Patent Office Proposes Reform 178
leabre writes "The NY Times (subscription required) is running a story about how the Patent and trademark office is trying to reform itself. Among some of the reforms sought, is higher fees for the initial processing fee, higher fees for more than 20 claims, higher fees for the more work the examiners have to due (lower fees for less work and fewer claims), 2000 more examiners, and required continued relevance of the examiner in their field (certification and re-certification). My favorite quote "...Mr. Rogan says excessive claims not only slow patent processing but contribute to poor-quality patents." They are trying to crack down on abundant claims and too-technical jargon which they claim overworks the examiners, reduces the quality of the patent, and other things. Worth a read."
Why they are reforming (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking from personal experience (both going through to process and having known employees) they are completely overwhelmed by people who are applying for patents for things that already exist, and primarily by poorly written yet overwhelmingly complex patent applicatons.
I don't see how charging according to the amount of effort that they have to put in is going to hinder the process. Most large organizations are going to ultimately be the ones paying the most. If an individual wishes to file for a patent, they hold workshops all the time on how to get through effieciently, and ultimately this will mean that you get to pay the least.
All in all, I think they need some reform, and I really hope this helps. They do provide a good service, when things are working.
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:1)
I guess I was still trapped in a yurop-ean mindset. The European Patent Office does make money from registrations.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
You may have some bizarre definition of "not making money". From a 4/01 News.com article [216.239.51.100]:
In other words, the USPTO takes in more money than it spends. The extra goes to other government programs. Now maybe you don't call it "making money", but that's exactly what it is. And the top-level poster is correct that the patent office could be spending more of its revenues checking applications.Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Since most people equate "making money" with "profit", that's probably what the parent meant.
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:3, Insightful)
Less work means that they are better equipped to handle the work they do receive. As anyone will tell you when you have 3000 things thrown at you at once, you don't always have the time to explore every nuance. Increasing the price will either do one of two things: It will allow them to hire more (and better technically minded) workers, or it will decrease the number of patents being thrown at PO.
Crappy patents get by because as it is now certain companies are literally shoveling patent applications at them like horse shit and some of it is bound to get through.
The major beneficiaries of this are people like you and me and various others who end up getting screwed because of bad patents which all of this is an effort to prevent.
As much as people might bitch about IP it's going to be around for a while. And while reform might not be as tasty a dish as outright dismal of the PO it's a far better treat then to leave things as they are.
Nevermind (Score:1)
Re:Nevermind (Score:1)
(The sun just broke through the clouds outside my window, for just a little while.)
Re:Nevermind (Score:1)
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:2, Interesting)
You're right, though, I do want to abolish the patent system completely. I think this is sort of like "those who can afford to pollute/restrict the intellectual sphere with patents can do it". A classical case of rich-gets-richer.
Now, left-slanted as I may be, I don't have anything against people making it by working hard. What I am opposed is "it takes money to make money"-situations. The old Samuel-Vimes-cheap-boot-dilemma. Patents are harmful in another way as well -- they're about restrictions and enmity, not cooperation.
As for my position on Intellectual "Property", there's no such thing. I go back and forth on trademarks (long story), I want to see copyrights and trade secrets totally revised, and I want patents to go away.
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:4, Interesting)
"You're right, though, I do want to abolish the patent system completely. I think this is sort of like "those who can afford to pollute/restrict the intellectual sphere with patents can do it". A classical case of rich-gets-richer."
I don't know. I have met a number of people who could only be called inventors. Were it not for the patent system they would not be making anything because those with money and resources could easily exploit their idea.
"Now, left-slanted as I may be, I don't have anything against people making it by working hard. What I am opposed is "it takes money to make money"-situations. The old Samuel-Vimes-cheap-boot-dilemma."
While I do agree with the general premise of "the more you have, the easier it is to hold on to it" I don't think patenets can really be applied in such a manner.
True, I would agree to such a thing if the price for reviewing patents was at such a level as to put more of a strain on those with less, but I'm not really sure it is (don't get me wrong, I honestly haven't looked into how much the proposed changes will be).
But I do belive that the PO is more likely to try to charge more to the big compaines. Those who put in a 100 applications a day, many of which are the same kind of application with just a few changed details.
So in a sense they're trying to raise the playing field rather than raise the bar (again, though I should note this is just mere conjecture on my part. I could be quite wrong.)
" Patents are harmful in another way as well -- they're about restrictions and enmity, not cooperation. "
But they're protective too. For example, if I invent the supersnooper and it because really popular, then I'm protected from big boys comming over and taking my tosh.
As for my position on Intellectual "Property", there's no such thing. I go back and forth on trademarks (long story), I want to see copyrights and trade secrets totally revised, and I want patents to go away.
I don't know.. Like I said I think that copyrights protect us to a degree. However I do belive that they should be more flexiable. Goverment and Public organizations should be able to make use out of them, and corperations shouldn't be able to sit on patents for years on end until someone else comes up with the idea too and figures a good way to make money with it.
Re:photographer vs. artist (Score:3, Insightful)
A general response to the original thread:
The Patent Office sees about a fifth of 1 billion dollars in fees that it makes for the government.
It seems pretty clear to me having (up-until-recently) worked at the Office, that the PTO is marked as a "cash cow" for the new Homeland Security Office. And why wouldn't it be when it makes all that money for the Feds!?!
I may be a minority on slashdot, but I don't think there is anything wrong with IP in general (whether it be copyrights, patents or trademarks. Yeah, am I definately biased because that is where I make my living. BUT the current system of extending patent and copyright term protection just isn't effective for the fast moving world of computer software and business methods. I think (or maybe, I hope) that over the next several years, the Feds will figure out that software and business methods are essentially without value after a few years on the market and reduce the term protection for those patents to a "reasonble" four or five years (I say "reasonable", because that seems reasonable to me based on what I know).
Thus, the inventor gets a chance to make his money when the invention has real value and the rest of the tech industry can spend the next five years coming up with a "better virtual moustrap."
-A
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:1)
True enough, but please - take back that ugly slur you made against horse shit.
...and... (Score:1)
patents will become a province of the rich, just as the legal system has become. Yea class war!
Re:...and... (Score:1, Interesting)
It costs relatively little for an individual to file their own patent.
The PTO also halves the cost on all fees for the little guy.
I am in agreement with your statement on the legal system, (the infringement side of the patent picture) with infringment lawsuits costing 1-3 million easily.
Some words from Barney Frank that add perspective toward your "class war" proclamation (although I am not a liberal, I respect these ideas he put forth):
We have two systems in this country. We have an economic system, capitalism, which is based on inequality. It is inequality which drives that system which has been so productive of wealth and which is so broadly supported. If people are not unequally rewarded for their labor, if people are not unequally rewarded for the wisdom of their investment decisions, if people are not unequally rewarded because they respond to consumer demand, capitalism does not work. So inequality, some of us want to keep it from getting excessive, but it is at the heart of that system.
We also have a political system, and the heart of that political system is equality. That was the genius of the American Constitution, not fully realized at the time, a goal that we have been striving towards with some success ever since. What we have in our public policy is a tension between an economic system built on inequality where people are unequally rewarded and unequally powerful and a political system in which people are supposed to be equal, in which people's preferences are supposed to count each equally one for one.
Re:Why they are reforming (Score:3, Interesting)
These 'reforms' further raise the barriers to entry for the small guy and compound the existing systemic faults in patents. That they are presented as 'reforms', perhaps gives a clue, that patent-opposition is _not_ a forlorn hope even in the US. US Geeks keep the pressure up.
Also we Europeans cannot sit on our laurels, the European Patent Office are still trying to force the introduce of software patent (http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indp rop/comp/index.htm) through the back door of EU treaty obligations and legislation. The proposals are not dead or without critics. A final push could see victory, (at least for a time). This could be forced given the major issues on table at the moment. So we ALL need to stand up for our rights and complain to our various National and EU representatives.
If you are in the UK, don't forget Fax Your MP [faxyourmp.com] remember keep it short, simple and professional. Don't be afraid to play up to the political position of the party in power, always claim past support & link future support to this issue, some points to use:
- Negative competitive pressure on Software sector.
- Negative economic impact overall.
- Anti-Competitive.
- Anti-Freedom.
- Anti-Democratic, process is at odds with consultation process results.
I'd also like to propose this Google Bomb, pointing the works Software Patents [ffii.org] to the http://swpat.ffii.org/ [ffii.org] home.
Not reform. More abuse of the public. (Score:1, Interesting)
We don't usually think of the average person as being an inventor, but most of us probably think of new products we would like to see offered, or new ways to use existing ones to solve some problem we are having. If we can write a description and pay the fee, the award of a patent is almost guaranteed.
Google Link... (Score:3, Informative)
... here [nytimes.com].
Easy Solution (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Easy Solution (Score:2)
Even better solution (Score:2)
Re:Even better solution (Score:1)
What if whatever the person is patenting would cost, say, $10,000,000 to build, and you don't have access to that type of money? (ie, you want to have a patent so you can license this new invention you have to large companies that could actually use it)
Prime examples (Score:2)
The same goes for the application fees. (Score:2)
The other poster had some good examples, too. In reality if it's a 10,000,000 project you're likely not going to have too many competitors anyway. And the R&D could be 10,000,000 but it's highly unlikely that simply duplicating a process would run 10,000,000 for materials. And last I saw they weren't patenting the stealth bomber. I guess I should go out and build one in the back yard.
higher fees will only make it worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:higher fees will only make it worse (Score:1)
Re:higher fees will only make it worse (Score:1)
Higher fees will only make it easier for mega-companys with a break-even somewhere around March to patent something.
Mr. Smith from down the street who did some really patent-worthy work will be in trouble if the fees are rising.
Re:higher fees will only make it worse (Score:3, Insightful)
They did not propose raising the patent fee to reduce the number of patents filed; they are raising the fees to get the resources to do their job better. They want to hire more examainers so they have more time to examine patents, better certification and training, and audits. You could argue that these are not the right way to go, but the fee increase is there to give them enough money to make the changes.
Their goal is to reduce the backlog, improve the review process, and to penalize companies and individuals who are gaming the system ("throw everything at the wall, just to see what will stick").
And, of course, if the federal government did not charge a ~10% hidden tax on patent fees, the increase would not have to be as great.
Try again (Score:2)
No. Higher fees, by themselves, do not raise the stakes--they simply raise the cost.
If I increase the price of a front-row seat for a concert, I don't make the seat any better--I just make it harder to get that seat.
Higher fees mean that companies need to work harder for the same effect--and low-yield nuciance patents will drop off a bit. (Maybe not a lot, but a bit; plus the added patent office $ will help improve the quality of each patent application review.)
Likewise, or contrastingly, the "little guy" who comes up with a legitimate invention is even less likely to be able to win a patent for it. These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
When was the last time an "independant inventor" all by himself won out anyway?
In any case, most patents are applied for and used by businesses who have cash. The solutiuon for the independant inventor is a "private citizen" rate, not to set up the system assuming that everyone's poor.
(Perpetually deferred fees sound like a good model: if I come up with something new, I can patent it, and I only have to pay the fee if I actually make money out of it.)
Re:higher fees will only make it worse (Score:2)
This may be the case if price of a patent application is the biggest cost the company has to pay. You could argue this is the situation software companies face, but how is this anything more than a minor annoyance to say, drug companies, who sometimes have to pay billions of dollars to get their (patented) drugs to market?
Even if the cost of getting a patent examined is the biggest, another poster (Planesdragon) notes how your logic is flawed - you're confusing payoff (revenue) with price (costs).
These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
This might be a valid point - it depends how big the fees are. Looking at the article, they mention $1250. Using words like blood for what seems like a modest amount of money does seem a bit harsh.
This may come out against independent inventors, as you suggest, but I think the idea of one inventor working alone is a bit of a myth. At some point in time, if the idea is really good, you'd need to start a company to market it. And if you can't raise $1250 for a patent application, you wouldn't be able to pay two employees for a week.
2000 more examiners (Score:1)
None of this addresses the real issues.
Re:2000 more examiners (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.popa.org is the patent examiners union. Read their critique.
Re:2000 more examiners (Score:2)
The patent office didn't suddenly decide, ok, lets patent software and business methods. It was the appicants themselves, who used the court system, particualy the court of appeals to force the pto to begin to examine these types of applications.
Fault the courts and the applicants themselves. its not up to the pto to legislate or interpret the law, that falls to congress and the court system.
Re:2000 more examiners (Score:2)
Re:2000 more examiners (Score:2, Insightful)
NYTimes registration go around.. (Score:2, Redundant)
here [google.com]
You can find the link here:
here [nytimes.com]
No registration required.
Patent #142049 (Score:4, Funny)
doh!
Ummm (Score:5, Funny)
So, it'll be run like a dot com? When's the IPO?
Re:Ummm (Score:2)
But _IF_ the money is spent wisely.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, extending it to looking through well-known journals relating to the particular art would be even better, but just looking at foreign patent databases (relative to the USA) would be a start.
Re:But _IF_ the money is spent wisely.... (Score:2)
The basic filing fee will be lower, to compensate for the transfer of prior-art searches to private companies that will impose their own fees.
Far from investing the additional money in better prior art searchs - they are admitting defeat and giving up on them altogether. You will have to go hire a private firm to do the prior art search.
Which could be a good plan - instead of the ineptitude of the USPTO, we'll have the lack of ethics of private business (I'm not suggesting that capitalist enterprises should or should not be ethical - merely observing that they are not).
Re:But _IF_ the money is spent wisely.... (Score:3, Informative)
When the PO responds, it's then up to the inventor to either point out why the new patent is novel (given the cited references) or to adapt it accordingly. I just feel that if more databases are searched (even via keyword only), then there's a greater chance that any prior art will be revealed.
Of course, there is the problem that "keywords" for the same idea might not match up.
Typical Government Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how there is no mention of changing the process for "business process" patents, like the Bezos "One-Click" and now infamous "eBay" patents.
Raising the fees only help big corporations, which of course want to patent everything under the Sun, probablly including the Sun, just like BT's frivilous patent on "links".
There needs to be some sort of improvement in prior art review. How come a couple thousand of us /.ers can find prior art, but the USPTO can't even use Google?????
Patents we devised to be accesible to the small guy and were designed to help increase innovation. Now they are used as ways for big corporation to squash people from even thinking, and the DCMA only adds to that.
Re:Typical Government Response (Score:1, Interesting)
BT's patent itself was valid (Filled back in the 70's). However, it was BT's attempted enforcment of the patent that was frivilous.
Of course I could be snide and point out that in the rest of the world, the patent had expired. It was only in the U.S, where patent terms are much longer, did BT even have a chance of claiming infringment. So in a way, it was your own damn fault for allowing your politicians to rape the commons with "IP" laws.
Maybe the reforms could be extended to cover patent and copyright terms? Oh, who am I kidding! Another Copyright Extension act for all!
Re:Typical Government Response (Score:2)
Not exactly helpful (Score:3)
Re:Not exactly helpful (Score:1)
So companies that file a thousand goofball patents hoping to have IP rights to the hyperlink (or soemthing silly like that) will effectively be paying more. While Joe Inventor who files a real patent from his garage will only have to pay that fee once.
--t
Reform (Score:3, Funny)
WRONG there are major examining changes (Score:5, Informative)
There would be a major change in the examination process. Examiners would no longer search for prior art, it would all be submitted by the applicant and the search would be preformed by a private search firm. The examiner then would then determine patentablility via that search.
There are several problems with this:
1. Patent examiners know what prior art is out there because they deal solely in a specific technology area (and are intimatly familiar with those sets of patents of record). What happens if the examiner knows of prior art not listed by the applicant? (This has yet to be addressed.)
2. There is a conflict of interest by the private search firm. They are being paid to find prior art that the applicant really doesn't want them to find.
3. You are removing a function of government by eliminating searching.
for more info, http://www.popa.org
thats the examiners union, im not a member by the way.
hmm Rich get patents and Richer, while we get poor (Score:1)
THIS SUCKS!
He's got the right idea (Score:5, Interesting)
But he's not going far enough. Simply charging more for more patent filings isn't going to stop the companies that exist to do nothing other than file patents. They'll just factor it into their business models and pass the costs on to licencees.
What the PTO needs to do is to charge punitive fees when they reject patents. Yes, you heard me. Currently, they get their income from granting patents, so there's absolutely no, zero, zilch, nada incentive to reject, and so there's no disincentive to file.
Let's turn that on its head. Patents should be granted grudgingly. Examiners should be looking for excuses to reject them.
I'd quite seriously propose a deposit of $10,000 for each patent filing, most of which would be refundable on granting. I want filers to be sure that they're actually filing genuine inventions, and I want the PTO examiner (and/or subcontractor) to be eyeing that $10,000 as her reward for finding prior art that you've missed or "forgotten" to mention.
If $10,000 looks like a lot, then consider how many genuinely novel inventions you're likely to have during your working life, and compare that to the number of cars you might buy over that same period. If you still think that's too much for basement inventors, then consider that they can always sell their idea to one of the patent swallowing companies, and we can go back to business as usual.
Edison had 1903 patents (Score:2, Interesting)
http://history1900s.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsit
Almost every patent suffers initial rejection of.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What the applicant would do to avoid complete rejection (and avoid paying your added rejection fee) is just to modify the claims so as to avoid all prior art...
The problem with your scheme is that it chills potential innovation, which is what the original patent idea was all about--grant a monopoly for a few years in return for disclosure of good stuff, heretofore unknown.
What the
THe reason that the USPTO does not search google is b/c most of the USPTO examiners who work on s/w patents are EE's, who may not know enuf background on s/w stuff to be effective at searching google for some patent on web design....so what the uspto needs is more comp sci oriented examiners, but the uspto hiring process is slanted towards engineers....
No it doesn't (Score:2)
In what way? You can't prove a link between patents and innovation. In fact, based on history, I could argue that patents have a chilling effect on innovation.
Real innovation comes about through the free exchange of ideas, not through cross-licensing of patents from major corporations.
Re:No it doesn't (Score:1)
Patents give innovation a reward in and of itself. Without patents, the reward for innovation is only in the competitive edge that the innovation itself gives--which may only be useful for a very short time, until an invention is copied.
Patents are more than just rewarding inventors, too--they're a record of invention. When someone is granted a patent, they have a few years to profit from it--and then EVERYONE has access to how their invention works.
Patents give corporations that have a high-turnaround and no espionage cover a reason to bother spending money to innovate. If not for a legal guarantee of a patentable idea's uniqueness (and thus profitability) corporations would likely not have research departments--and those that did would be smaller, and as focused on stealing the other guy's ideas as real innovation.
Real innovation comes about through the free exchange of ideas, not through cross-licensing of patents from major corporations.
The so-called "free exchange of ideas" often leads to mob mentalities that are hard to shake up but easy to abuse. A few exceptions and caveats allow open dialgue of important matters to be more than just social functions. One of these is a check against stealing someone else's work, and patents do that.
In theory, what you're saying is true, but (Score:2)
So, I'll ask you. What evidence do you have that patents are working in the manner you describe?
History is full of counter-examples. (Score:3, Insightful)
fortunately for WWI, the government stepped in. Without patent protection, the airplane industry innovated like NO OTHER industry in history within a span of 10 years.
2) The revolver
Colt's patent completely killed all pistol innovation for the period of his patent. All improvements to his design were squashed. The revolver remained unchanged until the patent expired
If you care to look, history is very clear on this. Patents may cause a single spurt of innovation, but ALL innovation on a given invention ceases from the time the patent is given until the time it expires. This is an intentional side effect of patent law.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:2, Insightful)
The PTO itself isn't rejecting the application, it's the examiners who examine the patents that reject it, and they don't see a cent of the money charged for maintenance. To say that examiners have no motivation to reject just for rejection's sake is asinine. Examiners don't grant or reject based on the PTO's ability to earn money from fees. They do it based on the fact that it's their job.
Furthermore, your idea is flawed. The examination process is there so that prior art can be found. To penalize an inventor just for having thought of something that he/she didn't know already existed is a horrible idea. The patent system exists as a pecuniary motivator for innovative people to innovate. To then slap a penalty on those same innovators just for attempting to innovate is just a bad idea.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:2)
reject just for rejection's sake is asinine. Examiners don't grant or reject based on the PTO's ability to earn money from fees. They do it based on the fact that it's their job.
Unless what I have read from slashdot is wrong, for many years, patent examiners were rewarded based on the numbers of patents they granted. So the above poster is trying to correct for this. But your idea, of going back to the original state of affairs, may also work. But I suspect that even if individual examiners weren't rewarded, the entire PTO itself may be rewarded for merely rubberstamping applications, so it still wouldn't work.
The point of the penalization, is to make the applicants think hard about how much the patent
is really worth. To the swamping of the office
by obvious and silly patents.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:1)
You are quite correct that examiners are not motivated by fees; most are cynical about the various fee plans; when multiple dependent claims were introduced most examiners groaned because they were worried that applicants would screw up the provisions, creating Byzentine heirarchies of claims, hard to understand, and also encouraging applicants adding scores of stupid, tedious ependtent claims, given them the opportunity to argue every damn permutation of features; the examiner risked being reversed on a lot of such dip-shit claims if the case went to appeal, meaning lots of tidme and effort to fend off crapola.
That leads to what the motivation really is: meeting the production goals, acting on amended cases withing two months, and all kinds of "process" metrics. There was a "quality" metric, but you basically got a pass on it as a default; Getting an oustanding rating or an unsatisfactory required lots of documentation by the supervisor, so that was rare; The process stuff was automatic and self documenting.
You guess where quality went.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:2, Interesting)
What are you doing on slashdot? (Score:1)
You should be testifying before Congress. Your solution appears to be the only reasonable proposition so far.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Your idea for a "deposit" is interesting, but I think it is a bit too harsh. Like many other posters have mentioned it will just raise the risk to entities (companies and individuals). Often, applications get prosecuted past the final rejection where the applicant wants to persue it, and has to file a "continuing" application, complete with a new filing fee. Heaping on another deposit (the original having been forfeit by that application becoming abandoned) just multiplies the risk, unneccessarily IMHO.
More importantly, your comment about patents being allowed "grudgingly" is the way it used to be, say, over 30 years ago. The applicant had to work get some claims allowed. Also, it was existing law that business processes and, after the invention of programmable computers, programs were just not patentable subject matter. So, what changed?
Two main factors, driven by the Patent Bar (Thats the community of Patent Attorneys for those of you thinking free as in beer):
1) patent applications were taking lots and lots of time to prosecute. The response: "Compact Prosecution"; Only three months to respond to Office Actions rather than the Statutory six (Statue permitted period to be shortened to as little as 30 days); second action is made final (limited ability to respond/amend). Also, examiners were required to produce so many first actions and disposals (abandonments and allowances) against a quota. non-final second and subsequent non-allowances didn't count toward the goal. So, the incentive was to get out work as fast as possible, and a terrible incentive to just issue the application on the first action ("first action issue", two "counts") was really tempting, especially if you were behind and getting nagged by your supervisor for "low production" every two weeks. Whil the "old school" examiners took a very jaundiced eye toward such actions (they were trained NEVER to allow on the first action) a new generation, trained by the "new management" (what became our PHBs)it was not scandalous UNLESS it led to some embarassment. High production was a visible, and easy to validate metric; high quality was invisible, hard to measure, and, thus, paid lip service.
2) The expanding into business method and software patents was driven by the court system by patent applicants, not the PTO. The PTO rejected several cases over the years and, in brief, got shot down by the Court of Customs Appeals, it's sucessor, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and, ultimately, the Supreme Court. This done, the matter has been settled, so the PTO must examine them on the limits; they have no authority to create rules to countermand that; when you appeal an issue and you lose, that's it, from a legal perspective; only action by Congress can change this (similarly to the "Disney Protection Act" for Copyrights). As to the question of, given the fact of business method and software patents being patentable subject areas (35 USC 101), that such applications are not having the proper application of Novelty (35 USC 102) or Non-obviousness (35 USC 103)is a whole other issue I won't discuss here.
So, in a nutshell, the one-two punch of a PHB production/process oriented management and a court system that has pretty much decided that "anything under the sun" is properly submittable in a patent application have lead us to where we are today.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:2)
This is how they should be working in the first place
I'd quite seriously propose a deposit of $10,000 for each patent filing, most of which would be refundable on granting. I want filers to be sure that they're actually filing genuine inventions, and I want the PTO examiner (and/or subcontractor) to be eyeing that $10,000 as her reward for finding prior art that you've missed or "forgotten" to mention.
The problem here is whilst big corporates can consider this a small amount of money the "lone inventor" could easily find this a very difficult amount of money to raise.
Re:He's got the right idea (Score:2)
The application deposit should be a fixed percentage of the financial "size" of the entity (market cap for corp, last year's declared income for individual). For a typical lone inventor it would cost maybe $2K, where it might cost hundreds of millions for a big corporation. Shareholders would dump the stock of any big corp that sought lots of frivolous patents.
There would be a thriving legal business in appealing rejections, so there would need to be a way to make those variably expensive too.
If it's broke, don't fix it (Score:1)
Why is it so hard for them to fix what's actually wrong with the system?
TWW
prior art only part of the problem (Score:1, Insightful)
IMHO, the entire scope of patents needs to be dramatically restated and restricted from what it is today.
Three steps to patent reform (Score:2, Funny)
2. ???
3. Patent reform!!
Re:Three steps to patent reform (Score:1)
In AD 2002 war was beginning
-somebody set up us the 1-click shopping
-we get signal
-main screen turn on
BEZOS : all your patent are belong to us!!!
-it's you
BEZOS : you have no chance to license make your time
-what you say
-move claim. For great justice.
Anyway, I can't believe you and I are so funny !
Wait a minute... (Score:2, Interesting)
fees are lower for small entities (Score:2)
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/1999
look at the right hand column. The fees are half price for the most part.
How would this have prevented Pat. #6368227? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How would this have prevented Pat. #6368227? (Score:3, Insightful)
What the examiner should have done was gotten an affidavit which said that a 3rd party had swung sideways as a child. that would have been valid prior art.
Re:How would this have prevented Pat. #6368227? (Score:2)
Too late. (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, about a year back, they came out with software for electronic submission. Codes things in XML. Nice concept, but the software was virtually unusable. God knows how much money they spent on that. Their flawed electronic search system is another example of ineffective, grossly expensive automation projects.
Another very basic issue is that they seem to lose half the papers people send to them, and then commit significant resources to reviewing and ruling on the proof that the submitter actually sent the papers. This is routine. The most important part of any submission to their office, regretably, is the proof of mailing.
Then there's the touchy issue of quality. Some of the people who work there are highly competent and dedicated. But a lot of them are really inexperienced. Adding 2000 more will just make this worse.
The commissioners (who have been rotating with considerable frequency of late) always say they want to run the office "like a business." Well guess what? It ain't a "business" and it never will be.
They keep talking about their mission to serve "customers," i.e. the people who file patent applications. This is infuriating. They seem totally to forget that the key part of their mission to to represent the PUBLIC. At one point, a past commissioner actually wanted to privatize the office (and make himself the CEO). They should start thinking about what serving the public actually means, and just lose the part about trying to be a "business." At this point, that would be the most useful "reform," in my opinion.
Too-technical jargon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they're off to a bad start on reform if they going to try and take away the technical jargon. That will simply make the process too vague and would allow it to apply to much more than it should be.
The answer is not to dumb things down, it's to hire people that can understand the technical jargon in the first place.
Deliberate obfuscation? (Score:2)
Interestingly... (Score:3, Informative)
Reject Gobbledigook (Score:2, Interesting)
If the patent is written in a way to make it obscure and not understandable (by suitable reviewes), then it should be rejected and the filing fee kept. This should stop comanies trying to "innovate by obscuration" and should also lighten the load on the patent office.
Another Bone to the Luddites (Score:2)
Typically, some advocate abolition of the patent system entirely, a comfortable way to avoid dealing with a real problem by campaigning for the untenable. Still, I guess, it gets them street cred around here.
How about going after legislation that loosens the corporate grip on employees' inventions? How about going after legislation that would compel real reform of the Patent Office? How about going after legislation that resolves the issue of software patents?
Given that open source is increasingly confronting broader political issues sparked by attempts to apply open source doctrine beyond the software development model, why the lack of serious political lobbying and organized effort?
publicknowledge, cptech (Score:2)
Public Knowledge [publicknowledge.org] is a new group that does work in the IP area. They are more focused on copyright at the moment but work on patent issues as well. They are better funded and more focused on IP issues.
There are major changes to the examination process (Score:2)
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/strat2001/
http://www.popa.org
Here are a few of the changes.
There would be a major change in the examination process. Examiners would no longer search for prior art, it would all be submitted by the applicant and the search would be preformed by a private search firm. The examiner then would then determine patentablility via that search.
There are several problems with this:
1. Patent examiners know what prior art is out there because they deal solely in a specific technology area (and are intimatly familiar with those sets of patents of record). What happens if the examiner knows of prior art not listed by the applicant? (This has yet to be addressed.)
2. There is a conflict of interest by the private search firm. They are being paid to find prior art that the applicant really doesn't want them to find.
3. You are removing a function of government by eliminating searching.
Re:There are major changes to the examination proc (Score:1, Insightful)
The examiner can use whatever knowledge in his possession in order to invalidate a patent (whether derived from a 3rd party or not)
2. There is a conflict of interest by the private search firm. They are being paid to find prior art that the applicant really doesn't want them to find.
They are being employed directly by the PTO. If they do not catch enough prior art, then they will lose their contract. So where is the conflict of interest?
3. You are removing a function of government by eliminating searching.
Searching for prior art is a function that can be performed effectively by any organization, government or not. So why specifically are you identifying it as a "function of government".
The function of government (judicial branch and/or PTO) is to rule on the "art" in the patent based upon the content of the "found" prior art.
Re:There are major changes to the examination proc (Score:2)
Higher fees for big coorperations? (Score:2, Funny)
Humpf! (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, this is not something to get too excited about. Every time the USPTO thinks it needs money it makes these proposals. The complaints are always similar - too many claims, too difficult, yada yada yada. I even once ran across a newspaper story from the 1930s which complained of the same things (interestingly, back then, USPTO examiners were required to know a second language).
Reforms (Score:4, Informative)
Fees should probably be higher, the USPTO should be allowed to keep all its fee income and pay the examiners accordingly or supplement the research resources the examiners have. The fee probably should be higher for longer patent applications. (Yes, it is the same fee for 10 pages of description and 1000 pages of description now.)
Patents are granted unless the PTO can find a reason not to. ("A person shall be entitled to a patent unless --" 35 U.S.C. 102) Shorting the examiners of time and resources necessarily leads to bad patents getting out.
Part of the reason that patent application fees are low is that the U.S. Patent system is a "winners pay" system. After the patent is allowed you still have to pay a publication fee, an issue fee, and then maintenance fees at 3, 7, and 11 years. That way, small inventors can take their shot but not bear the full cost unless they get a patent.
What Rogan won't confront, is that the darn points system, which basically is a system where you require the hamsters to run a little faster each year, is not the right management tool (at least in a vacuum). The only thing that supplements it now are "customer satisfaction surveys". Mind you, having the USPTO be polite and responsive is ok, but please notice that QUALITY OF ISSUED PATENTS just does not enter the picture. Please, FIX THE METRICS. If it takes money, which is must, then raise fees. Don't just raise fees to hand money over to Congress though.
Quick, cheap and easy path to reform (Score:2)
The only way to get rid of ridiculous patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Rationale: If something is so easy to invent that it only takes a week there is absolutely no reason to grant an exclusive worldwide monopoly for that.
Bonus benefit: a single inventor will have little problem documenting all his/her spendings and effort while big multinational companies will probably have some degree of undocumented effort.
Small inventorrrss (Score:2, Interesting)
I still think other countries would benefit from this document avalanche in the US.
How?
Have a small nation like Haiti (or other nation that owes $$ to the US) create there own patent offices, with certified specialists, (probably from the US) then have a UN agreement accepting the mini-patents as art for all prior art cases, with the possibility of full patent rights after 5 years. The mini pats can only be filed by the average citizen, and can only fit on one sheet of paper, with a fontsize of 8 as the minimum font size. One extra sheet can be added for Graphics, or pics, and the price would be $50, of which the US gets paid $40-$45 from the country in question. Of course... the small country would accept applications from acceptable countries all over the world, this would bring in money from other countries, and not just recycle american money.
This will lower the cost of patents for the small time inventor, help other nations pay us back some of there debts, and have a system of recording prior art.
Maybe you guys at
Mabidex
Here's how to fix the patent office (Score:3, Funny)
...from an earlier post of mine:
I know how to do away with all of this patent nonsense from here on out.
I'll make a machine that will approve or reject patents, and store them on microfilm. I'd like it to look like something Terry Gilliam would animate. A huge throw switch for accept/reject. An elephant on a treadmill for a source of power. Two rubber stamps, one for approved and one for rejected. A huge bellows to dry the ink. A massive series of lenses, mirrors and candles to reduce the image down to microfilm size.
Then, I'll patent it. If it gets rejected, I'll keep changing components until it passes. Replace the bellows with a cage of pigeons and a box of popcorn and resubmit.
Once I get my shiny new patent, I'll wait one week. Then I'll tack on the words "with a computer" and resubmit. We all know that the magic phrase "with a computer" makes a new patent. Ask Jeff Bezos - he'll tell ya.
Now - it'll be illegal to use a computer to store or approve patents. It's my idea now. The entire process will have to be done by hand. If you want a patent search...well the patents number around the 4,700,000 range. If it takes a minute to read a patent, then it'll take about 20 man years to prove it's original. By then it won't matter.
And just in case the government gets any funny ideas about "prior art" - well we know those lawsuits aren't ever won. Look at Wizards of the Coast. They managed to patent card games for chrissakes. Even though prior art of all kinds exists *cough cough* Steve Jackson *cough*.
But, I'm a reasonable guy. If they press their case strongly enough I'd be willing to settle out of court. Just pay me a nickel royalty for every patent in your database and I'll be okay with that.
Weaselmancer
The Corporate Innovation Machine. (Score:2, Informative)
Triviality (Score:2)
Killing the trivial patents is the most important reform the patent office has to make.
Proof positive... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh well...
Standard Government Response (Score:3, Insightful)
When the government is found to be doing a poor job at something (as it always is, due to its nature) the standard response is to charge more for it-- obviously it must be lack of money that is the problem. So they raise fees.
This is how we have the situation where the average single person pays over %50 of their income in taxes, and still doesn't get adequate fire coverage, adequate roads, adequate health care.
Any REAL patent reform would require taking it out of governments hands and putting it into an entity that has an incentive to provide a good job. For thats is why government sucks-- it has no incentive to do an adequate job, and so it doesn't.
Structure an entity such a way that it makes more money with good patents and its unprofitable to issue bad patents and you'll then have a good patent office.
Until then, the patent office will continue to give the socialists among us an excuse to complain about how "All property is theft".
Filter for computer fans (Score:1)
freaky.
Hmmm... (Score:2)
If not, then I hereby request trademarks for my new products: A(r), An(r), and The(r).
Wrong problem, money grab? (Score:2)
Charging more money and telling us it's good, because it helps reduce bad patents... uhhhhnnn, ya.
They are trying to crack down on abundant claims and too-technical jargon which they claim overworks the examiners, reduces the quality of the patent, and other things
Better idea, rather than charge the general public more, why not have a contractual counter/penalty charge implicit for those who try to copyright things that are already existant, very obvious, or in use, by crouching them in so much technical crapspeak that they pass simply because nobody can understand them.
Re:A nice gesture, but they're missing the point (Score:2)
As a result, it is in the applicants best interest to file and have a patent granted as soon as possible since their protection runs out.