Patent Chief Decries Continued Downward Spiral of Patent Quality 179
Techdirt is reporting that Jon Dudas, head of the US Patent Office, is lamenting the continuing quality drop in patent submissions. Unfortunately, while this problem is finally getting the attention it deserves, the changes being implemented don't seem to be offering the correct solution. "When you set up a system that rewards people for not actually innovating in the market (but just speculating on paper), then of course, you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that rewards those people to massive levels, well out of proportion with their contribution to any product, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that gives people a full monopoly right that can be used to set up a toll booth on the natural path of innovation, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When the cost of getting a patent is so much smaller than the potential payoff of suing others with it, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. The fact that Dudas is just noticing this now, while still pushing for changes that will make the problem worse, is a real problem. Patents were only supposed to be used in special cases. The fact that they've become the norm, rather than the exception, is a problem, and it doesn't seem like anyone is seriously looking into fixing that."
really? what a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, when the benefits of owning dodgy patents can be into the tens of millions, it would be well worth sinking a few million into the right peoples pockets to make sure no change goes unchallanged.
All the while keeping any revision of the system on hold long enough for the rest of the world to overtake the US.
Yeah, there are places in the world where innovate is still a word with a real and exciting meaning, not just a tired and overused technology business buzzword. I do wish this would be realised by the people who are in a position to change this bizarre patent mess.
Isn't this easily solved (Score:4, Insightful)
"Memo: Hey, As of this morning we're going to raise the bar a bit as to what counts as 'novel.' So, clerk x, could you please deny the patent on your desk for Claratin E. Thanx, xoxo, your noble leader."
No Silver Bullet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why allow corporations to own patents? (Score:4, Insightful)
Screws the little guy (Score:5, Insightful)
This only screws the little guy over and ensures that bigger corporations will keep patenting. 300k to a Microsoft, IBM or pharmaceutical company is small fries. To a small business owner or full-time dreamer like me, it breaks the bank. It's an artificial barrier to entry that does not address the real problems.
The threshold should not be financial, it should be by virtue of technical merit. Set the bar higher, the terms shorter, etc. Have a maximum duration over which a patent owner must implement said patent, or forfeit it, similar to enforcement of trademarks (see trademark dilution). It's not precisely the same concept, but I think it's a virtuous idea.
Re:Also, dudas, 'chinaman' is not the preferred .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:increase the fees dramatically (Score:2, Insightful)
Patents are for OUR benefit, not "the little guy" and not "the faceless corporation".
Patents are meant to keep the really good ideas from forever remaining trade secrets.
They aren't meant to make anyone rich. They aren't meant to create any petty monopolies.
Re:Overlooking Economic barriers (Score:3, Insightful)
Any granted patent should be at least as valuable as the social
cost of that disruption.
They're not supposed to be about how expensive it was
to invent something but whether or not the invention
is suitably novel. It's not meant to be a cash cow or
a means to make up for R&D expenditures.
BS patents do far more harm than "lost R&D costs".
Ideally a patent isn't just the end of a marathon,
it's the end of a marathon where none of the other
contestants were able to even cross the finish line.
I have a simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an idea: reject them. Eventually, people will get the message.
If you keep accepting them, you'll keep getting more.
Slightly different than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
They were designed to create an environment where an inventor could create something and market it for a set number of years with our government providing protection from competition. In exchange for that, the invention would be free to be copied when the patent expired.
Now, patents are used to BLOCK development. Because you can get a broad patent on ANYTHING, just about EVERYTHING is being patented.
So Company-A is working on a new invention. Company-B hears about the work and rushes out to get a patent on a broad "process" that covers (but does not specify) the invention that Company-A is working on.
Now Company-A owes money to Company-B for an invention that Company-B never produced.
Fuck that. Just have the patent office require a WORKING, PHYSICAL model of the invention PRIOR to accepting the patent application. That's how is used to be.
Of course, this would kill all the software "patents" and "practices" patents and so forth. Which I think is a good thing(tm).
Hold on there josie (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the hell thinks it's really getting the attention it deserves? Not me. When 'what is your position on patent reform?' becomes a more important question than what color toilet paper Obama uses, or who wears a flag pin, or what happened on some reality tv show, THEN it's getting the attention it deserves.
The USPTO is broken. It's a system that worked quite well back when the phonograph was considered an expensive laboratory toy that would never be of use on the commercial market.
If only they would go to some kind of system like a social news aggregation site, whose patrons were engineers, scientists etc. and other professions and titles that exclude anyone selling ID as science. Then as a last step before granting the patent it would get sort of peer reviewed. IMO that would stop BS patents and trolls can be stopped by changing requirements of patent holders to something like radio spectrum licenses. If you don't use it, you lose it. If you sue someone with the patent and cannot show that you have done anything with it yourself: automatic jail time.
Redefine non-obvious to exclude anything that is a natural extension of another technology, and anything that is specifically in the public interest. (thinking of MS's patents on using a computer to connect to emergency services over a phone line)
sigh
Go back to the original idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent comes from the latin patens, meaning "open" (notice our usage of the adverb, "patently": patently absurd, patently obvious). A patent is supposed to be you "opening" your product up so that other people can understand how it works. In return for increasing the greater good (by not making it difficult to reverse engineer) you got a brief monopoly. Using this metric, if something is obvious upon inspection, it doesn't deserve a patent, regardless of how innovative or original it is.
The key difference is that, today, patents are seen as a carrot to promote innovation. As originally conceived, the system assumed (correctly in my opinion) that innovation will always happen, and that what we really needed was a carrot to promote the "opening" of the technology (in the same sense that opensource is open).
Re:Why allow corporations to own patents? (Score:1, Insightful)
Fundamental fix: Stop widespread US gov corruption (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a fundamental improvement that could be made, however. The U.S. government is as corrupt as 8 years of selling favors to private interests can make it. We could stop the corruption.
Corrupt big companies with little creative ability want to make the patent system as complicated as possible for smaller companies. That's why not enough money is available for the patent office to do its job correctly; the corrupters have been deliberately starving government agencies that prevent corruption. They've been starving the SEC, too.
See Principles for thinking about U.S. government corruption [slashdot.org].
More evidence of widespread corruption: It costs more than $1,000,000 of U.S. taxpayer's money to kill each Iraqi, most of whom are very poor. That shows the real purpose of the war is embezzling money from the taxpayer to give it to weapons and war investors.
Notes about the U.S. government-Iraq war: 1) I've liked every Iraqi I've met in the United States. I don't want them killed. (I've never been to Iraq.)
2) There was always violence in Iraq. Supposedly one "justification" for the war was stopping Saddam's violence. Now, however, U.S. taxpayers have caused more violence in a few years than all the violence caused by Saddam Hussein.
3) Notice that prices in the U.S. are rising rapidly. That's because the U.S. government has been printing more money to pay for the theft of taxpayer money that war makes possible.
4) The way to not have enemies is to make relationships. The U.S. government has been doing the opposite of that.
Since before 1953, when the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran, The U.S. government has been killing Muslims and Arabs and destroying their property. For example, the U.S. government has been donating $5 billion each year of taxpayer money to Israelis to be used to buy weapons from U.S. weapons manufacturers. The manufacturers get high profits because Israelis are willing to pay high prices when the money is not theirs.
Re:Slightly different than that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents were crafted by people who accept capitalism and competition as inviolate principles, and wish to prevent the sort of secret hoarding that defined the guilds of the Mercantile age.
There was once a time where if you wanted to learn secret knowledge, you had to join a secret society. If you were in the secret society, you couldn't leave and practice or share, because the law prevented you from doing so.
The point of patents was to force secret societies to reveal their secrets if they wanted the law to continue to validate and enforce their control. If you didn't reveal the secret, you couldn't ask the cops to go shut that guy down, but if you did, you could.
This would be better realized in the modern age by making transparency of process a requirement to enter the market, period. We already have safety inspectors whose approval you must win to enter the market, so it's not like this would be a novel invasion of privacy or freedom that didn't exist before.
First simple change (Score:3, Insightful)
Increasing patent fees is not the way forward, as this penalizes the real innovators: the little guys working out of their garage.
Re:Patent fees? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a concept: (Score:3, Insightful)
Be a leader, quit whining and do your job.
Re:increase the fees dramatically (Score:3, Insightful)
As to the actual subject, it already costs way too much for a patent. The world lost yet another device a couple of weeks ago when I had to keep my head down after a vitrectomy. If a patent was twenty bucks and fill in a form, the device would be on the market in a couple of years.
But as there's no way in hell I'm giving away ideas for free to big rich corporations who always scream about their intellectual "property" the world is just going to have to make do without it.
Re:Why allow corporations to own patents? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Fed "old boys network" is a system of banks. When the Fed wants to lower the interest rates, they reduce the money supply by instructing their brokers to sell government bonds. Anybody can purchase these - the point is that there's less money in circulation (the Fed has it now and is sitting on it, while people have bonds.)
Likewise, when they want to "print more money" (that's what the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does, actually) they instruct their brokers to buy bonds. Anyone is free to sell them, and the effect is that more money is in circulation. Instead of trading bonds for money, they trade money for bonds. It's not some illuminati association; they're probably the only branch of the government that isn't reveling in corruption.
Running the presses would devalue the dollar therefore people's savings, but the problem is giving all of the new notes to only a few individuals. We don't have a system to do that; the government relies on private banks to circulate currency.