent.
Basically, if a law is really bad, the local police often don't bother enforcing it. They've got better things to do.
What, like prohibition? I guess you never heard of the war on drugs? I guess you haven't seen police officers enforcing segregation? You have a seriously deficient understanding of the difference between interpreting law and executing law. If you combine those powers, you have bad results. They are kept separate for very important reasons.
The USPTO doesn't have anything better to do, and it enforces the bad laws that it oversees with great enthusiasm.
Once again, the USPTO doesn't "oversee" anything. Interpretation of the law is done by judges. The USPTO issues a patent if it fails to enforce the application - "a per
Wow, great idea. Why don't we call it "basically the 3rd world plus China" and we can have this huge economy where nobody has a right to profit from their ideas and everybody can "share" everyone else's ideas. It'll be super.
You can have a boot factory, and when you come up with a dirty, filthy piece of intellectual property - we'll call it a "competitive edge" - then everyone ELSE can "share" your "competitive edge" - for the good of society. Sweet. Then we'll all have the same competitive edge - production at your boot factory will improve. Of course, the government (which owns your boot factory, naturally) will know this and simply raise your production quotas! Awesome. Plus, all your fellow boot factory managers will know that you're responsible for raising THEIR quotas, which they now have to meet or fear being reprimanded by The Party, so all of your comrades will hate you. (Of course, I mean "comrades" in the friendly way - haha, not like those wonderful Communists.)
So what you end up with is this huge economic machines where individual achievement would be immediately obliterated by the sharing of your competitive edge. Wonderful. Utopia is just around the corner. Of course, some people would realize that developing a competitive edge is therefore pretty useless, since it is no longer the path to personal advancement or realizing your own individual destiny (but who wants that, right comrades? Who's with me?) so the issue of intellectual property is even more meaningless because nobody would give a rat's ass about research & development. Who wants a higher boot quota? Just keep your head down and turn out enough boots each month.
Of course, I could be wrong. I don't know much about the former Soviet patent system, and they had all the best technology they could steal from the West. Innovation wasn't really their bag. I wonder why? How about those Chinese? Their patent system isn't nearly as juicy to criticize as ours and I hear they've got a space program - only 40 years after the US. Hey, that isn't even five tiny decades late - it's practically another space race. You know, for all the 1000 or so different brands and models of DVD players, once you open the case, there are only about 25 different models. Those come from a handful of factories in NW China, where they enjoy a "patent haven" by dumping unlicensed DVD players on the world market (and less money paying license fees on rebranded players that go to America.) Why don't you enter the NW Chinese DVD player industry? Oh yeah, of course! Because they've already got their claws in that market, they'll steal your intellectual property, technological innovations, and competitive edge, and dump your product on the market before your factory pays its first electric bill. What problem could a patent haven NOT solve?
The patent system has its flaws, but a "Patent Haven" has been tried. It's called a "command economy", and while you might have the ticket to perfect the concept, historically they don't fare too well.
Oh really? THAT's the cause of it these days? It's not because of the huge disparity in expected wages? It's not because educated American workers demand health care? It's not because that health care is absurdly expensive? It's not because foreign workers are often struggling to overcome poverty while Americans are often struggling to not work too hard? It's not because of trade agreements that do too little to preserve the local standards of living while opening up huge labor markets to corporations? It's not because copyright holders in the US have gone apeshit (RIAA, MPAA) but their powers basically end at the American borders?
But it IS because of this heavily cliched hyperbole about nooses and over-regulation? Ok. Gosh, you convinced me. Would you like to sell me a toothbrush? How about something herbal? Would you like me to vote for a particular candidate?
I call bullshit. You've got an excellent premise for a fictional fairy tale, but I strongly doubt you would make such statements if you were well informed about patent law. You do claim "there needs to be a change in the law," so I'll presume you know which sections of federal law govern the patent system and have at least read the critical sections (it's only about 4-5 pages), so I ask you why is it you believe that this change is necessary?
You must be well aware that in order to protect yourself from an existing patent, you merely need to differentiate your invention from the existing patents. That means some improvement in function, some reduction in cost, some improvement in efficiency, some different process, or even a decrease in efficiency, etc., will make your invention patentably distinct over the prior art. All that matters is that your attorney goes on the official record and says, "Our invention is NOT taught by the prior because blah blah, blah blah." This establishes that your licensing deal does not create a patent infringement suit based on some other patent. Once that fact is clear and in ink, you're pretty much home free.
Why is this relavent? Well, if someone patents something and doesn't take it to market (something which was never even suggested, hinted at, required, or implied by the Constitution, mind you) whether it's 3 years later, 15 years later, or 3 days later, you and your company are perfectly free to improve upon the existing prior art and be protected from infringement. Hell, you don't even need to wait until it's patented - applications are published and searchable on the internet. You don't need to receive a patent yourselves to establish that protection, but it makes it easier if you end up in court.
So really, if you ask me (and you haven't, but I'll toss this out there for free) there doesn't necessarily need to be a Constitutional amendment to meddle with a legal concept which already exists with sufficient strength to achieve what you're proposing; there needs to be a change in public awareness and education of what patent law actually says as opposed to the pedagoguery, FUD, and fantasy fiction that is spouted, reread, and regurgitated around the internet and Slashdot in particular.
By the way, if your response to that is "But what about 'overly broad' patents," I would once again question the legitimacy of your knowledge. "Overly broad" patents are a fantasy that lives in popular media and anti-patent groupthink, not in law. The truth is that the broader a patent is, the easier it is to invalidate it in court. What about "overly broad" patents? If it's "overly broad", you won't have trouble proving so in an infringement suit. Of course, I'm sure you wouldn't bring up the idea of "overly broad" patents, because like I said, that's an idea based on media fiction rather than the law.
Here's a quick question for you. If the local police are enforcing a bad law, whom do you blame? If you blame the police officers, then you are entirely ignorant of how criminal law is written and amended. That observation is not irrelevant to your comment about the USPTO. Rub a few together and you'll see my point.
Uh, alright. While your opinion is that Microsoft shouldn't get a trademark for the reasons you've listed, my understanding is that the law holds an opinion quite different from yours. I know, I know, that's an insignificant detail around here, but it is peculiar that you would trash the author for failing to point out the release date of TurboExcel while completely steamrolling the quaint notions of law and how a trademark is actually issued.
But hey, what do I know. I'm just observing.
I doubt you meant what that actually means.
It would be ridiculously easy to write claims for those exhibits while disqualifying them as suitable prior art. That fact has to do with the level of "enablement" present in a fluff-journalism paragraph. The very basic concepts are taught, but throw in 5,000 details of implementation and you have yourself a completely different animal.
If the patent is issued, it's valid until proven otherwise in court.
I think what you're trying to ask is whether it matters that the feature was never publicly released, despite being patented. The answer to that is it makes no difference. It will affect the duration of the patent, for if they release the feature 10 years later, they cannot "refresh" the patent's lifetime (35 USC 102 and related material makes that clear.) More interestingly, if they develop the feature, presumably with dated documentation, but never apply for a patent, those dated documents can be used to defeat a future patent application if they can be discovered by the examiner. Technically the applicant is legally bound to submit all known pertinent material, but that's not something that can be enforced regarding whether or not the patent issues, but it is in the applicant's best interest to comply if he wants a strong patent that is less likely to be challenged in court.
What are you saying here? If they support things that are unpopular, then they deserve what they got? You've already convicted them of whatever the FBI thinks they've done - and you don't even know what the FBI thinks they've done. Cuff'em boys, they must have done what you won't tell me they did because they like unpopular things.
Now, if there exists hard evidence that they were sending money to Al Aqsa et al., there might be some merit in the "they got what was coming" attitude. Unfortunately, the FBI hasn't made any charges public, and unless you've got the inside scoop on what they were up to (you should be talking to the FBI about it) you've won the award for the most anti-American, anti-Constitutional demagoguery I've read all week.
Wrong. There's more than 1.5 million primes up to 24,036,583 (the largest Mersenne exponent known), and only 41 of these are Mersenne exponents.
Read what I typed, then read what you typed.
If I were wrong, then most of the Mersenne numbers would be composite. You have suggested that most of the large prime numbers are not Mersenne numbers, which is an unrelated concept, and substantiates my original post.
Rather, most of the Mersenne numbers are prime, and most of them are large. That doesn't begin to scratch the surface of most large prime numbers though.
Consumer McMonkey, you are hereby notified that the voice of democracy has been heard at all levels of American government. America has spoken in favor of moral values across this great nation.
This is your final warning before you will be apprehended for thought adjustment.
The appropriate, patriotic, American phrase is, "Well, at least dirty fags can't marry."
Be offended if you must, but at least realize that it's satire.
I don't have mod points, but you got my respect.
So, 97 sq ft per dollar. Wow, is that what your in-laws charge for you to put a trailer on your wife's dowrie -cough- to put a trailer on their land?
Aw.
I stood about 10 feet away from this guy and seriously laughed out loud at him. He was visibly annoyed, but white collar dad was entranced. Oh well, it's not my job to save people from making dumb purchases. In this case, he suckered that guy into buying a computer, and all I can say is God bless him.
I also pay $1300 per month in rent. Blow me.
That's pretty good advice. I wear Bostonians and Italian shirts depending on the day of the week, unfortunately the nitwits selling Monster Cables don't seem to be up to speed on clothing that doesn't have a gaudy logo...
Yes. Put them in your shoes. Now that I'm 24 and make twice the average family income whatever this is worth I find it almost impossible to shop unless I know exactly what I want. I guess there aren't too many single guys in their young 20s shopping for really nice vacuum cleaners or $1500 mattress sets. Who knew?
Power grids - everyone is screwed if the computer malfunctions. This is a tool.
Nuclear generators - see above.
Water supplies - see above.
Space shuttles - everyone involved has a legitimate interest in seeing these computers perform accurately.
XBoxes - entertainment devices are not critical.
This is in direct contrast to an electronic voting machine, where election ethics demand that voters retain their anonymity while trusting the computers to perform appropriately. This is not a situation where the nature of the problem demands that the computers perform as expected - there is something to gain by "malfunctioning" computers and the nature of the problem interferes with correcting the problem.
You realize that there is no difference between a human putting a record into a database and a computer putting a record into a database, except that the human may decide to do it because he doesn't like your skin color.
This would be true, except the part about "there is no difference". The difference is that a human putting the record in the database takes legal responsibility and accountability for that action. When a computer screws up, who takes the blame? If you lose an email, who cares? If you go to jail, hell, who cares? How are you going to address that problem? You're clearly a criminal now - all criminals claim to be innocent. Even if this supposed "mistake" took place, how could you explain it? No person exists to take the blame for the "mistake".
A computer will make errors in patterns. A human will make errors randomly; or worse, very specifically and thus much harder to catch and correct.
An introduction to mathematical logic and reasoning will present the observation that the sun has risen every day for billions of years. While that's poetic, it does not prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. How about you volunteer to be the first person wrongly fired or convicted by a computer? We'll get the problem all sorted out in a couple decades, so don't worry about it.
Even if you want to talk about elections, where the "pattern" would presumably be discovered amongst the millions of votes counted for a single event, explain to me again where this is any better than voting on paper? Once we enter the realm of recounting votes, nothing surpasses voters creating marked paper ballots in the first place (problems with hanging chads notwithstanding.)
Can anybody put a name to that paraphrased quote?