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Patents Software Your Rights Online

Interview With 'Idiot' Behind Key Software Patent 223

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, an appeals court ruling opened the door to making it easier to kill software patents. It turns out that the guy whose name was on the actual patent didn't even realize it was at the center of the debate, and doesn't like software patents very much. 'So I was thinking — great they invalidated software patents, lets see what crappy patent written by an idiot they picked to do it — then I realized the idiot in question was me.'"
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Interview With 'Idiot' Behind Key Software Patent More

Interview With 'Idiot' Behind Key Software Patent

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  • Double standards and people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ge7 ( 2194648 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:08AM (#37190142)
    It just shows that most people have double standards. When they or someone they know do it, it's all good. When it's someone else, it's the root of evil.

    • Re:Double standards and people (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bkr1_2k ( 237627 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:16AM (#37190232)

      Or they change their opinion based on more information. Not all people are underhanded or double-dealing. Some people just learn from their (and others') mistakes.

    • “The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has his reasons.”
      Jean Renoir

    • Re:Double standards and people (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:33AM (#37190390)

      Or, they don't have double standards, but in order to succeed at business they have to do things that they know actually harm business and innovation, because that is how the system is set up and they can't change it. Which seems to be what happened in this case.

      It's a bit like the two-party system in the US. Neither party may be very (any?) good, but since one of them is going to be elected, might as well vote for whomever you think is better than his opponent.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shimage ( 954282 )
        I got the impression from reading TFA that 1) he does not think his patent was "junk", 2) he does not agree with the reasoning behind the invalidation of his patent, and 3) he does not think software should be unpatentable, only that the patent system needs to be reformed. I'm not sure where your interpretation of events fits in to all of this.
        • This quote specifically:

          I've never been a big fan of the broad swath of business method patents and even less of a fan of the process for creating and litigating patents. That said, it's the world we live in. So, like every other Silicon Valley entrepreneur, I file patents.

          He clearly wants the patent system to change, but can't. True, he doesn't seem to think his patent(s) is (are) junk, but that the entire system is broken so only patents that really are innovative (software or not) are allowed.

      • Or, they don't have double standards, but in order to succeed at business they have to do things that they know actually harm business and innovation, because that is how the system is set up and they can't change it. Which seems to be what happened in this case.

        It's a bit like the two-party system in the US. Neither party may be very (any?) good, but since one of them is going to be elected, might as well vote for whomever you think is better than his opponent.

        Both of these things that you describe are Self-fulfilling Prophecies. They are only true because people accept and believe the premise that they are true before choosing to act. Once people begin believing that premise that they are not true, they will cease to be true.

    • Re:Double standards and people (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Carewolf ( 581105 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:38AM (#37190434) Homepage

      I see no double standards. Handicapping yourself does not improve the world. If you want it to change you need to play by the rules and work to change it, just ignoring bad rules will not make them go away.

      • ...just ignoring bad rules will not make them go away.

        Sometimes it will. It worked for (the original) prohibition, before it Zombie-Jesused sixty years later...

    • Re:Double standards and people (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AJH16 ( 940784 ) <aj@ajhenderson. c o m> on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @09:13AM (#37190842) Homepage

      No, it shows that software patents are the equivalent of digital extortion. You have to patent whether you want to or not simply to protect yourself from being sued. It's a business necessity.

    • Or they file the software patent because that's the game, and not filing it means the competition will shut them down when they have no stack of IP to bring to the table.

      Just because you're stuck in that game doesn't mean you like it. Deciding not to play just means you're going to get sued into bankruptcy (or charged extortionate royalties that lead to the same thing).

      • Or they file the software patent because that's the game, and not filing it means the competition will shut them down when they have no stack of IP to bring to the table.

        As opposed to a stack of IPX, or a stack of DECnet, or a stack of AppleTalk?

        Seriously, an inventor might file the patent application and offer a blanket license for use of the invention in software distributed under a copyright license meeting the DFSG. This gives the FSF and friends what they want while keeping the option open for the inventor's company to add its stack of patents to uniform-royalty patent pools for non-free use.

    • Sometimes, you file patent applications because your employer wants you to, perhaps against your better judgement. Yes, it's an ethical issue, but you have to choose your battles. Idealists rarely survive long enough to accomplish anything. I have some patents that I'm proud of, some that I'm not, and I successfully got my name removed from one inane application that someone else wrote up, without getting my ass fired.

    • Yo retard, RTFA.

      When you work at a hi-tech corporation, and you are competent, everything you do that is novel is filed as a disclosure for patent. About 10% of my time is spent writing up disclosures on everything I do, which then go to legal, and every now and then a patent pops out. It's almost like writing a status report. I have no idea which concepts will be deemed patent-worthy, but it is required, and sometimes I'm surprised at what makes it. THis is done to protect innovation and intellectual p

    • It just shows that most people have double standards. When they or someone they know do it, it's all good. When it's someone else, it's the root of evil.

      Or it just shows that when someone reads TFA, they realize the summary and headline is misleading and that the man in question actually has a decent bit of experience and insight in software patents. And when they don't read it they start making up generalized statements based on an incorrect summary to sound like they have enough general knowledge to offer insight on everything at first glance.

  • How is he an anonymous reader if his name is in the second sentence of the article?

    • I doubt the person described as 'Idiot' in the summary, is the one who submitted it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cyn1c77 ( 928549 )

      How is he an anonymous reader if his name is in the second sentence of the article?

      Remember that in addition to being "anonymous," he is also a self-proclaimed "Idiot."

  • It's CmdrTaco's fault we have idiotic software patents?

  • But I hate individual website comment systems...

    [...] I also like the idea that weak disclosures should invalidate a patent, since that would kill a bunch of patents, but I do wonder how you put that into practice. If anything, it seems like the kind of thing that should be solved at the beginning -- in that a patent examiner shouldn't approve a patent that doesn't really teach anything. As for shorter terms for "software patents," we're back to how do you define a software vs. hardware patent.

    ...back to

  • Errors in the Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Grond ( 15515 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:24AM (#37190290) Homepage

    There are lots of errors and other assorted silliness in the article. For example: "But because the USPTO focuses much more on "prior art" (i.e., "is this new?" rather than, "is this obvious?") all sorts of obvious stuff gets patented."

    In fact, obviousness rejections are extremely common. In my experience they are the most common kind of rejection. Moreover, the obviousness analysis is based on prior art. The analysis is basically thiis: would it have been obvious at the time to put these pieces of prior art together in order to create the claimed invention? Requiring prior art evidence of obviousness is important because it helps avoid hindsight bias. Note that the KSR decision made it easier to find things obvious by invoking 'common sense' and 'common creativity,' often with fairly minimal evidence.

    "if a patent doesn’t actually tell you enough information to understand and build the invention, it shouldn’t be valid."

    This is already a foundational part of patent law. "The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same." 35 USC 112 [cornell.edu]. I would agree, though, that these requirements (called 'enablement' and 'written description'), are not applied rigorously enough by the PTO or the courts. The PTO's policy on software is especially silly. For example, it prefers flowcharts over pseudocode to describe algorithms. Not only is this not very searchable, it's also decades out of date and captures far less detail about an algorithm than pseudocode.

    "End the venue shopping for lawsuits"

    The Federal Circuit has been clamping down on venue shopping somewhat. I wouldn't say that the Eastern District of Texas's days are numbered quite yet, but litigants are definitely finding it easier to get out of there. See, e.g., In re Genentech, Inc., 566 F. 3d 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2009); In re Microsoft Corp., No. 944 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 5, 2011).

    "Expedited review of new and disputed patents by a panel of experts in the field with a high bar for validity"

    Who determines who these experts are? And who would review their determinations? A new appellate court of super-experts in every field? Or would it be back to non-experts? The PTO can barely keep itself staffed with non-expert examiners and board of appeals judges, much less actual experts in every field.

    Furthermore, the reality is that litigated patents are already reviewed by a panel of experts: the expert witnesses called by the parties.

    • Re:Errors in the Article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by _0xd0ad ( 1974778 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:30AM (#37190356) Journal

      There are lots of errors and other assorted silliness in the article. For example: "But because the USPTO focuses much more on "prior art" (i.e., "is this new?" rather than, "is this obvious?") all sorts of obvious stuff gets patented."

      In fact, obviousness rejections are extremely common. In my experience they are the most common kind of rejection.

      So? Those are not mutually exclusive scenarios. A large number of patents denied for obviousness doesn't mean there aren't also a large number of obvious patents being approved.

      Moreover, the obviousness analysis is based on prior art.

      Great, so you just proved the original point, the point you were trying to argue with. The USPTO focuses too much on prior art. Even when they deny a patent for "obviousness", all they're focused on is prior art.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Grond ( 15515 )

        A large number of patents denied for obviousness doesn't mean there aren't also a large number of obvious patents being approved.

        My point was that the article claimed that "obvious things are patented because the PTO focuses on prior art rather than obviousness." In fact, the PTO focuses a great deal on obviousness (at least one obviousness rejection is raised in a majority of applications, I believe).

        Even when they deny a patent for "obviousness", all they're focused on is prior art.

        How could you possibly decide whether something was obvious without using prior art? Simply asking a person of skill "in your opinion, without any other evidence, would this have been obvious?" is a subjective mess.

        • How could you possibly decide whether something was obvious without using prior art?

          You don't ignore prior art, but you also don't ignore prior art just because it isn't exactly the same as the patented idea. Yeah, you show someone who's skilled in that area a piece of prior art and ask them, "in your opinion, is this an obvious modification of this prior art?"

          Hell, you want something less subjective? Maybe you give them a specific enough description of the problem they need to solve, and see if they come up with the same solution on their own. If so, it's obvious.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Grond ( 15515 )

            but you also don't ignore prior art just because it isn't exactly the same as the patented idea. Yeah, you show someone who's skilled in that area a piece of prior art and ask them, "in your opinion, is this an obvious modification of this prior art?"

            That's pretty much precisely what the KSR decision says.

            Hell, you want something less subjective? Maybe you give them a specific enough description of the problem they need to solve, and see if they come up with the same solution on their own. If so, it's obvious.

            That would be rife with hindsight bias unless you have a time machine.

        • Because not everything that is obvious is patented? Like this one,

          A computerized list is provided with auxiliary pointers for traversing the list in different sequences. One or more auxiliary pointers enable a fast, sequential traversal of the list with a minimum of computational time. Such lists may be used in any application where lists may be reordered for various purposes. [google.com]

          This is not a new idea, but it was issued in 2006! But I guess it is easier to just treat the patent office database as the complet

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Grond ( 15515 )

            You do realize that that patent cites as prior art numerous patents describing linked lists and other data structures, right? The patent doesn't claim a plain, CS101 linked list. The idea is a linked list with two pointers per node such that the pointers describe two different sequences (e.g. in a list of customer records, one set of pointers traverses the list according to last name and the other according to first name).

            • The idea is a linked list with two pointers per node such that the pointers describe two different sequences (e.g. in a list of customer records, one set of pointers traverses the list according to last name and the other according to first name).

              And, this is the problem with software patents.

              Anybody who has ever used indexes in a database would immediately realize that this patent is the same thing using a slightly different data structure. Every CS student who takes a data structures class has had to endure the "now use to implement assignment 3", and would see this patent as obvious. And yet, the reason it was approved as a patent is because nobody sane had ever believed that something as simple as a linked list could be patented, so there isn

      • The real problem I think is the standard for obviousness; that is "obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art".

        Well pooh. Someone with ordinary skill in the art isn't going to be all that creative, and 'obvious' means that he can come up with the same idea without any substantial time or effort.

        That's a damn low hurdle.

        Patents should be granted for something that clears a significantly higher hurdle, not something that could be thought up by any shlub who spent an evening on the problem.

    • Moreover, the obviousness analysis is based on prior art.

      Within the article, the contention is that the prior art corpus is basically already-issued patents. Art that has not been patented is largely not checked. This leads to patents being issued for obvious art, as defined by other practitioners of that art.

      Stupid example:

      • Me: I'm letting people patent innovative integers. Any takers?
      • You: Sure, I'll do that. How about '3'?
      • Me: (Checks database that is, at the moment, completely empty.) Looks good. No one else has that one. You got it!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Grond ( 15515 )

        Within the article, the contention is that the prior art corpus is basically already-issued patents. Art that has not been patented is largely not checked.

        No, the PTO has access to lots of non-patent databases (e.g. scientific journals). Rejections based on non-patent literature are very common, including in software. They should probably be more common, and the examiners need both better search tools and more time to perform their searches, but it is not the case that examiners only consider patents and patent applications.

        • They should probably be more common

          You have got to be kidding. The software patent system is a joke. Just what bizzaro planet do you live on.

          In my entire life, I have *never* heard of a software developer going to a patent to find out how to do somthing.

          Just what is the point of software patents anyway? Artificial barriers to entry that can be used as negotiating tools? Innovative bussines model for patent trolls? Job creation program for Lawyers?

      • Oddly enough, your example reminded me of Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach [wikipedia.org], particularly [handwaving-description]Gödel's method of assigning integers to sentences in logical systems, which he used as part of his proof of the Incompleteness Theorem.[/handwaving-description]

    • Re:Errors in the Article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Theaetetus ( 590071 ) <theaetetus.slash ... minus physicist> on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:52AM (#37190588) Homepage Journal
      Yep, all of those. Plus, he's got a few conceptual errors:

      "Patents are meant to protect innovation so they should be held to a high standard."

      Patents aren't meant to protect innovation at all. Patents are made to grudgingly protect an inventor's rights, for a limited time, in exchange for public disclosure. The alternative is that the inventor still innovates, but keeps his or her innovations secret and exploits them behind closed doors. Others then have to duplicate that effort, wasting time and money.
      Trade secrets do a much better job of protecting innovation, since they last forever. But that's bad for society, so we want to encourage public disclosure of innovations, so that the overall pace of innovation is accelerated. But we, as a society, couldn't really care less about any individual inventor's rights.

      There's another, more important one, that I think the author got completely backwards:

      We closed with the big question. One of the key reasons why CAFC rejected the key claims was because they were merely "mental processes" that someone could do with a pencil and paper, and thus didn't require any actual machine. Noting his stated mixed feelings about this result, I asked how he felt about this reason for rejection, and here he dove in with a bit more detail:
      This is where it gets interesting. If you go down this route, any patent that results in purely a change in stored information is invalid. I don't think that would be a good outcome.

      This is something the CAFC and Supreme Court have been wrestling with, but they haven't fully enunciated their reasoning yet. I think it's pretty clear if you look, not at the patent, but at the remedy for infringement. If you have a patent where the claim can be done fully in your head (1. A method for determining a summation, comprising adding two and two, and realizing the result is four) or on paper, then it's possible to infringe by thinking. One of the remedies for infringing a patent is an injunction, preventing the defendant from performing the patented method until the patent expires... so, stop thinking. I patented imagining a pink elephant. Don't think of a pink elephant. Wait, you just did! You owe me more money now.

      This applies to software patents, business method patents, diagnostic method patents, etc. In the latter, a method that claims "determining a patient has an elevated blood count of chemical X; realizing the patient has disease Y," can be infringed simply by reading an example in the patent specification itself!

      The courts have realized that's a problem, and that's why they started requiring a physical machine or transformation in Bilski. If the claim says "determining, via a testing kit, that the patient has an elevated blood count" or "adding, by an FPU of a computing device," then it's impossible to infringe the patent in your head, and injunctive relief is possible: think all you want, do whatever you want with pen and paper, but don't use a testing kit to measure this chemical or use a computer to determine this value.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by plover ( 150551 ) *

        The courts have realized that's a problem, and that's why they started requiring a physical machine or transformation in Bilski. If the claim says "determining, via a testing kit, that the patient has an elevated blood count" or "adding, by an FPU of a computing device," then it's impossible to infringe the patent in your head, and injunctive relief is possible: think all you want, do whatever you want with pen and paper, but don't use a testing kit to measure this chemical or use a computer to determine this value.

        The difference would be between "use A computer to determine this value" and "use THIS SPECIFIC computer to determine this value." I think if I embedded my grandiose idea in an FPGA's gateway, I have a tangible thing that produces concrete results, and the machine it is a part of should be patentable.

        So there's my grandiose idea, that I should obviously patent: "A method for patenting software. Express the software you want to patent by burning it in an FPGA. You have now produced a concrete, tangible m

      • The alternative is that the inventor still innovates, but keeps his or her innovations secret and exploits them behind closed doors.

        This justification doesn't hold for software patents. We know this, in part, because nobody learns software by reading patents. The bargain is broken; society gets no benefit.

      • Trade secrets do a much better job of protecting innovation, since they last forever.

        Just to be pedantic, trade secrets last as long as they are kept secret. Post the recipe for your secret sauce on the company website, and your innovation is no longer protected. Unless of course you require every one that accesses the site to sign an NDA. And it provides no protection from reverse engineering.

    • Furthermore, the reality is that litigated patents are already reviewed by a panel of experts: the expert witnesses called by the parties.

      Which is one of the problems with patents per TA, patents are not reviewed prior to rubber stamping them which leads to patent trolling and settling for those who cannot afford to defend themselves against bogus violations claims. Proper review coming in the door would reduce the problems.

    • The analysis is basically thiis: would it have been obvious at the time to put these pieces of prior art together in order to create the claimed invention?

      More exact: Would it have been obvious for someone with total and complete knowledge of all the prior art in existence, and with infinite amount of time and patience, but with no inventiveness of his own, to put these pieces of prior art together to create the claimed invention?

      So if there are two commonly known pieces of prior art, but it is not obvious that combining them would give the wanted result, that is non-obvious. If there are two extremely obscure pieces of prior art, that nobody on Slashdot e

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Grond ( 15515 )

        but with no inventiveness of his own

        That is not accurate, at least not since the KSR decision, which held that "A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton."

  • fix patents (Score:3)

    by currently_awake ( 1248758 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @08:31AM (#37190370)
    Either give the USPTO sufficient time/resources to determine if applications are valid, or assume they are invalid until proven in court.
  • If he thinks that patents are stupid, and have one key patents on which depends the almighty credit system, could be used as a tool to really invalidate all those trivial and not so trivial patents hanging around that are screwing innovation worldwide. Or just make a metric ton of cash of it, anyway that alone won't solve the deeper problem.

    • Just to hang a number on it, according to a web site that cited the US Treasury, $1 million in $100 bills (10,000 bills) weighs about 22 lbs., or 10 kg. So a metric ton (1000 kgs.), aka 'tonne', would be about $100 million. If one uses $1 bills then it's only about $1 million.

  • Hey, as long as he's an "idiot", how about getting him to lose the case defending his patent, so badly that it sets court precedent? Most of the ruling precedents (on adapting and reusing and refurbishing something patented) go back to an 1800s cotton baler case. http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/lawrev/48/gajarsa.pdf?rd=1 [american.edu] Please, defend your patent! Just try to do it hideously and incompetently.

  • 1. It is a mental process or it could be. I like that argument if it weakens software patents. But as the article points out, generally speaking, software patents are obvious or have prior art which has not been patented previously. Moreover, we see a lot of implementation shifting where "... on the internet" or "... on a computer" is added to things which are already done elsewhere.
    2. Software development and innovation is a massive community effort. Even in the closed source world, ideas, methods and

    • Re:Two reasons software patents should not be (Score:5, Insightful)

      by plover ( 150551 ) * on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @10:30AM (#37191798) Homepage Journal

      OK, so let's trot out the old chestnut of pharmaceutical patents. Let's say I invest $100 million to do the research needed to create a new drug, I create it, and the doses cost only $1 to make. Extrapolating from current demand, I will sell a million doses in the next 20 years while my patent is in force. I set my price at $200 per dose; with the costs being $1 in manufacturing and $100 in repaying my investment, so I'm making $99 in profit per dose. After 20 years, I have $99 million dollars in profit.

      If I don't have patent protection, as soon as my drug hits the market someone will do an analysis and make a generic clone of it, selling it for $100 a dose, also settling for a $99 profit margin. They would take over 99% of the business from me, leaving me stuck with the tab for about $99.99 million dollars in research investment.

      Would any pharmaceutical company ever do research again? Would anyone be trying to cure anything if they thought it would bankrupt them to do so? My guess is that a few celebrities will be affected by some diseases and create "foundations for the cure" efforts on a one-off basis, but in general, innovation in drugs would die without the patent system.

      Of course, this is a simplistic picture, and the real world of shady marketing, fraudulent studies, suppressed side effect reporting, drugs to treat imaginary ailments, and all the other unethical stuff the pharmaceutical companies do certainly complicates things. And there are ongoing costs to the inventors and manufacturers of the drug: lawsuits over side effects, wrongful deaths, etc. But at its core, without the patent system these drugs would never be created.

      So if we've established that pharmaceutical patents are necessary to drive research that may benefit us as a whole, then at least part of the patent system should at least be salvaged and not dismantled.

      • Actually cost of sales is about 50%, operations is probably in the range of 20% to 25%, liability insurance is on the order of 10% to 15%, so profit is only about 15% to 20%. Oddly enough, that's about what the companies report as a rule.

  • it to a medical device that takes metabolic readings and alarms if they go out of bounds: You could do the same by sitting a nurse down to watch the patient, but the automated device only processing information is clearly patentable under current rules.

    But should it be?

    I think that a new novel invention that takes metabolic readings should be patentable. I mean, it has to have some form of input from the patient, be it a new invention to measure blood pressure or a new invention to measure blood-sugar levels, etc...

    But why should adding an 'alarm' to it be patentable? That sounds like a really OBVIOUS addition. Why should making it 'automatic' be patentable? Not only does it sound like an obvious idea, it's not an invention, it's a process.

    -Rick

  • Wake Up Congress?!? (Score:3)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @10:46AM (#37192004) Homepage

    From the article:

    This is something we hear all the time from almost every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Patents feel like a "necessary evil," but no one feels like they need them. This should really wake up Congress. They always talk up how patents help and protect entrepreneurs, but the reality is that they're a complete nuisance for most.

    HAHAAHAHAHHHHAHAHHHHHAHHHAAAAHAHAA. That was awesome. My eyes are watering. Man, I've been working long hours for the past week or two, and I needed a good laugh this morning.

    That is absolutely precious. OK, Mr. Masnick: I hate to be the one to bear this bad news, so I'll try to do it gently. Congress is not interested in protecting entrepreneurs, the middle class, small business, or any of the other drums they beat so frequently. When a Congress person says "We have a responsibility to protect XYZ", it is like when the President says, "I have complete confidence in Michael Brown". It means "The referenced person/class is a freaking albatross that I would sooner toss down the oubliette than spend one more minute thinking about, but professional politicianing requires that I pretend I don't want to gut it and sell the tender innards to my friends."

    Congress cares about lobbyists with a lot of money. Period. End of story. Entrepreneurs have jack shit. Entrenched incumbents have the money. Entrenched incumbents are who is served by patent policy. Congress is entirely awake and aware of who their puppet masters are.

    Want proof? Read this. [wikipedia.org] We are the only country in the world that still rewards the inventor with the patent, instead of the company with the fastest lawyers. It is blindingly obviously the right way to reward innovation instead of litigation. It is so obvious that for Congress to accept First-to-File would be indefensible as supporting innovation or entrepreneurs to anyone who has even a remote knowledge of the patent process. And for inventors who have lots of patents, like my Father, the idea of First-to-File is enough to send him into a half hour apoplectic tirade that makes me fear for his heart. Yet the movement to make the switch is alive and kicking, and probably going to happen within the next few years. Why? Mostly because with every check Microsoft writes to damned near every person in Congress, they say, "Oh, and pass first-to-file -- we're tired of only getting patents when one of our employees invents something."

    • The only difference between first to invent and first to file is what happens when two inventors independently invent the same thing and file patent applications within a short period of time. It applies only to patent application vs. patent application disputes. Patent application vs. prior art disputes are still handled under novelty.

  • US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

    That's ->TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS-, and "SECURING FOR LIMITED TIMES", not "protect innovation".

                    mark

  • 'Obviously, this ridiculous patent is valuable to the huge filing corporation, so I'm green lighting it in exchange for a large stack of untraceable hundreds that will surreptitiously show up in my mailbox.'

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