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Tech Patents on Science Friday 128

Posted by Hemos from the good-listening dept.
lyonsj writes "NPR's Science Friday show is discussing technology patents today; it sounds like this one is going to be well worth a listen. They'll be discussing Jeff Bezos' letter about patent reform, and the bar's reaction to that letter (which everyone should read). Call in and talk about tech patents with a law professor, a guy from the USPTO, and the chairman of Aurigin Systems. " Check out NPR's website for radio stations, and you can grab the archive of the show later on.
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Tech Patents on Science Friday More

Tech Patents on Science Friday

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  • Forum at Technology Review (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is also a current forum on patents at the Technology Review's website that might be of interest: www.techreview.com/forums

  • What a Crapfest (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is the closest thing I've ever heard to an real live orgy of NPR.

    Where is the alternative voice????

    Uhmm, Gleick, Lessing what weren't they invited. I expect that the USPTO set some groundrules for their participation.

  • Only Nixon could go to China... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...and maybe only someone with his own patents at stake can get reform taken seriously. It sounds like Bezos is having some impact.
  • Well... I think it's funny... :)
  • Another kind of patent reform would be to simply run the patent office the way it was supposed to be run, without changing any laws and international treaties.
    Michael Kirk, director of the Arlington, Va.-based American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), was quick to divert the discussion back to a consideration of the financial resources available to the Patent Office. He accused the Clinton administration and Congress of running "a rolling Ponzi game," by diverting fee-income funds from the Patent Office to other programs.

    "To the extent that people have identified problems in this area, they go back to the fundamental lack of revenues for the Patent Office to apply to this area to develop prior-art databases and the training and retention of skilled examiners in this field," he said.

    I largely agree with Mr. Kirk. While I do think even justly awarded patents may have an overall negative effect (take the wavelet compression issue for example), my main irritation is the large number of patents awarded for things that fail to meet the basic criteria of originality and nonobviousness.
    --
  • "Politics makes strange bedfellows" as the old adage says. 'Twas ever thus.
    Is this clichestock? No, just a reminder that not everything in the digital online virtual future is going to be brand new and unconnected to the past. At least not while humans are still involved : )
  • But according to him, the particular "one-click" system that they came up with *isn't* obvious and simplistic, or the way that they make it work isn't or something like that, and though I don't know whether it is or not, he apparently sincerely believes it.
    Honest and sincere people can honestly and sincerely disagree about whether something is or isn't obvious, which sort of complicates a simplistic rule like "no obvious patents".

    But then again perhaps this will be modrated as "obvious" : )

  • And how many patents did you violate with your modification : )
    Of course if you're using those 2 AAA's in parallel to sub for a single 1.5 Volt button cell (some are 1.5, some are 3), then you may have grounds to file for a patent! Consult the nearest expensive attorney at the earliest possible opportunity. : )
  • Can we have a show of hands of everybody here that wants to pay higher taxes so that the patent office can have all the resources it needs to deal with the constant deluge of applications?

    Yeah, that's what I thought.

  • Patents don't allow people to take an idea and run with it. Doesn't allow the freedom to expand a current idea with out price and alot of time the price is way too much for most people. Now as a programmer if must find if every algorithim that I want use is patented that may be a problem but now they are even doing business processes that is wrong. If I create a program that fill a need in my business or employers if that process is patented not the code but the process that is nuts. Well my mini rant is over

    http://theotherside.com/dvd/ [theotherside.com]
  • I can't stand the hypocrisy in Bezos' state ment [amazon.com].

    There need to be changes to the patent system, but the most obvious reform he fails to mention is the not to give patents out for obvious and simplitic "ideas" like one click shopping.

    Having a 2-3 year patent on something like 1-click shopping is still ridiculous and totally unacceptable. If this individual was honest about patent reform he would;

    Not have sued Barnes & Nobles for using one-click shopping.

    Give up this absurd patent.

    Please Mr. Bezos get a clue !

  • Let's grant Bezos the benefit of the doubt, and accept his statements that the one-click patent was defensive - that is, Amazon felt that

    • It could be patented
    • If someone else did so, they would use it to charge Amazon licensing fees
    • Therefore, Amazon needed to patent it themselves to keep this from happening.

    If this is the case, then the reforms Bezos is proposing might have stopped Amazon from getting the patent. This would have been almost as useful from Amazon's point of view, since that would mean that nobody else could get the patent, either. Granted, I don't think Amazon's thinking in this matter was quite that pure; having the one-click patent does give them a way to keep an advantage over B&N, for example.

    Overall, though, I think Bezos' point is that Amazon (and probably other internet companies) would be willing to live with the concept that there are some business practices and processes that can't be patented, as long as they can be sure that the patent office will not continue to cavalierly approve everything that comes through the door.

  • The terse statement cited in the letter is a slick, cromulent example of the generally crapulous way the Patent Office has been run.

    "Embiggens? We never had words like that in Shelbyville".

    "I don't know why not, it's a perfectly cromulent word."

  • I've spent many hours discussing this with my sister (a JD herself, who spent many years (after getting her JD) as a computer consultant and trainer in law firms.

    (as an aside: you would not believe how primitive the systems at many big firms are! Even firms that brag about how up to date they are.)

    We've concluded that it's because the outlook best suited to legal training is one where argument and subjectivity rule. As Joseph Weizacker (the MIT prof who invented the term 'hacker') pointed out, one of the reasons many techie types find computers so addictively appealing is that it is so strictly rational -- unlike the largely arbitrary human world around them.

    Admittedly his argument that "if the CPU doesn't run your instructions, you know you are wrong, not the machine" is a bit naive now, when computers and operating systems are so complex that errors may indeed be CPU errata or reside in flawed code elsewhere in the system. Still, I doubt few of us could tolerate 0.01% indeterminacy, much less 10%

    I've had some interesting arguments with my lawyer friends over who was more 'logical': a doctor or a lawyer. (I went to med school) The best argument I have ever heard was: "Scientists have the luxury of repeating their experiments. A criminal lawyer can never repeat the crime. We have to use pure logic, and available data."

    "Yes," I said, "but isn't it true that most legal cases would turn out differently with a different judge, argument, or other detail that had nothing to do with actual guilt or innocence?"

    "Of course," she said, as if scientific reproducibility was irrelevant, "So what?" Her definition of 'logic' was directly descended from the Greek 'rhetoric' (In ancient Greek courts, evidence was largely irrelevant -- it was a matter of swaying the masses who showed up)

    I've given her 'lawyers are more logical' argument to many lawyers in our debates (they think it's as clever as I did) but none has ever done as good a job of defending it as she did -- or been impressed with the need for reproducibility. I guess they can't be -- it would drive them crazy in their work. Most cases are reproducible, given the arguments used, but if even 1% aren't, it would eat at their souls. [no jokes]

    A doctor has to live with a lot of uncertainty, but at least there isn't anoth er team of doctors on the other side, trying to kill the patient.

    BTW, because law recognizes the indeterminacy of court cases, a legal appeal usually is NOT PERMITTED to use a better argument. You have to argue an error in the original proceedings, given the original arguments.

    Atty. Einstein, your appeal is rejected, as were the previous appeals by Newton et alia, on the grounds that they were not raised in the original Aristotle v. Observable Universe

    My new .sig: Join AMSAT [amsat.org]
  • Someone with the money to do it (like Bezos) should challenge the patent office: deliberately patent something that's not only obvious but also has prior art, and when it goes through, go back to the patent office and tell them what a poor job they did, and bring a lot of media attention to it. Things might start to get done if they come under public criticism and it's all their own fault... their obviously not in the mindset to make changes right now.

  • "I am troubled byt the broader notion that Bezos and his industry are entitled to special protection"

    That nearly knocked me out of my chair, too.

    Thankfully this man is not part of the USPTO. I would hope that someone with such an assinine conceptualization of patent law (and the constitution is the prime patent law) is never ever part of the PTO.

    He is basically saying patent law is something for an industry to be protected from! As if intellectual property is a natural law, acknowledged by the framers of the constitution! Patent law, because that is it's intent, by the founders themselves, is measured by how well it helps an industry and the entire economy, by way of giving special, unusual, temporary property rights to some individuals, sometimes!
    Stupid bs streaming lawyer!

  • Herbert F. Schwartz is quoted in the above article as saying, "(Changes of the magnitude Bezos proposes ) could be the unraveling of the patent system," Schwartz warns. Special consideration sought by Internet and software companies today, he argues, could lead to similar accommodations made to other industries. "I am troubled by the broader notion that Bezos and his industry are entitled to special protection," he says.

    This guy and his ilk just don't get it, do they?

    We are fighting the broken PTO patent issuance system so that our industry is NOT "entitled to special protection".

    The State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group decision opened the floodgates of bad patents. The business method and software patents issued after this decision have hurt industry, hurt competitiveness, hurt the U.S. free-market economy, and stifled growth - especially of small, innovative companies.

    Meanwhile, lawyers like Schwartz are making out like bandits in the patent litigation feeding frenzy. Don't expect them to give up this lucrative new source of ready cash without a fight!

  • Thats a good question. What value does a lawyer bring to the world. Do they somehow make the pie larger for us all or are they a nuissance. When has a lawyer enriched the lives of others with his work without having a reciprocating loss in another party. THERE'S a question for you! Hangtime
  • Well, what bothered me ws that the patent system is effectively a system for lawyers to tell scintists/inventors about the novelty of their field. That is a bit off.

    One other question. Where are all the Slashdotters who spend half of each patent discussion criticising Coble? He made a useful, coherent sensible arguement, which is actually the norm. Oh well.

    Finally, What is the argument for coputter programs deserving a different sort of protection. If the material is patentable (andI think it should be), the term ought to be the same. If the industry is in flux, so be it. If the system worked properly--obvious patents easily discarded, and novelty truly rewarded, what exactly is wrong with the current system, at least in principle? And why is it so different from other areas
  • No shit. Actually, what they need, and agree upon, is a better database. They don't do, and don't have time to, do full searches on all teh potential journals. Get them a better database, and more time to sort through it. I think they need 20-60 hours per patent, not 8.

    And anyway, whats your better idea?
  • Good. This morning I modified a $6 watch-sized FM radio to run off two AAA cells so I could listen to Science Friday without using the $3 button batteries which the unit was designed for. I suspect 2 AAA will last at least 2 weeks, much longer and cheaper than the day-and-a-half of the 2 button batteries. Next to see if I can instead power it from my cellphone battery. (I need to find a broken Nokia 5100 Analog sleeve so I have a case that fits between the phone and battery...)

    Not that I expect the show to do more than broadcast an awareness of the problem to a wider audience...

  • Sorry, but laughing at government institutions was brought to a pinnacle by the British Empire with the institution of the monarchy as the department in charge. The concepts have been widely copied and are no longer considered novel. The most recent example is the present USA presidential campaign. (obligatory link) [compuserve.com]
  • Oh, no. I had to reread that several times to understand it. How much do I owe you?
  • Does anyone have the money and time to submit a block of say 15 patents:
    5 already patented items,
    5 physically imposible barred by the laws of physics items,
    and 5 obvious items drowned in lawyerspeak and technobabble.
    my suggestion for the last are
    the wheel,0 (Off),1 (On),fire, and the internet

    Then use the fact that some of them WILL get through as ammo for reform.
  • It is special protection for those companies which have to abide by a competitor's/outside party's patent. After a shorter period of time the industry would have unfettered use of the technology. This would be a benefit that other industries would not have. i.e. Companies into plastics would still have to abide by a 20 year term for say some patent that speeds up the setting time in moulds. From a larger perspective, the statement makes sense.
  • Let me get this straight, Bezos/Amazon comes up with an alleged "invention" of one-click shopping, hires a lawyer to patent it, sneaks it past the lousy examination procedures at the PTO, and gets a patent on it. Then Bezos/Amazon goes out and sues its competitors, and somehow this is the fault of the lawyers, patent system and PTO? Sure there are problems with the patent system, there are plenty of sleazy lawyers out there (and some honorable ones too though, e.g. Abraham Lincoln just to pick a name), and the PTO does do a crappy job of examining applications, but quite frankly all of these events took place at the direction of Bezos/Amazon! Even if you believe in patenting software/business methods in order to prevent some one else from doing it, there is NO requirement that you sue someone! Bezos/Amazon is acting like all these actions are someone else's fault which is just total crap. If anything the lawyers are getting the worst of it, because if a lawyer doesn't represent his/her client's interests to the full extent of the law, which is assumedly what the lawyers were doing in this case, they can be sued for malpractice (and Amazon doesn't seem too adverse to suing people on weak grounds)

    As mentioned in a previous post, Bezos is not the mascot we want for patent reform. He's the one who set everything in motion for the one-click patent suit, we shouldn't let him off the hook just because he's mouthing the right platitudes now and pretending he doesn't like it after he intentionally abused it.
  • Actually the fees for patent applicants and holders more than cover the current costs of the PTO. Congress just takes some of the money and spends it on other stuff. If they actually used all the fees for better patent examination a lot of the problems with the patent system would go away because these lousy patents (e.g., one-click shopping) would never get issued. So better examination would cost the taxpayers nothing, but politics as usual prevails.... apparently better patent examination procedures don't show up very high on the voter's opinion polls.
  • 20 years from now any patent they hold will have been rendered obselete. [reply:] Don't be too sure. The RSA patent is due to expire this September, and the technologies it covers are still in common use.
    Sure, but the patent holders have been compensated pretty well for this innovation. RSA isn't obsolete yet, but I doubt you could argue that a shorter patent term would have taken away the incentive to create it.
  • There needs to be an open review period before any patent is granted. The combined knowledge of everyone in the field is far greater than what's written down.

    Or, put another way: "With enough eyes, all prior art is shallow."

    Don't open-source patents. Open-source the Patent Office!

  • You can get an NPR feed at http://www.npr.org [npr.org]; it's only available in QuickTime and Windows Media, though. Some of the local stations may have feeds in other formats - anyone know of any?
  • A 3 to 5 year patent on a truly groundbreaking patent is too short. Don't get me wrong here, I am against software patents. But, if it takes 10 years to develop a patent, and the application is granted for only 3 years, many inventors will stop working towards ground breaking development.

    I think the RSA algorithm deserved a patent. I also think it deserved a 17 year patent too. If it had a 3 year patent, the industry would have ignored it until the patent expired, and the inventors would not have made much monetary profit from it -- which defeats the whole point of a patent. RSA would have kept the algorithm as a trade secret, and then no one would have been able to benefit from their work -- except for RSA, of course.

    There needs to be a scalable system for the length of time patents have been given. For instance, RSA really did deserve a patent because the work was so groundbreaking. You can't hold the 1-click patent up to it, but we are stuck with it for the next 17 years. The ATT XOR patent falls into this category too. The company can still apply for its patent, but the length of time for which the patent is granted, say 1 year for the one-click patent, may make companies decide hard which ideas they choose to patent.

    The alternative is a patent for everything under the sun.

    --R
  • Jeff isn't saying he wants to ban software patents entirely, like Richard Stallman. He's saying the patent term should be shorter. He knows that any value in his patents will expire after a few years anyway, regardless of whether the patent term is up, since new technologies will be invented that render them worthless.

    So, basically he's willing to give back to the community after he's sucked all the monetary value from it.
  • Interesting viewpoint. I do find that I must agree with your assessment of WHY laws are complicated. The analogy of complexity in programming is a good one.

    However. When you state "BZZZZTTT, wrong, thanks for playing. If the patent system was simple, it would be ambiguous and we'd need legions more patent lawyers to handle the resulting legal disputes." I cannot agree. Yes there might be more legal disputes with more simple/ambiguous laws. But simple law could be argued by each disputant. We would not need more lawyers, we would however need more judges.

    Personally I would be okay with the laws that govern my life being a few highly general principles that are interpreted and implemented on the fly. I realize that would require more judges, and more competant ones, but I've always liked the Bene Gesserit solution, (3 person panel, their decisions hold, screw what the law says) and that approaches it.

    Absimiliard
  • NPR's Morning Edition show has had a number of interesting stories recently that are relevant to various discussions here. Here are the links and some of the topics from last week:


  • Sweetenly, Boston's NPR news station provides a live webcast.

    http://www.wbur.org [wbur.org]

    I'm not sure what the variation in programming is for the local station, but you can't fail with Science Friday.



    -=Adam "sign-here-to-secede-your-land-to-my-government" Roxton
  • Bezos is asking for special treatment and making a monkey of us all by cloaking it under the guise of reform

    I understand that taken literally, "special treatment" includes "less protection than we now have". The reason this is spin is that an average citizen upon hearing that statement will think that Bezos is asking for more protection, not less. This is human psychology, the reason why spin works.

    I don't think Bezos is necessary to make monkey's out of the establishment. Primal instincts such as territoriality and pissing contests do a good enough job of that.

    Mojotoad
  • I don't see how "a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow" has any relevance to shortening the patent timespan.

    If anything, it argues for shortening it, because one of the key issues here is the crushing of innovation along with all those near-term dollars in the fist. If innovation is not smothered, then there will always be more dollars to be had, near-term or otherwise.

    Mojotoad
  • Check out this quote from Herbert F. Schwartz, patent litigation lawyer, in the Bar Reacts to Bezos [lawnewsnetwork.com] story:

    "I am troubled by the broader notion that Bezos and his industry are entitled to special protection"

    That, when in effect, Bezos was suggesting less protection!

    Special, indeed.

    Mojotoad
  • Is it just me, or do the lawyers seem to be saying "You know nothing about the law, so keep quiet". So because we have not "passed the bar" (or whatever they call it when you officially become one of the most disliked people on the planet) we have no right to complain about something that affects us all. Exuse me? I thought even the most dim witted individuals (even lawyers) had a say in what should be law and what should not. Or has democracy become the preserve of the few and no one bothered to tell me.
  • As a software engineer, I don't expect the users to understand on a technical level what I'm doing. However, they have every right to complain when something I write goes wrong or just does not do what they wanted it to do. Do I say to them that they have no right to comment on the program because they can't program themselves? No, I want their comments so I can write a better program. By the People, for the people sort of thing. I thought law in a democracy was something like that as well.

    You don't have to be an expert on patent law to tell that it's not working the way most of the people who it's been designed for think it should work. And everyone has a right to say how it should work, be they bookseller or lawyer.
  • You're way off. Patents were never meant to provide sole proprietorship. Patents are NOT a question of rights. They're a question of balancing the need to survive with the right to compete. Competition is about innovation not territorial wars.

    Read the case law sometime.
  • If anything he was asking for LESS protection. While this might be conceivably interpreted as "special", it's fairly obvious that he believes the current system provides too much protection.
  • Go to the QuickTime [apple.com] front page and click on the NPR channel button.

    Or choose NPR from the Favorites menu in QuickTime Player, assuming you already have it.

    This is served through the Akamai network, so should be proof against the slashdot effect...
  • Suppose there was a class of patents that had a different period. It might be possible to change the wording on your patent such that it could be classified as a different class as well (a hybrid), thus earning the longer period.

    Of course, there's the immediate argument that in any such case the shorter period should prevail, but that is likely to encounter much debate.

  • It's nice to have Bezos on board on this, but talk is cheap. AIPLA and AIPO are gearing up for a lobbying effort. In Congress, the name of the game is fee-for-service-legislation, at least on issues that don't make it onto the radar screens of most voters. As unpleasant as the prospect may be, the patent-reform effort is going to have to match the IPO lawyers dollar-for-dollar if it wants to be successful.

    Looking around, I see plenty of virtuous sentiment (Bezos, O'Reilly, even Larry Ellison, apparently), but I see no evidence for a sustained industrial-scale lobbying effort - just a couple of highly publicized meetings. Where is campaign central? Which lobbying firms are being hired? How much money are Amazon, O'Reilly et al. tossing into the kitty?

    These are the measures of seriousness in this game. If the "heroes" of this story don't pony up, it means that they're just sucking up to their geek customers who care about IP reform, and their efforts are unlikely to succeed.

  • From the byte article [byte.com] which was posted [slashdot.org] on /. several days ago:
    The final class of patent, statutory, does not afford any legal protection to the patentee, but does convey legal protection to the general public by registering the invention and thereby formally declaring it to be prior art for the purpose of future patent filings. This class of patent is most commonly used to register inventions made by the U.S. Government and it is known as Statutory Invention Registration, or SIR.

    Anyone can apply to receive SIR patent status for a novel invention, and there is only a small one-time fee for this type of patent compared to the larger and periodic fees required to receive and maintain a regular patent. However, statutory patents are only used when the patentee wants to guarantee that no third party will ever be able to claim patent protection for an invention. This makes SIR a very interesting, if currently overlooked, option for protecting open source inventions.

    Okay, patents as they are should definitely be fixed. But has anyone actually used the SIR patent method above to proactively stop this land-grab mentality? Maybe FSF or EFF should spend some of the members' money to make things more public domain. I would contribute if my money were used to stop the current insanity.

  • Forgive me folks... the Bar ?? isn't that kind of the lawyers' professional organization ?

    And they call for a broad applicability of patent law ? What chuzpah!
    this is like the Fraternal order of the Police calling for more crime!

    Gosh folks, maybe you shouldn't start reforming patent regulation. Maybe it's time to start with lawyer regulation.
    Quite a number of countries in the world are already very successful at that.

    f.
  • Try WBUR's web cast at http://www.wbur.org/ [wbur.org]. Sorry, but it's in Windows' streaming format.
  • I'm not kidding. Although I am pretty messed up from that fruit juice.

    ---

  • When I graduated with my history degree, I was offered a full ride to law school. Fortunately, my parents raised me to have morals....

  • Okaaaay. Care to give us any reason why?

    Got one: because change is BAD. Repeat after me: I am complacent. Things are fine the way they are. All is well. I make lots of money.

    I am complacent...

  • Certainly every profession thinks they are 'leet, (laywers, software engineers, burger flippers, etc) but in the same way you don't expect laywers to know anything about software engineering, they don't expect you to know anything about law.

    What the average knows about computers (press the "Start" button) is similar to what the average /. knows about law (police give out speeding tickets), although law principles are mostly common sense and can be learned fairly easily.

  • If only that were true in any industry other than software/business model.. A search at http://www.patents.ibm.com under the name gerencser (my family anem) brings up 10 differnet listings.. Not one of these patents lasted more than 1 year in the real world.. With very minor changes, each one of them was made useless by competition and sometimes even partners..

    But for some reason, business model and tech patents have taken on this air of invulnerability and permenance.. this is most likely a result of business models being just that, models.. There is no real products or technology that defines the model, just a 'way of doing things'.. If all patents were granted on that basis, we'd be using triangular tires becuae they had one less bump than the square ones.. But the idea of the tire would have been patented so no others can be made..

  • I would agree that the statement put forth by the patent lawyers bar is a bit arrogant, well, more than a bit to be honest. It's not surprising however, the same way a programmer would probably say who is Jeff Bezos to comment on programming style, or a heart surgeon would say who is David Letterman to comment on surgical procedures. I'm not qualified to comment on psychiatric procedures, but as a former psych patient I *AM* qualified to have a slightly informed opinion. Everyone involved in every segment of the patent process should have a fairly equal voice in this matter, and a Patent Office unwilling to listen to what their constituency has to say shouldn't be deciding anything. The lawyers have a valuable contribution to make, if they decide to make it in a constructive way. These ARE "experts" in the field of patent law, and they have seen how the system evolved and what ramifications it had outside the walls of the PO. This is going to be an interesting situation to watch evolve as no matter what the outcome, even a maintainence of the status quo, it's going to have profound implications on how a large number of industries do business in the future.

  • If you want a quiet, polite, wimp for a lawyer get one. But don't complain when he loses your livelihood for you, because a judge was influenced by an alpha male's victory in a domination contest.

    So that's what a trial is. I wondered why it seemed liked the facts of a case don't make that much difference in the outcome. Had I known all along that it was just a contest to see who had the bigger dick (metaphorically speaking, of course), it would have made perfect sense.

    I doubt I've ever met anyone quite as arrogant as you are, but then you still ride the subway, so I guess that makes it ok.

    Lawyers take on the shit that other people want to get rid of. That's our role in life. It's what we do.

    It's no wonder there's so many problems with the legal system. Lawyers turn it into a game unto itself instead of attempting to keep it in tune with the real world. We're talking about changing a law that doesn't make sense here. You have no more place in making the law than any of the rest of us. If we think something isn't right, then it doesn't matter if it's currently legal or illegal. We can have it changed so that it makes sense here in the real world. Once we, as a people, decide what the law should be, then lawyers get to write it down and try not to leave too many holes in it. Then all the rest of you lawyers can have your turn to try to pick holes in the law and twist its meaning to benefit your clients. That seems to be the natural order of things.

    Oh, btw, just because we want to change the law, it doesn't mean we have to turn the country into England or China. It will still be America, only the patent laws will make a bit more sense. Nobody said a damn thing about anything becoming the property of the government, so quit the bs scare tactics. New laws are passed and others are changed all the time. Why not this one? If you're so concerned about the welfare of this country, then maybe you should try to figure out a way to simplify things so that we don't need so damn many lawyers. Lawyers are an overhead cost of doing business that we should seek to reduce. The more laws we have, the more lawyers we need, the more money gets diverted from producing real things to paying lawyers to keep other lawyers off your back. Vicious, stupid cycle.

  • Bezos is claiming to be a victim of the current system. He says that he believes it should be changed, but until it is, he must play by the current rules. Basically, he's saying "If I didn't patent it, someone else would, and then I'd be screwed instead of the other guy." While I can agree with this reasoning, I don't think his self-defense argument holds up when you figure in the fact that he's suing Barnes and Noble. That should've only be done if they sued him first. I'd rather not see him held up as the mascot for patent reform.

  • But according to him, the particular "one-click" system that they came up with *isn't* obvious and simplistic, or the way that they make it work isn't or something like that, and though I don't know whether it is or not, he apparently sincerely believes it.

    What do you expect him to say? "Yeah, we pulled one over on the PTO pretty good!" B&N would nail his ass in court in two seconds if he openly admitted that he didn't think they deserved the patent.

  • It's way too similar to too many other systems out there. People have been doing similar things with cookies for years. Now he decides to store people's credit card numbers along with the rest of the info that everbody stores on users and he should get a patent for that? That's ridiculous! That only leads to a system where everybody has to patent every incremental advance for fear of being sued later. Naturally, corporations end up with most of the patents, which they cross-license with other corps and the rest of us are out in the cold. Bad idea. 1-click was just a minor incremental advance over other similar systems. It was not deserving of a 20-year monopoly on the technique.

  • That's great! Roll on 2pm (http://www.wbur.org/information/programming/frida y.shtml).

    Now we just need a longer list so that it doesn't get slashdotted!
  • I'm London. Ontario. Anybody know if I can get NPR here? Does CBC or any other station rebroadcast any NPR programs? Is this broadcast on the web at all?

    I've already tried getting NPR from Erie, PA (93.1FM) figuring it was closest and I would get better reception over the lake, but either it's too far, or my radio's to shite (probably the case: it's old with an analog dial). I've only lived here a while so I'm not entirely familiar with neighbouring US geography: it would take me hours to go through the list of NPR stations and figure out which are closest (OH, MI, PA, NY).
  • 20 years from now any patent they hold will have been rendered obselete.
    Don't be too sure. The RSA patent is due to expire this September, and the technologies it covers are still in common use.

  • The article [lawnewsnetwork.com] from LawNewsNetwork clearly shows how arrogant and greedy those fucking lawyers are. Basically, what they're saying is that patent law is the business of lawyers and not of technology experts. How fucked up is that??? The Law is voted by the parliament, which is supposed to represent the people. The people, not the fucking lawyers! I had never read an article before this one that showed that clearly how american lawyers are so full of themselves. Hey, lighten up, you job is to help apply the law, not to tell *us* what it should be! We, the citizens (I'm talking about the democratic world in general, not the US only obviously), are entitled to decide what should go into the law.

    Damn, how DARE THEY claim to know better than O'Reilly, Bezos and Stallman how the law should be? Their business is not about WHAT the law is, it's about how it applies, as it is written.

  • Well, Cleveland, OHs NPR Radio station is 90.3FM and it might be better....i'm always picking up Canadian stations here....might as well give that one a whirl :)
  • Really, for being such a generally smart bunch of people, the lawyers I've known have been clueless about technology. One didn't even use a computer. Another has trouble using AOL. Another takes pride in the fact that he doesn't know computers, because that's not his field and he shouldn't have to know all those details (interestingly, he's a patent lawyer). This last attitude seems comicly prevalent. Does anyone know why lawyers seem so technology-inept? Does anyone else have this experience?

    The incredibly arrogant William T. Ellis (in Washington, DC) dismisses Bezos as a "bookseller" that should not express his opinion on patent law. I'd say it's even more "somewhat incongruous" for a lawyer to think they know the best way to foster technology.

    Another lawyer dismisses this as "Pamela Samuelson revisited." Yes, we do need to revisit it if they didn't get a clue the first time around.

    If this is the best thing lawyers can do for technology, then lawyers should stay out of technology.

    We all know patent lawyers are saying this because they want to keep their jobs, no better reason. Don't forget that.

  • No shit. Actually, what they need, and agree upon, is a better database. They don't do, and don't have time to, do full searches on all teh potential journals. Get them a better database, and more time to sort through it. I think they need 20-60 hours per patent, not 8.

    No, what I'm saying is that even IF they had more time and money to build a better database, it could never be definitive. Probably useful, but they would still need to look outside of it, because many of the important ideas simply aren't, and won't be, in ANY journals. Journals are NOT the entire sum of human knowledge. (The USPTO already searches literally hundreds of thousands of publications.)

    And anyway, whats your better idea?

    I never said I had one, but since you asked: There needs to be an open review period before any patent is granted. The combined knowledge of everyone in the field is far greater than what's written down. Other countries do this. I remember hearing there are drawbacks, but I forget what those are. However, without a review period, I don't see how any patent examiner can take into account all relevant technical history.

    I also think patents should be easier to overturn if prior art or other info is discovered later. The PTO agent's ego shouldn't be involved-- an overturned patent shouldn't be seen as a sign of his/her incompetence that must be battled in court.

  • Or, put another way: "With enough eyes, all prior art is shallow."

    Exactly! Thank you for pointing this out! I meant to say it in my last note but I forgot. That's exactly the parallel I was trying to draw.

  • This is why it's important to get involved in your local Senatorial races, and why I have no sympathy for any geek who "makes a political statement" by being a lazy bastard and not getting involved.

    I know of one US Senator who had no position whatsoever on exportation of encryption, and adopted our position shortly after I cornered him in a small-town airport and brought it up. Never underestimate the power of talking to your Senator or Senatorial candidate.

    After all, one man who doesn't vote makes no difference.

    One man who votes makes one vote worth of difference.

    One man who convinces five people to vote his way makes five votes worth of difference.

    And:

    Every revolution is begun because one guy was pissed off enough to do something about it.

    Or, if you want a concrete example:

    We have 20-year patents because one man signed a treaty and between 67 and 100 other men agreed to it. That's between 68 and 101 voices, affecting a change for the entire country. Imagine what could have happened if the entire geek community had talked to those 101 men before they walked that path.

  • From the "Bar Reacts To Bezos Patent Reform Plan":

    "I am troubled by the broader notion that Bezos and his industry are entitled to special protection," he (Herbert F. Schwartz) says.

    Excuse me? From what I can tell, Bezos did not in any way, shape, or form indicate that he thought process or business patents were "entitled to special protection". His point is that this class of patents requires closer scrutiny, should be more difficult to obtain, and should not last as long as traditional patents.

    I guess you have to be a lawyer to understand how "make it harder for someone to obtain these patents" translates into "please give us special protections."

  • I'm not sure whether Americans realize how different the role of lawyers and law in the US is from most other places in the world.

    Having lived in a number of different countries, my impression is that US laws are deliberately vague and that US administrative procedures involve an inordinate amount of legal procedures. Here are just some random examples I have come across:

    • In other countries, immigration applications don't usually involve lawyers. The criteria are spelled out pretty well, the options are fairly clear, and individuals are expected to submit their own applications, truthfully and unambiguously. In the US, immigration regulations are very vague, and for practical purposes, you must have a lawyer to stand a chance.
    • Traffic violations in the US involve the court system and legal proceedings. You can choose to represent yourself and perhaps get away with it, but fundamentally, those are legal proceedings. In Europe, in my experience, common traffic violations are administrative issues not involving courts or lawyers.
    • Consumer protection and product liability laws are so vague in the US that in any case involving substantial amounts of money, there will be a lawsuit that has some chance of success. Many other countries have much better defined rules and regulations that consumers and manufacturers can rely on, and they have efficient, standard ways of dealing with damages resulting from product liability and malpractice.
    • Although I haven't applied for international patents other than through a US patent lawyer, I doubt that foreign patent applications involve the kind of legal detail and legal involvement that US patent applications involve (and the responses from foreign patent examiners are definitely considerably more competent than those from US patent examiners). I also doubt that the intent of the US patent system was to involve patent attorneys to the degree that they are involved.
    The power of the legal system and the police in the US concern me greatly. I think that in the long term, they endanger both the market economy and democracy. To be sure, I think that the legal system and the police are crucial parts of a market economy and a democracy, but they need to be in balance with other forces. In the US, I think this balance is eroding.

    I can only guess at the reasons. A legal system like that in the US lets you avoid a lot of responsibilities if you only have enough money. Big companies can sue little companies out of existence, whether they have a case or not. If you are charged with a serious crime, a good legal team has a good chance of getting you off. And the people who write the laws are often lawyers, who probably think that adding more legal complexity (and revenue opportunities) is not such a bad thing. In short, having a complex legal system benefits the rich and the powerful, who can afford to navigate it.

    So, where will it all go? Well, read up on your history. This kind of legalism has had ample precedent in world powers throughout history as they were passing their maturity. Stories of legal problems in the medieval Islamic world, China, or Rome all sound amusingly contemporary, and they amount to non-democratic abuses of power. I hope the US will be able to avoid the same fate, but, just in case, I'm keeping my options open...

  • "These are the same arguments that were made in the early 1990s by people who were opposed to the patenting of software," [Friedman] says.

    And what is that supposed to imply? That the change wasn't as harmful as opponents predicted? Actually, that conclusion is just wrong.

    The software industry, so far, has developed spectacularly without software patents. The impact of the changes in the early 90's is only now beginning to be felt, and it is very negative: consolidation of companies because of patent issues, legal blackmail of startup companies because it's easier to pay a few percent than to fight in court, etc. Open source software projects, in particular, are at grave risk, because infringement is easy to claim based on the source code; most of the original Internet infrastructure was based on collaborative open source development and likely wouldn't have happened if software patents had been around.

    But from the point of view of patent attorneys, the changes must have been a resounding success: so many more patent applications to be processed and so many more legal fees to collect.

    This "everying is fine with software patents" attitude expressed by patent attorneys is in itself a good indication of how disconnected they actually are from policy and economic issues and how unqualified they are to determine policy in this area.

  • NPR [npr.org] will be posting the RealAudio 28/56 broadcast links on this page [npr.org] soon after the program is recorded; they don't appear to be doing a live broadcast of it, though. I'd expect it to be there some time between a couple hours from now and tomorrow, assuming they work quickly.

    As for listening to it on the radio, here's a link [google.com] and another link [google.com] for you; it might help you find a radio station you can listen to. I'd suggest just spending a few minutes tuning the dial, though.

  • How in the world did we get ourself into such an position. So now the president can create his own laws that are more important than congresses laws, all while expecting a rubber stamp from congress unless we make other countries angry.. Hmm sounds like the government I want :) :(
  • Ok, stupid comment (just noticed that it comes from original constitution, not amendment) Still seems excessive power though.
  • Read the quotes of Irwin Schartz of Schwarz and Nystrom, who is representing Mattel in the CyberPatrol censorship list decryption case:

    http://www.wired.com/news/linu x/0,1411,35038,00.html [wired.com]

    He brags about the censoring effect that the injunction will have on others mirroring the cphack utility (which in reality has had little effect), and mocks the defendants for not having opposing counsel show up, when the hearing, set on a friday morning, was arranged late on the previous thursday. Remember, that these two guys are not Americans, they live in Sweden and Canada.

  • Talk of the nation is a good show. I like both flavors (science friday, and the normal one). For those of you in strange places, you can go the the WRVO web site (http://www.wrvo.org) and you can listen to it in Real Audio. It's on at 2:00 PM today (friday).
  • Well, I think you raise some important points.

    However, this wasn't a case of congress reevaluting patents, but new classes of patents coming into play that weren't conceived of in 1861 and were extremely rare at best and of little practical importance in 1994. The situation has now changed dramatically.

    I think we do know enough to say that certain classes of patents should be granted for shorter times, because in some areas technology advances too fast for the patent laws to react on a once per century basis. Probably the law should be abstract with respect to these categories, but allow for short and long term patents based on the time horizons to develop new technologies. For example drugs take years to test, and thus need to be patented for longer. Business methods and software are generally created over much shorter time frames. Take any drug going on the market today and it was started in development years before Amazon was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye. I think a two tier fast track slow track system would make sense, with fast track patents getting approved sooner and expiring sooner.

    I'm not really sure what the CLIPPER chip has to do with this. In that case you're talking about a specific and highly technical standard which was probably beyond the average person's grasp.

    It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that new Internet business models and technolgies are being created and destroyed over the course of months, not years.
  • This is a really great point, but you don't make it strongly enough. Here's a concrete example:

    What is the prior art for an online discussion forum that uses user-moderation and moderation of moderation to determine scores for articles which can then be viewed in a threaded fashion, wieghted by a moderation threshold? We know it as Slash. Does the USPTO know of it? Doubtful, as the folks at Slashdot/Andover.net/VA-Linux have been too busy writing code and making their site work to publish papers. The source is out there, but I betcha you could sneak this sucker through the USPTO if you greased it with enough patent-lawyer-speak.

    Prior art can only be identified usefully by individuals who work in the affected field. This is not being done.

    My solution? Patents should undergo a probationary period where they are publicly displayed and the community at large can submit comments. That would have killed the 10 most aggregeous patents of the last decade easily.
  • "It's somewhat incongruous for a bookseller to be opining on the patent system," said William T. Ellis, a partner in the Washington office of Foley & Lardner.

    This sent a chill down my spine. It really set the tone for the whole article. "We know what is best, now shut up." And this to O'Reilly. They really don't know what they are up against.
  • One other question. Where are all the Slashdotters who spend half of each patent discussion criticising Coble? He made a useful, coherent sensible arguement, which is actually the norm. Oh well.

    I'm certain I have no idea who/what you are talking about.

    What is the argument for coputter programs deserving a different sort of protection

    Ahem.

    http://www.oreillynet.com/patents/ [oreillynet.com]
    http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/amazon.html [fsf.org]

  • I found the response of the Patent Bar fascinating but not surprising.

    [rant]

    Does anyone else here think that what the patent lawyers think isn't worth $RANDOM_EXPLETIVE? I mean talk about a biased viewpoint.

    These folks have a strong interest in preserving or making more complex the current situation. Heck, if it was simple we wouldn't need patent lawyers at all. Given that exactly how surprising is it that they want to $RANDOM_EXPLETIVE those of us who see the flaws in the current system and are thus calling for reform.

    Not that I would typically want to destroy someone's livelihood, but these yutzes just don't figure into the equation as far as I'm concerned. Sure they're experts on the current law. But if the system is broken why should their income potential matter when the question at hand is "How do we fix a broken system?"

    Basically I guess my opinion is this. Screw them all. Their money is at stake, that makes them inherently untrustworthy in my book. (Not that I trust lawyers I don't personally know anyway.)

    [/rant]
  • In fact, that's the first quote that came to mind when I thought about Bezos being our mascot.

    But here's the rub: Jeff Bezos is not fighting for the same thing 'we' are, and in fact, it's not clear that he's fighting for anything that would help really reform patent law.

    What bugs me is that the lawyers (i.e., "them") are putting him up on "our" pedestal, when we're fighting with him. We haven't chosen our bedfellows--the patent office defenders have!

    Ugh. I'm not making a lot of sense. More coffee!

  • The bar claims that the current system is good. But many, many people from Nobel-winning scientists to writers like James Gleick, businessmen like Tim O'Reilly, Jeff Bezos, and the thousands of signatures in Tim O'Reilly's letter.

    So this is my question to this bar of lawyers: Where's your proof that the current system is good? For whose interest does it benefit, and at the expense of whose interest?

    I would really appreciate an honest reply. But not expecting one.

  • "I am troubled by the broader notion that Bezos and his industry are entitled to special protection."

    This is the kind of lawyerspeak that is so disgusting.

    Firstly, Bezos and his industry is a very large industry. It represents very diverse businesses and encompasses a wide range of the business activities that we can benefit from in the future. If the whole industry get some special protection, its not special! There are no concession, so stop pretending that it is. It just reflects on the distinction that we see as evident between business method patents and technology patents. This distinction is similar to the distinction between patenting a screwdriver, and patenting a method of holding a screwdriver.

    Next Jeff Bezos is by no means representative of the industry. In fact, a number of people in the industry disagree strongly with his method of doing business. So attacking Bezos himself does nothing for us, the people you are supposed to defend!

    Again, there is the subtext. No special concession is asked for. No privilege. In fact, we are asking the people who have been given this privilege of holding business patents (for offensive or defensive purposes) to give them up. To stop ligitating each other to death. For the common good. It's just like a lawyer to paint this argument into something it is not.

    End of rant.

  • Congress does not revisit patent duration very often. It was set at 14 years from date of issue in 1790, upped to 17 years in 1861, and then changed to 20 years from the date of filing (for international conformity) in 1994. That last change made little practical change in the duration of a patent. That looks like they revisit the issue about oh, say, once every 100 years, give or take.

    Congress wants a general purpose system to handle patents. That's probably a good idea for the same reasons that Congress legislating specs for encryption chips (HELLO CLIPPER!) is scary.

    Congress could do the same thing they do with the environment, telecommunications, labor relations, etc, etc, and punt. Give the job to the PTO to figure out how long patents should last. If you don't think the PTO is doing a good job of figuring out WHETHER to give a patent, imagine how scary letting them decide HOW LONG the patent lasts also will be. (Oh, we'll give one click 100 years!)

    Sure, the system is not perfect. On the other hand, the system has been working pretty well for through a couple of hundred years of the fastest period of technological change in the history of mankind, in the country that is likely the most significant engine for that change in that period.

    Even if Bezos is right, that is, we now have enough hindsight to change the system with respect to some category of patents, like software, you have to have a general system for dealing with the technology you haven't seen yet. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with Congress passing a software/business method patent law now, and ignoring it for 100 years. (How bad would CLIPPER have been after 100 years? Pretty bad.)

  • This isn't meant as a troll, it's meant to point out something that most people here seem to be missing.

    1-click shopping fits the PTO's definition of an unobvious innovation. The standard says something similar to that if any experienced practitioner of the art would find the innovation obvious then it doesn't get protection. It should be obvious that 1-click shopping is a good thing, yet it still took Amazon a year or two before they started using it. They clearly HAD experienced practitioners working to improve the site constantly and yet it wasn't obvious to them, this alone shows that it fits the legal requirement to deserve protection.

    Remember, back then (and still now on most sites) everything was viewed as a grocery-style model with users putting things into a shopping cart and then taking the shopping cart to a checkout. Once Amazon has shown that there IS a way to do 1-click shopping, it becomes easy to see ways of making it work, but until someone does it first it ISN'T obvious that the problems are solvable (for instance, if I order 3 books I want to pay a combined shipping charge, rather than 3 single book charges).

    If someone can show that there was prior art, THAT would be a reason to have blocked this patent, but remember, it has to be art prior to Amazon's use of it in July 1996, not just prior to the filing date of June 1997. By the time they filed many people had copied them, but when Amazon first announced and started using 1-click it was a new model. They deserve the patent.

    That said, I don't think they SHOULD enforce it, but they certainly seem to have the RIGHT to enforce it.

    Patenting affiliate programs on the other hand..... I believe there WAS plently of prior art on THIS one.

    -B

  • I just finished reading the article, I suggest all of you take the time to read it, its a good breakdown on the current situation of that tiny pebble that Tim Oreilly rolled down the mountain to Jeff Bezos, and is now a giant snowball thats hit the rest of America. I never would have thought that Tim Oreilly would be the inspiration that could ultimately change patent laws in this country.. wow, the power of flame mail..
  • I've heard patent lawyers brag about the hundreds of thousands of publications in all languages that USPTO agents search on before granting a patent. The USPTO and its agents are very proud of this fact, and they rest on it as solid proof that they know what they're doing, and that all of us critics are a bunch of irrational kooks.

    That's right, they assume that anything worth knowing about any field has been published in some journal somewhere. Anything not published is beneath consideration for any true expert in the field. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not a true expert. The USPTO and patent attornies are firmly entrenched in the academic world of several decades ago. Take a minute to let this sink in.

    They don't realize that "prior art" exists in everything from source code, to round-table discussions, to personal conversations. In fact, some of the most important prior art exists in these forms, which cannot be indexed, cataloged, and numbered in their database.

    It is impossible to have a complete prior-art database, and they should not pretend that it's possible!

  • Interview with Slashdot (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @06:43AM (#1176339)
    Next week we'll be interviewing the Slashdot readership for their comments on patents. Current polls:

    I think patents...
    Are a good idea
    ___________________ 3 votes
    Microsoft sucks!
    ||||_______________ 230 votes
    Information wants to be free
    |||||||||||________ 1394 votes
    f1$t p0$t d00d!
    |__________________ 1 votes
    Hemos/Katz/Malda sucks
    ||||||_____________ 694 votes

    And there you have it!

  • If you can't beat 'em (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @07:22AM (#1176340) Homepage
    Ok, here's MY claim to fame: Pat.No. 10,385,288:

    ----------------------
    1) A software control structure means comprised of a repeatable code block consisting of a start address, and end address, and a code block variable, said variable alterable by instruction in the code block, said code block terminated by a decision means to test the code block variable for compliance with a preestablished condition, said decision means directing program flow to either
    repeat the code block at the code block starting address, untill the decision means determins that said preestablished condition has been satisfied, otherwise direct program flow to code following said code block and the code block ending address.
    ----------------------

    That's right, I own the DO...LOOP. If anyone uses a similar control structure in their software projects please contact our licensing office at http://www.doloop.com to arrange for our easy royalty payment plan. This week only we are having a sale; you can get 10 do...loop license-paks for the price of 1. Hurry! Supplies are limited! There may never be an offer like this again!

  • Re:Arrogant Lawyers... (Score:3)

    by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <syberghost@@@syberghost...com> on Friday March 24, 2000 @07:44AM (#1176341)
    If the entire industry agrees to a reduced duration for sotfware patents, then shouldn't the patent office allow this?

    They can't.

    We're bound by a treaty, and according to Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S Constitution [emory.edu], treaties are "the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

    The treaty itself says that for any change in the time limits, the signees must agree UNANIMOUSLY [wipo.org].

    The only thing we could do unilaterally is denounce the entire treaty, which (fortunatly) is allowed by the treaty itself [wipo.org]. If that clause wasn't in there, we couldn't abrogate the treaty legally without agreeing to a new one with all the signees!

    If we did denounce it, no signee nation would be required to observe our patents at all anymore!

    It's a much bigger fight than just convincing your Congressman. He doesn't even have a say in it.

  • Who is qualified to set patent policy? (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @10:42AM (#1176342)
    "It's somewhat incongruous for a bookseller to be opining on the patent system," said William T. Ellis,

    I find it somewhat incongruous for lawyers to opine on policy matters. "Booksellers" like Bezos are the constituency, beneficiaries, and subjects of the patent system. Economists and social scientists are qualified to make statements about the long term impact of changes to the patent system.

    Lawyers? Lawyers are trained in the patent system as it is and its historical development. While those are interesting aspects of patents that are to be considered in any reform, they are hardly of primary importance. Lawyers also have a strong self-interest to generate legal fees from patent filing and lawsuits.

    First we need to decide where we want to go as a society, then lawyers can help us translate that into legal language and enforce it.

  • For a closer look at how we got into this mess, check out this december article on Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com], it details how it all started in 1952 in a congressional commission chaired by a patent attorney named Giles S. Rich, that changed the wording of the Patent Act to cover 'Processes'.

    Mr. Rich subsequently embarked on a long term plan to expand the scope of wat is patentable. These efforts culminated in the 'State Street Bank & Trust vs. Signature Financial Group' decision of 1996, over which Giles S. Rich, now a judge in his nineties, presided. This decision created the current situation where a computer mediated business process is patentable.

    There were a few other steps along the way, but Judge Rich was definitely instrumental to the chain of events, and as a patent attorney, was hardly a disinterested party. Unfortunately, He's now safely dead, so we can't call him up and ask: 'What were you thinking?'.
    --

  • Re:Arrogant Lawyers... (Score:3)

    by Mark Shewmaker ( 29292 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @06:59AM (#1176344) Homepage
    If the entire industry agrees to a reduced duration for sotfware patents, then shouldn't the patent office allow this? It would certainly seem that the patent office and the lawyers have allowed this to take a life of its own, forgetting the original purpose.

    This arrogrance is very disheartening.

    Don't be disheartened. All is not quite lost.

    Even if we can't (yet) convince the patent office and legislatures about the harm of (software) patents, businesses who would rather bypass the whole mess but need to have their own patents for defensive reasons can still cross-license their patents among themselves.

    It's not as effective a solution as international patent law reform, but at least it can be a partial solution for Open Source writers as well as give those who have defensive patents an even greater defense against any who use patents offensively, and it doesn't require an act of congress to implement.

    That's the sort of solution I'm wanting to promote with the Open Patent License [openpatents.org] in development at www.openpatents.org. [openpatents.org]

    If you have any suggestions as to how to better go about this, or suggestions on improvements to the license, please let me know, or join the mailing list. [openpatents.org]

  • Arrogant Lawyers... (Score:3)

    by helver ( 36342 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @06:46AM (#1176345) Homepage
    It distresses me that the lawyers have taken the wheel a vehicle that was designed to protect the rights of inventors and will not steer where the inventors wish to go. It would seem to me that in patent law, the lawyers are providing the service of protecting the interests of their clients. If the clients decide that their interests don't need as much protection as the lawyers believe, wouldn't it seem reasonable that the lawyers would allow the rules to be changed to support the desires of their clients?

    I believe that almost everyone in the software industry understands that the rate of innovation is such that 20 years from now any patent they hold will have been rendered obselete. If the entire industry agrees to a reduced duration for sotfware patents, then shouldn't the patent office allow this? It would certainly seem that the patent office and the lawyers have allowed this to take a life of its own, forgetting the original purpose.

    This arrogrance is very disheartening.

  • Override obvious Conflict of Interest? (Score:3)

    by DaveHowe ( 51510 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @07:15AM (#1176346)
    Hmm. It's fairly obvious where the interests of the Patent Lawyers lie here - in more, longer and wider patents that cover stuff the Patent office isn't capable of scanning for prior art.
    However, do we need to get their approval? If some of the bigger players (Amazon for instance) agreed to place any or all software / business method patents into a common pool three years after they are granted, with free licencing for anyone willing to make the same commitment for THEIR patents, I can't see how the Patent office can fail to accept it as a de-facto standard - particularly if their own supporters start to suffer from being excluded from (and sued by) members of the common pool....
    --

  • So what is the other sides argument? (Score:3)

    by Spyky ( 58290 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @07:36AM (#1176347)
    After reading this article, and the article at lawnewsnetwork, I can only say that I see no argument to the side that thinks the current patent laws are fine for software and high tech business methods. Sure some guys, like the patent office issue a statement like "We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies." Okaaaay. Care to give us any reason why?

    There are a lot of very cogent arguments why the current software patent law is impractical and even detrimental. See RMS for some extreme views or Bezos for a more moderate plan. However, in my brief searches I've really found no argument that really supports the other side. Saying that Bezos suggested changes "could be absolutely devastating" to this country's high-tech economy. "If you look at companies that live and die by their intellectual property, these changes would be their worst nightmare," Sure, some companies definitely have something to lose if you change the laws, but if they've been relying on laws that are unjust, and likely to change, thats their own fault for not coming up with some other plans to sustain them when they do change. What about all the companies that have something to gain by patent laws being changed? Doesn't that outweigh the cost? These are just a few thoughts of mine. If anyone really knows a good reason that the current patent laws should be kept the way they are with regard to software, please tell us, i'm willing to listen.

    Spyky

  • Hmmm. Good article by lawyers? (Score:3)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @07:20AM (#1176348) Journal
    Well, colour me quite impressed. The article in lawnewsnetwork was surprisingly well written and balanced. I have a few objections to it, though.

    1) They didn't really _explain_ why those of us opposed to the current state of patent laws feel the way we do.

    2) Somehow Jeff Bezos, the man behind some of the most grievous patents in existence, has become our mascot for patent reform. Does anyone else find this ironic and disturbing?

  • They just don't get it (Score:3)

    by 348 ( 124012 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @06:52AM (#1176349) Homepage
    The Patent Office issued a terse one-paragraph response to the Bezos letter, saying, "We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies."

    The patent office just doesn't get it. Aside from the normal arguments, look at it this way. The US Patent Office views all patents, from new mechanical gizmos, new patterns on bricks and tiles, to software and it's implementation all as the same thing. Unfortunately they are not the same thing. Software implementations and the like are equivelant to me patenting the way I personally have the folks in my company use a screwdriver. Hold it wiith your fingers this way, turn it that way etc. The problem I feel, is in the implementation of the tools. Data is not as physical as a brick or a gizmo and therefore must be addressed by the US Patent Office differently, using an entirely different model. When data and technology software innovations are made, they must be handeled in a different way than a gizmo.

  • Patent Office's Back Currently to the Wall (Score:3)

    by Lux Interior ( 151795 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @08:18AM (#1176350)
    The US Patent office is currently under massive Congressional investigation for charges of corruption, graft, and gross mismanagement. The terse statement cited in the letter is a slick, cromulent example of the generally crapulous way the Patent Office has been run. This brings me to two points. 1) The PO has bigger fish to fry right now than spend its time on this issue. 2) The lawyers and software investors will be the ones to take advantage of this lapse in oversight to guide the reform or block it altogether.

    Although IANAL, I play one on TV (actually, I am an historian and have studied Constitutional law a fair amount and patent law a little), and I feel that the dialogue currently happening will be subceptible to public opinion if expressed maturely (no fl@m3rz) through forums like Slashdot, Salon, Slate, and direct mailings to Congress. Check out Slashdot's protocols, as always, before mailing Congress on an issue, though.

    Hope this made sense. I'm all hopped up on fruit juice.

    ---

  • Article 1, Section 8 (Score:4)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday March 24, 2000 @08:08AM (#1176351) Homepage Journal
    On Monday morning, Herbert P. Wolmsley,
    executive director of Washington-based
    Intellectual Property Owners Association, [snip}... called for "a refresher course in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the
    Constitution.


    OK I'll bite. Article 1, section 8 generally outlines the powers of Congress. Clause 8 specifies Congress's powers to grant Copyrights and Patents. Here it is in all its glory:

    The Congress shall have the Power To promote Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to the respective Writings and Discoveries.


    The first thing to note is that Congress is under no constitutional obligation to protect every manner of novelty, and that power is granted with the express purpose of promoting progress. Congress may, of course use this power for other purposes, such as protecting what they believe to be a natural right to intellectual property.

    Leaving aside the issue of what is a protectable Discovery (since the current state of the law says these things are protectable), what Bezos is raising is the question of what constitues "limited Times". In the context of the clause, I think that limited times must be understood as such a length of time that that "To promote Progress of Science and useful Arts". Congress, in my non-lawyer opinion, has no power to establish patents for periods of time that manifestly retard progress in the Useful Arts; at the very least it flies in the face of the reason the founders granted them this power. Bezos is suggesting that patent terms for software and business methods lasting twenty years damages progress.

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