EFF, PubPat Each Seeking Some Patent Sanity 201
AbstracTus writes "According to Wired, The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to get the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine 10 patents that were selected from public submissions. We slashdotters often curse patents that should have been rejected, but are not. Do you think that the EFF can have any influence on the U.S. Patent Office? Are there other actions that are more likely to work?" And sharkb8 writes "The Public Patent Foundation is searching for
people with experience in all technical fields to help examine patents. This is the perfect chance for attorneys, law students, and geeks in general to do some pro bono work. PubPat is the group that recently
challenged one of Microsoft's FAT patents."
I thought this was a dupe (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
1. Patent examiners are EXTREMELY over-worked. My future brother-in-law is a patent examiner, and he's often told me of a draconian quota system that rewards being quick and sloppy.
2. The US government is pro-business (as it should be, IMHO). However, this translates into the default standing order at the USPTO being "accept", and not "reject" (whereas most
The USPTO recently underwent some changes (new computer system, IIRC) that should allow patent examiners to be a little bit more effective in the future. But it's obvious to me the USPTO has problems - and they are management issues, not really idiot patent examiners.
-Erwos
Clickable Link (Score:0, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
No reason not to patent (Score:5, Informative)
One way to change this would be to institute some penalty for filing dodgy patents. Both for the examiner who passed it and for whoever got it. A fine at least and repayment of any license fees garnered on the patent. Covering of expenses for the challenger, perhaps? A system of extra checking of patents from companies/persons that have had patents overturned previously? Repeat offenders? Three strikes and you're out? The possibilities are endless, but frivolous patenting should be as serious an offense as infringing on a patent.
-Lars
Re:Did anyone here actually read the article? (Score:5, Informative)
As dumb as the swinging-sideways patent may be, it hasn't actually caused any real harm, other than to undermine the credibility of the patent office. If people on swings were getting C&D notices, then maybe it would have been more appropriate for inclusion in this project.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
OK, it's a simple concept called profit margin. If it cost you $5,000,000,000 to make $1 of profit, then that investment is not generating a good return. You would almost certainly get out of what you're doing and focus your $5,000,000,001 in a market that will grow your business a little faster.
This is especially true of publicly traded companies that are issuing stock or stock options. Since each stock issue dilutes the value of the existing stock, you have to grow the business fast enough to offset the resulting decline in the stock's value.Re:Finally... (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, I have been wondering recently whether anti-trust can be used here. In the EU, at least, the competition authorities are pretty good at pursuing activities that are detrimental to competition, and I'm waiting for someone to make the argument that this blue-chip process of mass-patent-filing and mass-cross-licensing is tantamount to a cartel ("the tragedy of the anti-commons") that excludeds others from effectively using patents.
It seems to me that a lot of these "dodgy" patents are the result of companies with too much budget aimed at patenting anything the engineers and the patent attorneys can think off. I used to read IEEE publications and think a lot of engineers with numerous awarded patents, but now being a bit older and wiser, I realise that if you work in a big blue-chip, the patent attorney's will help you pursue patents on anything and everything, even the most trivial patent that never returns its value.
But what the sum of all these patents do is give the blue-chip a huge arsenal it can use in the cross-licensing stakes with other blue-chips: and if they don't continue to build piles of patents, they'll miss out on the cross-licensing opportunities and be really shafted as legal teams from other blue-chips aim infringement canons for patents that may be trivial, but can chew up $millions in litigation time and expenses.
Some thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
As an ex-Examiner and law student, I have some observations on this.
First, Congress and the PTO are somewhat isolated. The way Congress and divisions of the government make law, as a topic, is called administrative law. This works by Congress making general federal statutes (Title 15 in the case of patents) and the right to make regulations to implement the goals of the federal statues fall to the governmental division concerned (with patents, the USPTO).
So, to influence patent policy, the first level is to influence the USPTO Commissioner. He could likely get the regulations governing how patents are actually examined, as well as the infrastructure withing the PTO, changed to improve the system. Most new Commissioners make changes anyway. As the Commissioner is appointed by the President, he ultimately has a lot of control as well. I'm not sure, but I expect that the Senate has to approve any appointment to the USPTO Commissioner, so in that instance, so contacting the President and your Senators at appropriate times may be influential, but this only occurs every so many years.
The higher level is to influence Congress to pass a bill to amend Title 35 (that part of federal statutes which deals with patents). Here you are up against all the big corporations who benefit from the present situation (IBM, MS, etc.). Still, lobbying is a tool and keeping up pressure effectively (i.e. not calling your representative every week, but applying pressure in lobbying-savvy ways, as by the guidance of an experienced Washingtonian lobbyist).
I would think that setting out goals for change, then adequately supporting them with evidence would be a good tool. Remember that the Constitution states that Congress is to "promote" science and the useful arts. The idea is to prove that some aspect of the current policy does not promote the development of technology, but retards it in some way, then Congress might be open to changing the statutes. I believe this happened with the so-called "submarine patents" - the patent applications that were in the PTO for decades and would get issued allowing the inventor to sue users of mature industries and, basically, extort vast amounts of money. (If this topic intrests you, search for the name Lemelson" - he built a multimillion dollar industry off of this tactic). As I recall, though, Congress modified the patent statutes to discourage submarine patents during the phase to harmonize US patent law with European practice, so the retarding nature of submarine patents may not have been such a big motivation for change.
If you really want to change patent law, the more effective way is as follows. Get elected President with a Congress stacked in your favor. Then do the following:
1) Pressure Congress to amend the Patent Act according to your tastes.
2) Use your treaty making ability to enter into treaties as a run around of Congress for any changes thet don't get implemented. This requires Senate approval but avoids the House.
3) Appoint a PTO Commissioner who will implement your changes in a way you like.
So, will the EFF be effective? What else can be done? Doing something (being heard) is better than not doing anything. Can the average /.er do something as well? Of course. The best thing might be to follow patent issues and contact the appropriate party (President, Congress, PTO Commissioner) at the appropriate time (just before action is taken). It would be nice if there was a companion website to /. that would encourage action on issues of importance to /.ers. I.e. allow postings of example letters, addresses for contacting, discussion of the issues. Sometimes this is done in /. itself - people sometimes post example letters or addresses of the concerned politicians. Maybe we can encourage a new
no one knows what they're talking about (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, changing minor details of a system is sometimes enough for you to be able to patent your own design. Take a look at the hundreds of different patents for the revolver mechanism on a gun, or ways of making a shock absorber, you'll see what I'm talking about.
Yes, overly broad patents are sometimes issued, but rarely stand up in court even though they've been issued -- so while patenting water or walking or something may sound clever, it's actually of little practical use. The best patents are those that refer to specific things -- such as the LZW patent. A very specific algorithm with a very specific use that did not prevent dozens of other methods of dictionary compression to pop up.
There is definetly a large need to stop the excessive Patents
I disagree. When you do things in an original way, the best means of maintaining economic viability in the software industry these days is to ensure that somebody can't clone your work and offer it for less, or in the case of OSS, for free. The best way to do that is to patent it. Theft of intellectual property (e.g. product design) should not be accepted as business as usual. Unfortunately, it is quite common in the industry as well as in the Open Source community (and it's often touted as a main feature of an application..."X is a Y workalike," etc. Software patents are really the only defense AGAINST the cloning of your program.
I spent three months working on the interface for my last program and my boss is so worried that somebody will just clone it and sell a look-alike for cheaper that he doesn't want to put screenshots on the web! In our industry, price is a BIG concern and we're already selling things as cheaply as we can without cutting big corners, like our R&D budget. Being able to have the peace of mind that, for twenty years, nobody else in this industry could do what the core of our product does in the way it does it without our permission, would be a great boon to the maintenance of our MASSIVE R&D budget.
incorrect, no bonuses for allowances (Score:3, Informative)
Examiners get paid based on how many counts they get. Examiners get counts for the first response to an application (the first action on the merits) and upon disposal, that is when the case is issued, abandoned, or as usually happens, when the applicant files a request for continued examination, which is technically an abandonment, but restarts the whole process.
What most
Bonus wise, examiners get bonuses for exceeding their quota by certain percentages. Having RCE's are a much easier way to achieve this as they are a "free" count.
Examiner's already have cases reviewed by their supervisors, quality review boards, other supervisors. The number of cases reviewed is pay grade dependant, and for primary examiners, the review processes is once every 3 years.
Most
already is (Score:3, Informative)
Clear Channel Instant Live Patent (Score:2, Informative)
Church technicians have been cobbling together systems to record and reproduce live events for several decades. Systems that record digitally and have at least a some editing functionality have been around for at least 5 or more.
The main difference between the commercial systems they describe and the Church systems are that they are trying to make money. Until the advent of cheap digital recorders and mp3's they had the market cornered. Now they need to find some way to commercialize what we used to call bootlegging. Unfortunately, a non-commercial entity has been bootlegging for a long time.
Re:Patent squatting should be illegal (Score:3, Informative)
But if you're patenting something like a user interface -- I can think of a few, such as the Fitaly [fitaly.com] keyboard -- they're going to need to see it. A patent is NOT on an idea. It's an actual product or process.