IBM Breaks Patent Record, Wants Reform

An anonymous reader writes "IBM set the record for most patents granted in a year for 2006. At the same time, IBM points out that small companies earn more patents per capita than larger enterprises and pushes for reform to address shortcomings in the process of patenting business methods: 'The prevalence of patent applications that are of low quality or poorly written have led to backlogs of historic proportions, and the granting of patents protecting ideas that are not new, are overly broad, or obvious.' And the company has been committing itself to a new patent policy: 'Key tenets of the policy are that patent quality is the responsibility of the applicant; that patent applications should be open to public examination and that patent ownership should be transparent; and that business methods without technical content should not be patentable.'"

Ability to revoke patents?

[PurifyYourMind]

How about changes to make it easier or even possible to revoke bad patents?

IBM is smart.

[TheSHAD0W]

They see the coming collapse of the entire patent system and would rather have some capability of holding monopolies than lose any chance of it.

Patent system broken

[HappySqurriel]

From my very limited understanding of the situation, it seems like there is serious problem with the patent system because small companies patent everything to protect themselves from larger companies, larger companies patent everything to protect themselves from patent trolls, and patent trolls use the massive overworked system to get patents filed which will never be found by small or large coporations in order to sue for profit.

Patents are both good and bad

[sygin]

The patent system needs to be updated to reflect the world we live in now, not the world hundreds of years ago. There are many examples of patents holding back progress.

Retina scanning is a typical example of this. One group/person holds most of the patents on this tech, how many times have you had your retina scanned? There is an only a few obvious methods to get the job done and the patent holder controls all of them. I guarantee that when those patents expire, we will have mainstream retina scanners everywhere.

For a start:
1. tech patents should have a shorter lifespan.
2. Getting a software patent should be damn nigh impossible.

Then fewer people would apply!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If you think that the patent system is there for the interests of the inventors then you are wrong. It is they way it is for the interests of the people in the patent industry. The patent machine is a nice little money maker for Uncle Sam and the patent lawyers. If you spoil the players' fun then they won't want patents. Much better to make it really hard to revoke a patent. That needs lots of lawyer hours and money.

It's the same for the tax system. That could be really simple, but no it's really complex so you need tax accountants/experts. It is a system set up to maximise benefit to the practitioners.

Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked on the peripheral of their patents applications. Most of the ones I've seen are just solutions to specific problems. Meaning that anybody would come up with the same idea given the problem. So while they might not be considered obvious with a blank slate, given a need, the solution *is* obvious. The did a whole bunch of patents on remote distributed media and given the requirements of security and content management, nothing I saw wasn't an obvious solution, they all got accepted anyway.

Re:How about?

[mark-t]

I agree with you in principle, but I think it's overly specific, and could be used to squish out the little guy (think: home inventor) from being able to come up with a patentable invention, since he may possibly use materials that are on-hand, and not have any real expenses.

small companies

[micktaggart]

Although small companies might be awarded the most patents per employee, I doubt they can actually defend their patents in court—they'll get their ass kicked immediately by larger corporations.

Re:Patents are both good and bad

[jrumney]

Retina scanners are not being held back by patents, they're being held back by the public's perception of retina scanning as being too invasive. I don't expect that will change when the patents expire.

Re:IBM is smart.

[Harmonious Botch]

P and GP are correct. But the pain will not be shared equally. Those with more experienced players ( ie: patent lawyers ) will do proportionately better as the system gets worse. So none of the big players wants to see it go over a cliff.

You misunderstand

[EmbeddedJanitor]

From the people actually driving the patent system (ie. US govt and the patent lawyers) there is nothing broken with this. Lots of applications (dumb or good, who cares) == lots of profits. Lots of litigation because of patent systems (dumb or good, who cares) == lots of profits.

Any system will work the way that its owners intend. While the patent system is owned by the patent lawyers etc, you won't see any changes.

If the patent holders (inventors) controlled the patent system then you'd see things work differently. There would be a feedback cycle that improved the quality of the patents. Right now, the patent system is a nice money spinner for Uncle Sam and there is no external quality check. Imagine though if you could sue for bad patents. eg. USPTO issues you with a patent so you start a business based on it, but the patent gets revoked so you had to close your busiuness. Imagine if you could chase USPTO for your losses. Likewise, imagine if USPTO had to cover your expenses when you have to take a stupid troll patent to court and they were wrong to give out the patent.

Re:IBM is smart.

[s20451]

They see the coming collapse of the entire patent system and would rather have some capability of holding monopolies than lose any chance of it.

Should the patent system collapse? Would that really be a good thing?

Patents work like land title.

Would it be possible to build a house without title? Sure, the same way it's possible to build a tech business without patents.

Would there be benefits to abolishing title? Sure, you couldn't "hold" land you didn't use, as someone would build on it and you would be out of luck. Much like you wouldn't be able to "hold" an idea and get license fees as a patent troll.

Will I be first in line at the county office to tear up my title deed and usher in this utopian future? OF COURSE NOT! Why? Because there's a serious risk that someone would bulldozer my house while I'm on vacation and build something else. The title system takes the risk out of land development, much like the patent system takes the risk out of technological development.

Re:IBM is smart.

[the eric conspiracy]

Nah. It will just be replaced by something worse. Do you think shrink wrap licenses are bad now? Imagine a world in which you have to sign a license to use every form of commercial technology you use. Want to buy a tube of toothpaste? It will come with a shrinkwrap license that states that you have to agree not to reverse engineer, duplicate, analyze or even try to produce your own toothpaste.

Patents exist because they are an improvement on a system where everything is held as a trade secret. Thow them out and you will create a nightmare.

Re:IBM is smart.

[TheSHAD0W]

There's the "intellectual property" meme again. Virtual property is unlike real property. If I steal someone's apple, that's a resource he will have to do without. If I copy someone's design, he still has it and can still utilize it. It's thought that treating "intellectual property" as if it were real property, outlawing theft, providing registration, etc. is a good thing, but it's still debateable.

How about "automatic revocation"?

[WebCowboy]

I don't think it should be TOO easy to revoke patents, however as it stands it is much too difficult to do so. More importantly, I think that the patent systems in pretty much all juristictions are missing an important thing: RESPONSIBILITIES.

Patents essentially grant monopoly rights to inventors for their creations for an extended time (say 20 years). This is to encourage innovation by giving the inventor time to fully develop and market inventions before competitors can rip them off. This is all based on the assertion that there is always a bigger, richer, "more evil" entity out there who could develop and market an inventor's creation more quickly than a resource-strapped inventor could. Without the originally intended patent protection many inventions would've been commandeered by big, established corporations and the end result would be that innovation would die away and the only entities capable of innovation would be those with vast resources (very large corporations and governments)--and such entities by nature are anti-innovation.

The problem is that patent enforcement is only one-way--it grants protection TO the inventor but asks little to nothing FROM the inventor in terms of responsibility. I think patent reform should include a set of RESPONSIBILITIES as well as rights, and if the patent holder does not live up to those responsibilities the patent should be automatically revoked. The responsibilities I see would be something like the following:

* The inventor must plan to develop and market this invention (make it available to the public in some way) within 'x' years or the patent will expire. The 'x' year period would be much shorter than the 20 year lifespan of a typical patent, and would depend on the "class" of a patent--complex physical devices would be granted several years where simple physical objects and non-physical inventions (technical processes, etc) would be allowed only one year from the granting of a patent. The inventor may develop and market the invention himself or license it to another entity, but the patent-holder CANNOT sit on a patent without actively trying to make the invention happen. If the patent expires after this time frame it becomes public domain.

* The inventor must consistently enforce the patent--if someone willfully violates the patent and it is evident that the patent holder knows of this violation they must pursue royalties or other legal action against the violator within a reasonable time frame. There should be protection from "submarine patents" wielded by patent trolls, such as those used against RIM for example. If RIM made improper use of patented technology there was AMPLE time for the patent holder to take issue with it. It seems that the patent holders in this case deliberately waited until RIM had sufficiently deep and full pockets before reaching into those pockets for a settlement. The patent holder should have a cooperative relationship with developers and manufacturers, not a parasitic one. In such a situation the accused patent violator should have the means to have a patent revoked if it is wilfully abused this way.

* If an invention DOES get developed and is marketed publicly, within the specified time frame and is properly enforced by patent holders, then the patent can be held for the full time frame. However, it must be CONTINUOUSLY marketed/licensed during that time. If the patented item ceases to be publicly marketed/used, and/or there are no current licensees to the technology, then the patent should expire early. Although the intention of the patent system was to encourage innovation, they have become a means of SLOWING innovation because so many good ideas sit in patent files gathering dust on shelves. It is perverse that corporations out there apply for patents (or purchase the patent rights) so they can DELIBERATELY shelve them, and sue out of existence any competition that tries to use the ideas covered in them.

Patent law is just another case of what happens when rights are not balanced with responsibilities.

Re:IBM is smart.

[Shados]

Yeah, because companies will all rush one by one to spend billions in R&D just to have a 5 people software firm take the idea and make a functional product out of it for pennies.

Its like biotech patents. Yeah they have bad sides, but between all the billions spent, the risk taken, the years spent on R&D before you get a product, on top of the -extremely high- risk of getting sued to oblivion if you make the slighest mistake, if Walmart could just wait for you to spend the billions, only to sell the product for 99 cents a bottle, would you be willing to go for it?

Patents are a necessity. The system is flawed, but not the idea behind it.

Having the public review applications

[YGingras]

Why would the public approve a single patent? Patents are never in the interest of the general public. Patents take away something from the public and give it to the inventor in hope that the inventor will publish more of his ideas.

Re:Oh, I get it

[Dufftron 9000]

The patent office does not sell patents. I know it is posh to dump on the PTO but you obviously have no idea how it works. The PTO is held by the laws and regulations written by congress and does not have the latitude to adjust the amount of time given to examine any particular case. If you want more time spent on a case, ask congress to give them more time. The USPTO would love to have time to exhaustively search each and every application, but with fewer than 8,000 employees and more than 500,000 new applications a year as well as just under 1 million already in the system that is not exactly fair to applicants that have been waiting up to three years for someone to take a first look at their application. Even with the current problems and limitations that they operate under, they still have a less than 5% rate of allowing "bad" claims to go to the pre-allowance stage where they are caught and re-examined.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/pre sentation/chicagoslidestext.html [uspto.gov]

Re:IBM is smart-Free property

[Kadin2048]

The DirectTV people probably could come up with a way to only transmit programming to people who've paid for it, say via careful distribution of encryption keys or hardware, but they choose not to because it's easier to make a weak technological solution and then buy some laws that prevent reverse-engineering. This is a serious problem, and it's the beginning of a whole lot of bad laws we're burdened with now.

I have no problem if companies decide to try and encrypt their content. If they want to tie it down, lock it to hardware, whatever; go for it. But where I draw the line is when they started getting involved in the legislative process and making it illegal for people to break their chains, even when it was clear that people had the right to use the content in ways that the 'chains' prohibited.

If DirectTV is broadcasting its signal onto my property, then I ought to be able to set up a 1m dish and an LNB amplifier and a signal processor, and do whatever I want with the incoming electrons, as long as I don't take the results outside of my property (e.g. rebroadcasting them in a way that causes them to leave my property). That it's illegal for me to set up a dish and a few analog parts, and perform some mathematical transformations to the resulting signal, is absolutely ridiculous, and represents the height of governmental pandering to corporate interests.

Corporations should be free to attempt to restrict and encrypt their content as much as they want. But individuals should be allowed do whatever they want with the signals that they're given, particularly when they're being broadcast over the EM spectrum, which is inherently a public resource.

The anti-circumvention laws about satellite TV broadcasts in the 1980s are where we really started to go wrong with technology laws in this country, and it's a very direct path from there through to the DMCA. It's nothing but laziness: as long as its easier to get a law passed than to build robust systems, companies will always go to Congress with bags of cash in hand.

Re:How about "automatic revocation"?

[KDR_11k]

Yes but if the timeframe is too short the companies will just wait until it expires and then use it without having to pay royalties.

Of course they want reform

[iminplaya]

These patents are more valuable than money, and with the treasure trove they have, they can't afford to have such a broken system that people might finally see the light and demand complete abolishment. It's not about reform. It's about protecting an investment.

Re:IBM is smart.

[arevos]

Patents work like land title.

Your analogy is tenuous. Land titles last indefinitely; patents last only a limited period. Land is a limited physical resource; a patented idea is information that can be used an unlimited number of times. Whilst there are similarities between the concepts, the differences are far more numerous.

Would it be possible to build a house without title? Sure, the same way it's possible to build a tech business without patents.

Presumably, a software developer counts as a "tech business", in which case it's worth noting that there are many tech businesses in the EU and elsewhere that are not protected by patents.

The title system takes the risk out of land development, much like the patent system takes the risk out of technological development.

Does software count as "technological development", or are you limiting your argument to hardware? If you do count software as a technological development, could you provide some evidence that US software companies are, (a) investing proportionally more on average in software development than software companies in the EU, and (b) that this is the direct result of software patents.