Why There Are Too Many Patents In America 189
whitroth writes "The judge who just dismissed the lawsuit between Apple and Motorola writes a column explaining what he considers to be reasonable uses of patents, and unreasonable ones. One of his thoughts would be to require a patent holder to produce the patented item within a certain time, to cut out patent trolls."
Re:As someone (Score:5, Interesting)
who worked for a company that got sued by a patent troll for some really insane email to fax patent from the 1990s that would NEVER have been a commercial product, I concur.
Make it, sell it, or the patent is tossed. Give them 3 years.
Ironically, I once worked for a company, developing cutting edge network technology and internet applications. I dropped the suggestion to a VP that what we were doing was all new terrain and we could patent some of the complex processes and end products we were developing. The VP simply stated, we're a development company, not an intellectual property company, so no patents were going to be considered, even defensively.
That's the way the world was for some people back 12 years ago.
Too much dirty money involved in patents (Score:2, Interesting)
Judge writes:
One of his thoughts would be to require a patent holder to produce the patented item within a certain time, to cut out patent trolls.
Why this will NEVER happen:
1) The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that politicians can accept an unlimited amount of lobbying money and they don't have to tell anybody about who is paying them off.
2) The biggest multi-billion dollar companies are in the patent troll business (i.e. Microsoft and Apple, to name just two such companies)
I am somebody who is very interested in open source operating systems and software, but I will NEVER volunteer my free time and expertise to help in such projects because Microsoft is forcing companies to way them money for MY hard work. I don't work for free, and I won't be giving Microsoft my free labour, so no open source software from ME!
References:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/two-vendors-pay-microsoft-for-the-right-to-sell-cheap-android-tablets/ [arstechnica.com]
Re:That's true, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't necessarily disagree. Again, the IP hack response is that without the patent and profit, there is no new drug from which to benefit, so the question is irrelevant. In theory, decent health insurance coverage is supposed to solve the problem of access to the drugs, too.
But as you've pointed out there are other funding mechanisms that could potentially work, and might even produce better results. After all, the end result of our current patent system is not that life-saving drugs get made, it's that profitable drugs get made (or at least research for profitable conditions gets done). If they happen to be life-saving, that's nice. Research on drugs for tropical diseases languishes. We've noticed it and try to supplement the incentives of the patent system with prize funds, grants, non-profit money, and the Orphan Drug Act.
The reason it is destined to fail on a large scale is probably because of political pressure from pharmaceutical companies loathe to see anything significantly alter the current system.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
What's with the term "Big Pharma"? Is there some sort of mom-and-pop pharmaceutical company that is the alternative to Glaxo-Smith-Kline? Aren't they all big? Isn't there just "Pharma"?
There are a lot of researchers who don't work for those companies. Trying to do things like develop a cure for cancer, HIV, diabetes... things Big Pharma won't do because the cocktails of medications to treat the aforementioned diseases bring in a lot of money. And that money would go away if there was a way to cure those people, instead of just treat them. I can show you stacks of internal memos and documentation showing that the major pharmaceutical companies purposefully stall and delay research into cures, and there have been several cases where they've sued to prevent universities and private researchers from pursuing testing of certain chemical compounds because they infringed on a patent -- after research showed dramatic and sustained improvements in a patient's health that reduced or eliminated their dependancy on already-existing drugs.
It's called Big Pharma because they're not about making sick people better, they're about making money off of sick people -- as long as they stay sick, Big Pharma stays profitable. None of this nonsense about making lightbulbs that last a hundred years... we all know what happened to the company that solved the problem too well.
Re:Go farther (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed.
Oddly enough, one of the rules for patents states that a patent "must not be obvious to a person skilled in the art.". Most software patents these days are quite obvious to an average software engineer, yet this rule is seemingly completely ignored.
I also think part of the patent problem is that many patents these days seem to patent the problem itself rather than a specific solution to the problem.
Re:As someone (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason there wasn't the tit or tat fighting back then is because the USPTO had spent decades fighting against software and business process patents. While they frequently lost in court, the battle itself was enough to dissuade many companies from filing ridiculous patent applications. This all ended in 1994, when Clinton appointed Bruce Lehman, a former IP lobbyist, to run the patent office. Lehman changed the course of the USPTO to simply become the rubber stamp it is today. It takes time for such changes to be felt though. It took many years for companies to figure out how to game the new system and for the frivolous patents to reach critical mass.
People have always been conniving, greedy, and underhanded, the difference is that patents were not as potent of a weapon as they are now, so people didn't employ them as often.
Re:Were I dictator: (Score:4, Interesting)
To construct this, I built it the way you would the rules of a game, or the rules text on, say, a Magic: the Gathering card. Sometimes i think game designers should write the law, because their job is to ensure everything interacts predictably.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can show you stacks of internal memos and documentation showing that the major pharmaceutical companies purposefully stall and delay research into cures
Please do. The biggest known case was the use of antibiotics to treat ulcers. But that was about 50 years ago.
bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
And thus you make patent the SOLE ballpark of big firm which can afford lose a few dollar setting up a quick-n-dirty item production, whereas the small guy, the garage inventor is royally screwed, because he won't be able to produce the items, and the industry can dictate their term while buying the patent from him, when not outright stealing, because he can't protect himself due to the production requirement.
In fact I contend there is no way whatsoever you can both protect the small inventor and avoid patent troll. The only way out is to enforce non obviousness and repell software patent outright.
Re:As someone (Score:4, Interesting)
>Ben Franklin was proud to file some really innovative patents, like bifocals and swimming fins
Absurdly false. Franklin did invent those, and many other things, but he never owned a single patent in his life and vehemently opposed patents. He argued against patent laws in congress on the basis that ideas are not property and should benefit society as far as possible - which means having the invention built by whoever can do it the cheapest, regardless of who had the idea.
Now I would say Franklin's thoughts were correct for his day, some industries today are different (the article points out pharmaceuticals as a good example) and in those industries it is genuinely in the public interest to have patents - but they are the minority of industries.