Patent Reform Act Proposes Sweeping Changes

Geccie writes "CNet is reporting that Senators Patrick Leahy and Orin Hatch have proposed sweeping changes in the patent system in the form of the Patent Reform Act of 2006. Key features are the ability to challenge (postgrant opposition) with the Senate version being somewhat broader and better than the house version." From the article: "Specifically, it would shift to a 'first to file' method of awarding patents, which is already used in most foreign countries, instead of the existing 'first to invent' standard, which has been criticized as complicated to prove. Such a change has already earned backing from Jon Dudas, chief of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office."

How about eliminating patents

[by Anonymous Coward]

and guaarantee the freedom to innovate so true competition may exist? That way a small inventor won't lose his house when trying to compete with the large companies who buy up all the intellectual real estate on the monopoly board.

Re:How about eliminating patents

[CosmeticLobotamy (155360)]

How about eliminating patents and guaarantee the freedom to innovate so true competition may exist? That way a small inventor won't lose his house when trying to compete with the large companies who buy up all the intellectual real estate on the monopoly board.

No, he'll just go broke when trying to compete with the large companies who wait for him to build something cool and then use their huge existing resources to cheaply mass produce his invention before he has a chance to make a dime off it. Not that either the existing or proposed system is "good", but yours would suck pretty bad, too.

Re:How about eliminating patents

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

No, he'll just go broke when trying to compete with the large companies who wait for him to build something cool and then use their huge existing resources to cheaply mass produce his invention before he has a chance to make a dime off it.

And how is this in any way substantially different from someone who sets up a new kind of shop or service or method of selling product only to have their competitors, yes, compete and emulate their ideas? Capitalism rewards enterprise, not inventiveness. I have no sympathy

Re:How about eliminating patents

[Kaktrot (962696)]

The patent system doesn't exist to make people rich for sitting around and thinking. That is a means to an end: That John Q. Public will have more useful technology available to him when the patent runs out. It exists only to encourage innovation. As it sits right now, the patent system is buried in bureaucracy, but it still stimulates more innovation than if there were nothing, which leads to better, cheaper products and medicines to the public.

Patents do work, especially in the medical area. Pharmace

Re:How about eliminating patents

[dattaway (3088)]

Patents do work, especially in the medical area. Pharmaceuticals would be prohibitive to develop (without direct state involvement) without patent protection.

I hear this a lot. Is this really true? Drug researchers often research native cultures and find what traditional remedies they have used. Then the drug company finds a way to mass produce or synthesize it. And don't forget decommoditizing it so they can guarantee profits. So what they are doing is patenting little known prior art and marketing th

Re:How about eliminating patents

[Kaktrot (962696)]

Where are you getting your information? When some big medical company, MegaFeelgoodCorp or something, wants to create a new AIDS treatment, you're saying they go out to BFE and observe how the ancient Buntuchuku tribe handles people with AIDS? Those billions of dollars supposedly spent by the industry on clinical research groups, doctors, lab work, you know medical-type shit goes somewhere.

Is it all just a farce, then? Or perhaps they've just been going about it the wrong way, and we should handle diseases the same way we did when people had the lifespan of a fruitfly in a blender? It wasn't all that long ago.

Re:How about eliminating patents

[shmlco (594907)]

"Yeah, it goes to the shareholders."

I'm REALLY tired of all of the people bashing corporations and acting as if it's a sin to for anyone to make money. Shareholders, huh? Okay, do you have a pension plan? 401K? Interest-bearing bank account? Car loan? Mortgage? Life, car, home, or health insurance? Student-loan? SBL?

Where do you think that money comes from? Did you know that half the stocks in the US are owned by... us, in the form of pension and retirement funds? Or that business and corporate taxes on pro

Re:How about eliminating patents

[B'Trey (111263)]

If you're really interested in the drug companies and patents, here's a reasonably accurate look at how things work:

Of Pills and Profits [commentarymagazine.com]

Re:How about eliminating patents

[nahdude812 (88157)]

Yes, it is true. It cost many millions of dollars to take a product from inception (whether it's a compound created in a laboratory, or a plant natives have been using forever) through all the preclinical and clinical trials that are necessary to obtain regulatory approval. Not only that, it often costs nearly the same, or sometimes even more, for products that get near the end of clinical trials, and present a side effect that all the preclinical trials failed to display (whether it's because the preclinical subjects were unable to tell the researchers about the side effect, such as something severe that only represents itself seldomly but with no visible signs, or because the non-human test subjects simply didn't experience the side effect).

There are litterally hundreds of people who work on a product at any given point in its many testing phases, and all of these people draw salaries. Testing for products can take 10 or more years, and all of this gives no guarantee the product will succeed at the end.

If all of that work and expense could be done by one company, and any other company could snap it up w/o having to invest in that research, then who in their right mind would invest 10's or 100's of millions of dollars into producing a product when that basically means they're giving it to their competetors for free? Sometimes when the product is sufficiently narrow in scope, even with patents, on a successful drug, drug companies fail to recover their investment during the patent's lifetime.

There are many areas that the patent system is abused. It may even be abused to some extent in the pharmaceutical industry (there certainly are products that are less expensive than other products to research and produce, depending on the product's origin, intended use, and how smoothly it runs through trials), but it is absolutely necessary in order that companies like these (which are in the end for-profit companies with a legal obligation to their share holders; feel free to start your own not-for-profit pharmaceutical) can research and produce life saving drugs and treatments while remaining financially salient.

Re:How about eliminating patents

[MooUK (905450)]

I wonder how well the following would work:

In order to sell a drug, a company must have proved that their product is effective and safe (as the original researcher has to now) - whether they researched it or not. With just that, every company has to perform all the safety tests for what they want to sell themselves, making it cost them larger amounts straight off. The cost for the safety tests will be less than the total development costs, but with enough others buying the certification they should be able

Re: How about eliminating patents

[Black Parrot (19622)]

> Yes, it is true. It cost many millions of dollars to take a product from inception (whether it's a compound created in a laboratory, or a plant natives have been using forever) through all the preclinical and clinical trials that are necessary to obtain regulatory approval. Not only that, it often costs nearly the same, or sometimes even more, for products that get near the end of clinical trials, and present a side effect that all the preclinical trials failed to display (whether it's because the prec

Re:How about eliminating patents

[andrewman327 (635952)]

You seem to think that invention is easy. There is a reason that Edison was the first to perfect the lightbulb: it was hard! He used everything possible to try to create a filiment that really worked. Do you think he would have plucked the hairs from his head and spun everything possible to create a more efficient filament if his competitors could have reproduced it? 100% of R&D costs would be lost to competitors, creating an incentive not to be innovative.

Re:How about eliminating patents

[Znork (31774)]

"I hear this a lot."

Yes, well, the pharmaceutical industry likes to repeat it a lot.

"Is this really true?"

No it isnt. The vast bulk of pharmaceutical spending is on administration, marketing and comparatively inefficient production. Not even a fifth of the average pharmcorp's spending is on R&D (take a look at their public filings some time).

That isnt to say pharmaceutical research is free, but it does mean this: we'd get _five times_ the current R&D if we paid for it outright. Or we could pay a fif

Re:How about eliminating patents

[Peter La Casse (3992)]

How about eliminating patents and guaarantee the freedom to innovate so true competition may exist? That way a small inventor won't lose his house when trying to compete with the large companies who buy up all the intellectual real estate on the monopoly board.

No, he'll just go broke when trying to compete with the large companies who wait for him to build something cool and then use their huge existing resources to cheaply mass produce his invention before he has a chance to make a dime off it. Not that either the existing or proposed system is "good", but yours would suck pretty bad, too.

There would still be more small inventors making products than there are now; the current patent system stifles the small inventor, who can't afford a huge patent search and who doesn't have a huge patent portfolio to cross-license with competitors.

Even if small inventors were worse off, society as a whole would be better off, which is the point of the patent system to begin with. If an invention really is useful, then it won't be lost.

Re:How about eliminating patents

[B'Trey (111263)]

Your underlying assumption here is that patents protect amazing new "Eureka!" ideas that are novel and imaginative but easy to rip off. There are a few examples of this. I believe the guy who invented the weedeater/string trimmer didn't patent his idea and made almost nothing off it. That's the sort of thing that patents were intended to protect. If they were limited to that, they might be workable and effective. Unfortunately, they aren't. Almost anything and everything can be patented. And if I'm r

Re:How about eliminating patents

[swelke (252267)]

People have been saying this a lot in the thread so far. "First to file" doe NOT eliminate prior art. What first to file means is that if two otherwise valid patent applicaitons come in to the patent office, the office gives precedence to the first one filed at the office (instead of the one that claims to have invented it first). Note that these are otherwise valid applications. If there is prior art before you file your patent application, then it isn't valid. Not only that, but the postgrant opposition part of the bill should be good for making sure that prior art doesn't get ignored (as it often does now).

Time Machine

[Aidan Steele (979438)]

$DEITY have mercy on the first to patent the time machine.

A prediction...

[pen (7191)]

I predict that any bill that makes things through Congress will only change the system for the worse.

Re:A prediction...

[g2devi (898503)]

It's dead obvious that they will. This is the attitude that troubles me the most:

> Specifically, it would shift to a 'first to file' method of awarding patents,
> which is already used in most foreign countries, instead of the existing 'first
> to invent' standard, which has been criticized as complicated to prove.

Basically, they're saying that since the useful solution that is easy to justify (if you believe in patent theory) is too hard to implement (and causes too many problems), then the obvious thing to do is to pick a useless solution that is impossible to justify (through patent theory) because it's easier and will allow the patent office to process new patents quicker (and cause even more problems).

This reminds me of the old joke. It was midnight at the parking lot and a policeman saw a drunk looking for something near a lamp post. The policeman asked what what the drunk was looking for. The drunk said "I lost my car keys in the dark alley a half a block away, so I'm searching for them here." The police said it didn't make sense. The drunk replied, "It makes perfect sense. It's too hard to find my car keys in the dark, so I'm looking for them where there's some light".

The key difference between the drunk and Congress is that the drunk didn't make the problem worse through his useless solution.

Re:A prediction...

[hey! (33014)]

Basically, they're saying that since the useful solution that is easy to justify (if you believe in patent theory) is too hard to implement (and causes too many problems), then the obvious thing to do is to pick a useless solution that is impossible to justify (through patent theory) because it's easier and will allow the patent office to process new patents quicker (and cause even more problems).

Where it gets interesting when you bring up the theory under which patents are granted is that, at least in my opinion, the situation these different methods are meant to resolve shouldn't exist.

Patents supposedly reward invention, and a key aspect that distinguishes an invention from a mere design is non-obviousness. But what does it mean to be "non-obvious"? It's a subjective measure: what is obvious to an experienced designer is not at all obvious to a novice, or to a lawyer or to a patent examiner. We are basically granting government sanctioned monopolies on ideas based on the subjective opinions of non-qualified people.

What we need is an objective standard. Let me propose one:

If an idea is arrived at independently by two parties working on the same problem, the idea is, ipso facto, an obvious one.

Under that standard, it doesn't matter who "invented" first or who filed first: if two parties came up with the same thing without knowledge of relevant details of each others' work, then the idea is not worthy of a patent.

This would (a) invalidate most patents and (b) greatly increase (according to the law of supply and demand) the value of truly orginal ideas, which now compete with merely patentable ideas. In my view that'd amount to an unquestionably superior patent system.

Re:A prediction...

[hey! (33014)]

So by your standard, Calculus is obvious?

Yes. If you travelled back in a time machine and shot Newton and Leibnitz before they revealed any of their discoveries, it is my belief the Calculus would have been "discovered" almost "on schedule".

The subsequent pissing match over priority tended to obscure rather than enlighten. Not to diminish the accomplishments of Newton or Leibnitz, but the basic concepts underlying differential and integral calculus were known to the Greeks as early as Euclid. What was

Re:A prediction...

[hey! (33014)]

So then the best business stategy would to spy on the competitors, and then quickly create "evidence" of prior R&D to make it look like both companies came up with it first.

In which case, nobody gets the patent. Which is unfair to one inventor. However when an obvious patent is created, it is unfair to every engineer who plans to work in the field for the next two decades.

Under the current system, you still have the incentive to spy and lie, but the payoff is bigger: you not only get to use the inventor's idea, you deny him the use of his own idea.

I think I see the noble ideal you're driving at, unfortunately, I do not believe it to be an achievable one.

On the contrary, I think it is the only practical one. We live under an impractical system now, that only works because people avoid researching prior art: with so many bad patents being issued, you're bound to violate something. It also works because there are so many fish in the pond, hopefully you can grow to a defendable size before a parasite leaches onto you.

The only reason the current system seems "practical" is because we don't know what practical would feel like.

To my way of thinking, having a simple, objective challenge for "obviousness" is the most practical solution conceivable. Sure, people may perjure themselves. That's true under any patent system. But the game itself is much tougher, and therefore less attractive to unscrupulous people out to make a quick buck.

So What

[Umbral Blot (737704)]

Wow, a bill that solves none of the many real problems with the patent system. Way to go lawmakers! Who votes for these fools?

I consider this bad

[rolfwind (528248)]

"Specifically, it would shift to a 'first to file' method of awarding patents, which is already used in most foreign countries, instead of the existing 'first to invent' standard, which has been criticized as complicated to prove.

I'm the first to say if another country does something better than the US, but just because other countries do it differently doesn't mean it is better. I consider "first to file" just promoting patent trolls even further, as they just keep an eye out for what everyone else is doing and patent what the other guy didn't really consider worth patenting. This provision is useless - yes, first to invent is hard to prove, but that is why keeping some type of traceable records is a good thing and you can't be locked out of the market just because patent troll X decided to file paperwork before you did.

Re:I consider this bad

[BobSutan (467781)]

I agree that this will bring the patent trolls out of the woodwork. However, this could work both ways. Imagine a big company releasing a product or service and not realizing its possible uses. Joe Schmoe patents that function, idea, whatever and turns around and sues the company that released the widget that gave them the idea for the patent in the first place. It happens today all the time, but its usually the big .Inc's that do it to small developers and inventors. They wait for trade shows where people showcase their stuff for VCs, take pics, notes, etc, and then turn over their notes to their developers who rush to beat the original inventor to market. As a matter of fact, that's how PONG was created.

Re:I consider this bad

[Znork (31774)]

"as they just keep an eye out for what everyone else is doing"

Technically, that shouldn't work. Anything they can keep an eye out for would have to have been published, and would therefore be unpatentable under first-to-file.

"you can't be locked out of the market just because patent troll X decided to file paperwork before you did."

As long as you're publishing everything you do you cant be out-patented and locked out. Only if you're keeping your work secret and someone else files for a patent on the same thing before you do.

Re:I consider this bad

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

In the UK, you file a preliminary patent. This protects you for about a year, in which time you submit a full patent application. Some inventions never get beyond the preliminary patent phase, but if something is really good then it is not hard to persuade someone to pay for the exclusive rights to it.

Orin Hatch - his son is a SCO lawyer

[geoff lane (93738)]

Brent O. Hatch is one of SCOs many lawyers. One wonders if any part of the new law would be of any help to SCO grabbing the work on many Linux programmers?

Re:Orin Hatch - his son is a SCO lawyer

[canuck57 (662392)]

Brent O. Hatch is one of SCOs many lawyers. One wonders if any part of the new law would be of any help to SCO grabbing the work on many Linux programmers?

If Wikipedia is right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch [wikipedia.org]

Mod parent UP as the post is on to something.

I guess the SCO group realizes it has no case so it is now influencing a change in law to change its case. Where is the SEC when you need them? Maybe this explains why SCO gets away with so much.

IBM/Linux should patent 0/1 (binary) since prio

"first to file" issues

[keithmo (453716)]

In the current system, a person/company has some fixed amount of time (1 year? 6 months? I don't recall) to file a patent after the invention has been mentioned publicly. Some companies rely on this by shipping the product first, then worrying about filing the patent applications. "First to file" will likely delay many product releases, as the inventor will be required to get the patent application process started before release.

As usual, follow the money trail.

[i_want_you_to_throw_ (559379)]

Oh dear God, not Orrin Hatch again! Seriously, this idiot was the man who introduced the DMCA and look how wonderful that piece of legislation was.

As usual, follow the money....
Orrin Hatch received $126,918 from the entertainment industry [opensecrets.org] in this last cycle. Not to be outdone, Leahy received $251,970 [opensecrets.org]

By my calculations that means that congressmen can be bought for less than $400K. My, my, my what an insanely great ROI.

America, the best government money can buy®

First to file?

[techmuse (160085)]

Sounds like an easy way to steal other people's ideas and patent them without having to do the work yourself. The people with the best lawyers and most money will win all the patents.

Re:First to file?

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

Oh bullshit. Any company working on potentially patentable ideas will simply be smart enough to keep that work secure and under wraps until the patents are filed. Companies are already used to protecting trade secrets (eg, the recipe for Coke) so this is hardly without precedent. Meanwhile, this change is easier both on the patent office, and the companies who are doing the work (since you no longer need to keep a detailed log book, just in case an idea turns out to be patentable).

So you do not want to patent, we got you !

[Coeurderoy (717228)]

First to file rather than first to invent means that all pesky open source programmers will have to worry about patenting random parts of what they do or risk that some large corporation or patent troll patents them out of their invention.

Even people that uterly despise software patents will have no choice in the US.

On the other hand all countries that heavelly invest in public education under the idea that education should not be only for rich kids and insannely smart, but also for smart creative poor or just not so rich kids, should be happy to see anything happen that makes the US less interesting for creative minds.
And helps the ROI stay in the country that made the investment.

Re:So you do not want to patent, we got you !

[Znork (31774)]

"First to file rather than first to invent means that all pesky open source programmers will have to worry"

It's not a problem for open source; if you've released code as open source that means it's been published, and no patent application filed on a later date could be granted covering any supposed invention in that code.

It's not first to file for a particular invention, it's first to file for a particular _previously undisclosed_ invention.

First to File

[cpt kangarooski (3773)]

Of course, this is unconstitutional. The Constitution requires that patents only be granted to an inventor. An inventor is the first person to develop a discovery or technology. The second guy to do so, even if he does so independently, is ultimately just an also-ran. If someone who had been unaware of them spontaneously invented the wheel, why the hell would he deserve anything? Why would it matter whether he did so thousands of years after it was invented by the actual inventor, or a day?

If other countries want to do that, then that's up to them. I'm not going to tell them what to do. But not only is it a bad idea here, it is one that would be entirely unlawful. It's only in here due to a combination of laziness on the part of the PTO, since they could avoid having to run interference proceedings, and greed on the part of large, corporate inventors, since they can act more quickly than smaller inventors.

I haven't had a chance to look at the latest bill, but I doubt there's much good in it, if anything, if this is any indication.

The constitution also says may other things..

[plasmacutter (901737)]

It specifically gives legislative authority to congress only, but this didnt stop the formation of the FCC, or the nixon drug laws (which give some yokle at the fda legislative authority against any pharmaceutical agent).
It also called for limited terms to copyright, but we all know who won in eldred vs ashcroft (so instead of infinity, it's infinity - 1.. which only those educated in calculus or higher know is still infinity)

I learned through my history classes and especially current events not to count on

Re:The constitution also says may other things..

[plasmacutter (901737)]

people would get quite angry at legislators (and executives) who consistently pass (and sign) unconstitutional legislation: Which would include Social Security, Medicare, welfare, abortion (yes, people, even abortion), massive "transportation" bills, etc. Remember that 10th Amendment*? It's not there for show. You can actually trace the huge amount of influence money has on current politics to the advent of modern liberalism, since that was when government suddenly became the solution to all our problems, a

Re:The constitution also says may other things..

[Valdrax (32670)]

So, to summarize, if you want to see judges actually strike down unconstitutional laws, vote Republican.

What, you mean like Scalia, Thomas, and Alito did in Rumsfield vs. Hamdan in their dissent?

No, thanks! I'll take unconstitutional rulings over property rights over unconstitutional rules over whether or not the government can kidnap people, torture them, and then try them in unaccountable military tribunals where not only they and their attorney aren't allowed to see evidence against them. I'd rather lose my house to a scummy developer and a crooked city than my life and liberty to an unaccountable unitary executive (aka dictator).

I'm sorry, but as much as I hate, hate, hate the Kelo decision, it's nothing compared to the Constitutional mangling that conservative/authoritarian justices are in favor of.

Re:The constitution also says may other things..

[Trepalium (109107)]

So, to summarize, if you want to see judges actually strike down unconstitutional laws, vote Republican. Because (generally) the judges they appoint will at least read the constitution before deciding a law. Liberal judges (like Ginsberg) will ignore the constitution if foreign law or "world opinion" differs.

You mean, the same party that complains endlessly about "activist judges" who strike down unconstitutional laws that Republicans like? There are plenty of Republicans actually considering taking awa

hatch and leahy are right there with stevens...

[plasmacutter (901737)]

..as two of congress's biggest sock puppets to moneyed interests, so there is no surprise theyre the ones comming up with this, and it's also a slight relief to know this is what some of the worst of the worst are comming up with, because if not this it would be something much much worse.

Anyway, this is designed to "reform" the system by clearing the courts of many cases by simply awarding the sneakiest party. This law would result in the legitimizing of those "patent parasite" firms who snag patents, then ambush companies just as theyre going to market. It would reverse the apple v creative case too. This is definitely at the expense of the inventor, and would also make invalidation of obvious patents much harder, since prior art would no longer apply. In that way it is playing to moneyed interests, but even moneyed interests would incur great expense to these parasites mentioned above.

The hatch/leahy duo are the perfect illustration of how partisan grandstanding only serves as a red herring, and that corruption extends beyond party lines.

In addition to the horizontal axis of left and right, there is a vertical axis nobody in the media or politics wants the public to pay attentin to, moneyed elitists vs populists.

voting one party or the other does not guarantee the politician's position along this vertical axis, and that axis in this nation is the one which is more important.

Replay from 2005

[955301 (209856)]

An interesting tidbit, this was introduced in 2005 as well by Lamar Smith of Texas:

http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/06/patent _reform_p.html [typepad.com]

Not sure what the difference is between the two, because I'm still looking for the bill's number. It's almost as if people like to use the fluffy name and never really look at the bill - only reference it from other articles.

First to file: who cares?

[MobyDisk (75490)]

The real problem with our patent system is not the first-to-file or first-to-invent rule. The real issue is the bogus patents. No solution will work until we stop funding the patent office based on the number of patents it grants. We have an big incentive for the office to NOT do their job. It would be like paying lawyers only if they lost a case!

it gets worse

[blackest_k (761565)]

"The bill would also establish a "postgrant opposition" system that would allow outsiders to dispute the validity of a patent before a board of administrative judges within the Patent Office, rather than in the traditional court system. The idea behind such a proceeding, also endorsed by the Patent Office, is to stave off excessive litigation.

The Senate version appears to give broader leeway for such challenges, offering up to 12 months--as opposed to the House's nine-month window--after the patent is awarded for challengers to file a "petition for cancellation." That time period could then be widened even further, with a second window available if the petitioner "establishes a substantial reason to believe that the continued existence of the challenged claim causes or is likely to cause the petitioner significant economic harm." Challengers would be limited, however, in the issues they could raise after that first year expires." from the article

Economic harm, seems to be potentially a way of blocking a large number of interested parties even the original inventor. seems that gpled software could be vunerable to this, it's free therefore no economic harm and no standing to challenge the patent. who can fight back in this situation ?

I will leave it upto someone else to explore the pitfalls of that little idea

I havent read TFA OR anything about this bill...

[jonwil (467024)]

But, its supported by Orrin Hatch, same guy who is behind a lot of other nasty IP related bills that have appeared on Slashdot. Which automatically makes it bad. (since Hatch has shown time and time again that he is a shill to big corps with lots of investment in IP)

Patent economics 101

[argoff (142580)]

People need to understand that patents are a lie, and pure evil. There are several reasons for this ....

a) Inventions are usefull, they are beneficial that's why there will always be a need for them with or without patents. The choice is not between patents and no innovation, the choice is between wether invention revenue will derive from a service model vs an invention control model.

b) When you have patnets that forces the market to center around invention controlls, when you don't have patnets that forces the market to center around invnetion services. So the notion that patents help small inventors, and incentivize invention is complete fraud.

c) Inventors are good at inventing things, big-business and government and lawyers are good at controlling things - patents do not help inventors. Patents help some large businesses, lawyers, governments, and anyone else who likes to control and deny other peoples liberties. They hurt inventors and do not promote innovation.

d) Patents are not a property right. Property rights exist because of natural scarcity, not because of human made scarsity. Slaves on the plantation were not a property right either. All the argument about incentive, business, commerce, and the wealth of America was crap back then and is now too.

e) Patents are a pure evil, and even genocidial. Those millions Africans who suffered and died of AIDS while pharmacuticals sued in the world court to forbid African nations from making generics - they suffered and died in the name of patetns. Those millions of people who died in auto accidents while patents held back air-bags and anti-lock breaks for 20 years - they suffered and died in the name of patents.

In sum, patents are a fraud, they are a lie, they harm inventors, they stiffle innovation, they are not property, they are anti free market, and they are evil to the point of genocide. We shouldn't be trying to reform them, we should be trying to kill them and hammer anyone else who dares try to impose them on us.

Re:Prior Art?

[Znork (31774)]

It mainly affects companies or individuals keeping innovations secret; in first to file, it's the first to file a previously _undisclosed_ invention who gets the patent.

For opensource it's probably slightly better, as it becomes slightly more difficult to submarine patents or futz the invention dates.

However, it doesnt affect the more real issues of overly broad claims, etc. Or the economic validity and usefullness of IP at all.

Re:Prior Art?

[3seas (184403)]

yes, it does mean that, much more so then it doesn't.

There is always a complication that man can inject. To assume that going with first to file is going to fix the problems of the first to invent is pretending that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Software is a big issue in this, as it is actually fraudelent to allow software patents. But to allow it also means that first to file will cause a land grab of patenting all sorts of things that originate in human thought but evolved little past writting it down.

There is a great deal that has been created in software which has never had a patent application filled out and sent in because the creator or writter of the work didn't want it patented. And maybe even if only to assure it stay free in use, they couldn't afford the .... what would be in this case, mob money payoff. The US patent office being the criminal organization in this case.

With software the issue of fraud is in application, otherwise software would be disallowed patentability. The proof that software is not patentable is only being avoided and by both sides of the software development industry, the proprietary and OSS, each having their own individual motives or incentives or vested interest to blind themselves of the provable facts of the nature of software.

To use an analogy or metaphor, mathmatics was complicated at one time thru the use of the roman numeral system. You could not do advanced math with it. Then came along the hindu arabic decimal system with its zero place holder that after 300 years of resistance and denial by the elite accountants , the general poopulation adopted the easier and more powerful tools of the decimal system, and has since gone on to go way way beyond the limitations of the roman numeral tools, to create whole new industries and economies that the roman numeral system simple was not capable of even conceiving.

Programming is the act of automating complexity, typically made of complexity automations that someone else did earlier. The human characteristic that set us above all other known creatures, which makes it our natural right to do, to build upon the works of those before us. The purpose of programming to to simplify the use of a complexity, to make it have an easier to use interface. and thru the use of easier to use interfaces more of use can put things together for ourselves.

But enters the fraud of software patents and the incentive to say "No you cannot use" (which is really all they patents are intended to be).
Add to this the first to file and what you have is a growing man made constraint as to your ability to apply your natural rights to create and improve you own ability and productivity which in turn contributes to an improved environment for us all. For even if you came up with something to help your dfaily tasks then someone else copuld file it and prevent you from using it via man made laws. Laws where all things are now no longer possible.

Abstraction Physics proves software is not patentable. But in a corrupt world, who wants to acknowledge that?

Re:Prior Art?

[babbling (952366)]

First to file still allows prior art - why wouldn't it?

Suppose first to file allows prior art. In the case of the person filing the claim not being the inventor, there would be prior art from whomever was the inventor.

Re:"First to file" is a horrible idea...

[anothy (83176)]

i agree with your concern in general, but it's worth pointing out that one can, in fact, file a provisional patent which lasts up to one year. i'm not sure what the expense involved is, and you have to provide more than just a description (which is a good thing, in my opinion), but the bar is much lower than a full patent app.