White House Takes Steps Against Patent Trolls 97
itwbennett writes "The Obama administration on Thursday launched a website with information to assist people and businesses targeted in patent lawsuits or receiving patent demand letters. The White House also announced that it would launch a new crowdsourcing initiative focused on identifying prior art (evidence of existing inventions) that the USPTO can use to reject bad patent claims and will expand a USPTO patent examiner technical training program by allowing outside technologists to help with the training."
A new crowdsourcing initiative to find prior art! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A new crowdsourcing initiative to find prior ar (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A new crowdsourcing initiative to find prior ar (Score:4, Informative)
Ask Patents was created at the behest of the USPTO. Presumably they get some financial support in exchange but the USPTO is self-funded so no slush fund adventures are needed.
How about the REAL link? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/patents
Re:A new crowdsourcing initiative to find prior ar (Score:4, Informative)
Of course the USPTO is aware of this as mentioned in their 2012 press release [uspto.gov]...
Here's an excerpt from the WH press release...
Today, the USPTO is announcing that it is exploring a series of measures to make it easier for the public to provide information about relevant prior art in patent applications, including by refining its third-party submission program, exploring other ways for the public to submit prior art to the agency, and updating its guidance and training to empower examiners to more effectively use crowd-sourced prior art.
The mere collection of this information, although important, is not what is being addressed here. The USPTO has a complex procedure in place to insert 3rd party information into a patent file for consideration by the examiner. Basically you can only submit other patents or papers (no explanations, analysis, comments, instructions, protest or wild-ass-diatribes allowed). There is also a time window, specific forms and a submission fee and a requirement that the submission be directed at a specific pending patent and limited to 10 items.
Of course the examiner is somewhat free to consider third party resources (like AskPatents), but they are often leery of doing so as third-party participation in the examining process is strictly regulated by statute. AFAIK, this is because examiners aren't supposed to consider pre-publication protests or other opposition in determining the validity of a patent application, only technical information, not opinions of others (like competitor companies or people with axes to grind).
Hopefully, this initiative will streamline the process of getting them relevant technical information w/o the inevitable chaff that tends to go along with crowdsourcing sites. Just because a document gets uploaded to a crowdsourcing site doesn't mean it's a legitimate document. Some people have an agenda, ya know...
Re:Or we could just go back to the Constitution (Score:5, Informative)
Originally patents were for 13 years with one renewal by the original Person that applies and copyright was for 17 years with one renewal by the original Person that applies.
Sure, but none of that is actually in the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 empowers Congress to secure exculsive rights to inventors "for limited Times[sic]", without stipulating any actual limit. For practical purposes this enables Congress to extend patents and copyrights indefinitely.
The framers were men of remarkable vision to understand that patents were needed all the way back in 1787, but they weren't supermen or fortune tellers. They did not foresee the rise of corporations to become the dominant force in American society, or the uses they would dream up for the patent system. I doubt they ever imagined anything like a business methods patent, or a design patent, or the notion of Federal trademark law.
Re:Obama hasn't been paying attention (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sorry, did you fall off the short yellow bus?
first to file has nothing to do with prior art.
The rest of the world has been doing it that way for a long time.
Re:isn't Michelle outlawing those? (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't the first lady's big thing getting sweets banned?
No. That would be the Rush Limbaugh version of what she's been doing. In reality, she promotes exercise for kids.
Re:Was kidding, but no. "Actionable federal govt f (Score:5, Informative)
"the federal government should pursue actionable items [to create] food boards ... set food policy"
That means things like "Public schools shouldn't serve pizza and french fries every day". Mine did. It does not mean "Pizza should be banned from existence".