EFF Runs Patent-Busting Challenge 173
markclong writes "Every year numerous illegitimate patent applications make their way through the United States patent examination process without adequate review. The problem is particularly acute in the software and Internet fields where the history of prior inventions (often called "prior art") is widely distributed and poorly documented. As a result, we have seen patents asserted on such simple technologies as One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.), Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.), The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.). The EFF is hosting a patent busting project to fight the most egregious abuses of the patent system."
Next challenge - the slashdot dupe. (Score:5, Funny)
However it's still being ignored.
Re:Next challenge - the slashdot dupe. (Score:1, Funny)
However it's still being ignored
So what's new? (Score:3)
Is this article a duplicate of an article from nearly two months ago [slashdot.org]? Or is there some specific news about this patent-busting project? The blurb didn't seem to help.
Re:So what's new? (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not sure why you were modded redundant.
Re:So what's new? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:So what's new? (Score:5, Informative)
the public call-for-submissions ("contest") part of the project was launched yesterday. the post wasn't very clear about that...
contest:
http://www.eff.org/patent/contest/ [eff.org]
press release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_06.php#0016
Re:So what's new? (Score:3, Informative)
Come up with a means to find dubious patents (Score:3, Funny)
An idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An idea... (Score:4, Funny)
But then they'll retaliate by patenting Wiki's
Re:An idea... (Score:2, Funny)
That's a great idea. Have you considered patenting it?
Re:An idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
why not even go further and create a whole online community, that deals with patents and intellectual property, from a freedom and civil rights perspective.
this could be a site, with a wiki, as you mentioned, forums for people to discuss current issues, but also to organize teamwork to bust patents, search for previous art, etc.... the site could be financed by offering support to people who have run into trouble with patents.
also on offer would be an extensive resource collection, to assist researchers.
blogs, as 'groklaw' could be affiliated with the site. users could create their own blogs at the site, for patent/ip related matters.
slashdoters! any more ideas? comments?
An exelant idea (Score:3, Interesting)
It could just fix one problem this way. Without the type o
Re:An exelant idea (Score:4, Insightful)
let me explain. whenever we participate in political affairs, for this example, without any financial compensation, aren't we doing someone jobs, which would be located in the government?
another example. what about the people active in the eco movement? now looking especially at all those involved in research, collecting data, publishing reports, etc.., aren't they also doing the governments job?
what i am trying to demonstrate is, part of democracy involves copies of existing processes. this is a safty procedure, to ensure the legitamecy of current affairs. this does not mean, doing someones elses job, but controling that other people have done their job correctly.
just look at sience. every experiment needs to be repeated multiple times, to become validated. why not also apply this concept to patents. to make this seems to make a lot of sense.
regarding the previous posters comment concerning the popularcy of the project. well this may be so at the beginning, taking the general public into consideration.
this i see as a benefit.
at the beginning of such a project, if it turns out as promissing as we hope, the reputation will spread quickly amongst those involved and interested with the matters subject. a community of professional people will form, that hopefully will be able to establish a fairly extensive resource library, and develop information sources specially created for the lai person. having established this ground work, the general puplic WILL tale notice. as what has been established will certainly cause references in the public media, which again will attrack the general public to the community.
enough written.......
Re:An idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
A site like this could be used to coordinate this process in much the same way as conferences and journals coordinate the peer review of scientific publications. It would be in the interests of companies to get involved as they would have some say in the granting of patents in the fields that they operate in.
Combine this with a shorter term (say 3 years) and software patents wouldn't be such a bad thing...
Re:An idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
i only managed to compare the patent granting process, with the scientific process of replicating experiments.
The idea of coordinating peer review of patents to grant, organised by an online community could prove to be quite revolutionary.
as many
patents + open peer review + short term licence == fair compromise
with a system like this in place, we could all live.
just let me state: in general, i do not believe in the concept of intellectual property. to me this is a joke. a bad one, but never the less a joke. i won't go into this though. why do i then state the above? we live in a democratic organised society. most of believe, that the every human being on thie planet should have the right to live under such cirumstances. the cosequenzes of this is, we need to find compomises - all the time.
democracy is about finding an agreement, that all can live with. of course this is crap to a radical mind. then again.....just take a look at the alternatives.
i have written all this to underline the importance of a change in the patenting system, and elude to the possibilety, that our democratic future might be connected, or at least a part of our societies actions, in how we decide to deal with intellectual property.
will we erode our individual rights and liberties, for the benefit of a few corporations?
Re:An idea... (Score:2)
So the question now is how to get somebody to suggest the idea to the right person? I was thinking of writing to my
Re:An idea... (Score:2, Funny)
Someone who has mastered the shift key, perhaps?
I call shotgun... (Score:2)
Re:I call shotgun... (Score:2)
Re:An idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously though, with the exception of a few scummy companies/people, patentees like to patent because they believe that their implementation is new, original, and unique. We would drop a patent application if some serious prior art was found (no one likes be to unoriginal).
Part of the problem is that a prior-art search is supposed to cover this. Lawyers will not be happy. Their clients will be unhappy that they spent money on both the lawyer and the fil
Re:An idea... (Score:2)
Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope every
Re:Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !! (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess I should...
1) Patent a whole lot of stuff (that I may or may nat have invented)
2) Sit back and wait
3) Sell patent for $$$
Re:Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !! (Score:1)
If this gains support, I think it's quite possible a politician will try to reform the patent system to get voted into power.
Re:Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Take off every 'patent'... FOR GREAT JUSTICE !! (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, the original poster was talking about a refund of the RE-examination fee. That's the fee you pay when you c
Distributed checking (Score:2)
I mean, most of us get a lot of email but maybe less than every day, how about a digest every week saying the same? Distributed patent-invalidation?
Re:Distributed checking (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem comes when these volunteers start submitting bad and misleading information, either unintentionally (by not understanding the patent) or intentionally (maliciously). For example, you are one of the volunteers. You are evaluating a patent of your competitor. So you might create a fake website with some "prior art" and point to it as an example.
The problem comes not in whether or not that fake prior art will be believed--it will be sorted out in the end, for sure--but rather that you've just created additional work for the patent examiner. Suppose everyone did this--submitted garbage that the examiners need to sort through. Some "prior art" might be valid, some invalid, some irrelevant. Notice on Slashdot how very few people RTFA? Well, consider how few people will RTFP. Much of the prior art suggested to be reviewed will be irrelevant. There are lots of people who will try to come up with something just to show how smart they are.
The net result will, unfortunately, be far more work for the patent examiner, not less.
This is not to say that your idea should be discounted entirely, but rather that implementing it would simply be a lot more complicated than your initial suggestion. It would probably have to be done more along the lines of an anonymous peer-review system like that which is used in academic journals. However, anyone who has had an article turned down for Physical Review Letters will tell you how well that works.
Indeed, it's a complicated problem.
Re:Distributed checking (Score:2)
My suggestion was just kind of thrown out there to stimulate discussion and I'm glad to see someone has discussed :)
Re:Distributed checking (Score:1)
if you had been thinking of this as an additional measure, combined in a packet along with other changes that need to be done to the 'system', then it may have some merit. though as a single meassure, trying to improve the current mess, it has no merit. the previous replyer has elaborated this nicely.
as mentioned above, i could see, how an email system, that professionals could sign up for, would be implem
Re:Distributed checking (Score:2, Informative)
Something similar to this is in place. Apparently, with the sheer volume of patents that are applied for, not every application gets commented on appropriately. Its much easier to bust a bad patent BEFORE it's granted though.
I don't know of any services that send out notice of pending patents, but the USPTO has a searchable database of pending applications at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.h tml
Might this not rather support the patent system? (Score:5, Interesting)
It might remove the most harmful and obviously insane patents, thus making the idiocy of the current system less visible.
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that Congress won't give the USPTO the money it requires to do its job. This is on its way to changing with the new fee bill H.R. 1561 [house.gov], but it may take some time. It is still largely a step in the right direction.
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:4, Insightful)
It should be obviousness that prevents such patents, not so much prior-art. Most software prior art is in the form of trade secrets, not prior patents.
They should use the "graduate criteria". If at least 20% of computer-sci graduates with a B or better could implement the functionality being claimed for a patent, then it should be tossed.
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:3, Insightful)
An artificial intelligence system is an obvious idea these days, but its implementation is very difficult. On the other hand the proverbial "better rat trap" would be comparatively simple to implement, but unobvious.
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:1)
Re:Might this not rather support the patent system (Score:2)
Dealing with the obviousness property (Score:3, Insightful)
The federal government establishes scholarships for people who which to obtain a graduate degree in a particular field.
Once these people recieve their degree, however, they are required to review a small number of patent applications in their field for obviousness each year (perhaps for a certain number of years).
There are obviously a lot of rough edges and unresolved details -- what if people change fields? How do we deal with the larger number of
Re:Dealing with the obviousness property (Score:2)
Yes, that's what OJ (at least in the criminal trial) and the Menendez brothers keep telling us. Hurricane Carter, et. al. are probably also ecstatic about the effectiveness of juries.
There is no evidence that the current patent system fails in anything but two areas:
1. Allowing process/software patents at all. This is an issue of law, not something under the patent office's control.
2. Allowing enough time per application for the examiners to properly review the
Re:Dealing with the obviousness property (Score:3, Insightful)
The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one color for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.
I suppose what I take issue with, then, is the "having ordinary skill" bit. That might make sense for the (relatively) s
Confusion over one patent (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Confusion over one patent (Score:2)
Re:Confusion over one patent (Score:2)
An interesting Concept (Score:4, Insightful)
If only one or two of the folks in that office find themselves unemployed after an annual review, because to many of the patents they granted were overturned, it wont take long and the rest will actually take the couple hours required to document prior art on many of them.
An obvious next step, would be for the patent office itself to provide a public input period for feedback on various applications. Heck, if they posted new applications to /., they could save a lot of effort. At least half of the new applications would get responded to with a link documenting valid prior art within an hour of being posted, thereby saving the office the trouble of processing that application.
Re:An interesting Concept (Score:2, Informative)
Read the POPA (Patent Office Professional Organization) newsletter [popa.org] for the last new years (issued bimonthly) to get a
When they say fight... (Score:3, Interesting)
When they say fight the outrageous patents, are they referring to the ones that already exist, or future ones? Or both? How would you combat a patent that already exist? Show prior art? Anyway, I think it's rediculous that we have to go as far as to create an organization to stop what should be common sense. Come on, a patent for double click? Oi..
Then again, if life were perfect, I'd have better things to do than rant on slashdot at 2 am in the morning. Hehe =)
Actually we need outrageous patents to succeed.... (Score:2)
Only via mega victims/abuse will there be patent law reform.
It was a real pity BT didn't succeed with it's hyperlink patent suit - the mega-economies would've reformed their patent laws quick smart if BT had succeeded.
Really the more outrageous the suit & the bigger the defendents, the better off we all are in the long run.
Fact is law reform virtually only occures if the big end of town are victims of bad laws.
The EFF's a little late to the party. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The EFF's a little late to the party. (Score:2, Informative)
Algorithm for generating stupid E-patents (Score:5, Funny)
h = openFile("regular_business_behavior.txt");
while (w = readNextWord(h)) {
if (random(0.0,1.0) > 0.96) {
w = w + " using a computer ";
}
print(w);
}
Re:Algorithm for generating stupid E-patents (Score:2, Funny)
Fixing the patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the person who must pay the fees is the person who wants the patent to be re-examined. Fees may start (for inter partes) at $8K, plus $12K for legal fees. Getting a patent accepted costs only about $1K. With legal fees and prior art searches (which I swear that a lot of these people don't do) that might get up to $8K or so.
This keeps the playing field quite tilted towards those that file patents -- there is little incentive not to file bogus patents.
I'd like to see this system modified to impose the fee (perhaps with some multiplier) on the *patent filer* if the reexamination finds that the patent is indeed invalid, rather than on the party requesting the reexamination.
If pro-bono legal work is available, or a simple walkthrough on how to do basic requests for review ("I wrote a program that already does this that was sold five years before the patent was applied for, and here it is"), the process could be made effectively zero-cost for organizations like the EFF that attempt to eliminate bogus patents.
I see few drawbacks. It does impose the difficulty of collecting fees on the USPTO, but besides being part of the federal government (and thus being in a good position to locate patent owners that refuse to pay), they can refuse to issue more patents to an individual until he pays his fees.
Old patents, many of which are quite bogus, will have to be grandfathered in. There's no other reasonable way to deal with them, but eventually they will expire, and this prevents future abuse of the system.
It also increases the potential cost of obtaining a patent (not good, if you want to protect the little guy). However, patent filers are *supposed* to do prior art searches ahead of time, and are *supposed* to only be submitting legitimate inventions. Thus, if a patent holder has performed his tasks as he should, there will be no additional cost added.
I don't think it's feasible (since the USPTO can't hire the best researchers in every field) to never let through an illegitimate patent. I do think that making the review process more oriented around discouraging people from filing bogus patents is possible. This also takes a lazy approach -- bad patents are only dealt with and the patent holder only imposed a penalty upon if an actual problem comes up -- otherwise, there's little reason for an organization to go after patents.
I would like to see review fees reduced if possible.
I would also like to see it be made possible for an inventor to freely invalidate a patent. This means that if a company (let's say Microsoft, or the FSF) discovers that someone is going after them with a patent, and they are able to produce prior art, it's easy for them to just send a letter to the patent holder noting that they have identified prior art, and unless the patent holder wants them to initiate a review, to mark his patent invalid within the next month.
That way, Microsoft or the FSF doesn't have to pay the legal fees associated with requesting a review (so it's in their interest to first send out a letter), review load on the USPTO is reduced, and the inventor is never hit with the fee associated with losing a review.
There are some details to be resolved -- how should invalidation of individual claims be resolved? Should a per-claim fee be increased, and fees for review on individual claims be lower?
I don't think any of them are showstopping issues, though.
I've brought this up once before on Slashdot and haven't gotten any idea-killing issues brought up -- I'd be interested in any feedback.
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:3, Insightful)
It's $2500 for an ex parte reexamination, where you just request the re-exam, and $9000 to request a inter parte re-exam. Even if the the work is done pro bono, it quickly gets expensive to go after anything but the most injurious patents.
In addition, it generally can cost quite a bit to get a pantent approved. it cost about $1000 to do the initial filing. Most patents actualy get rejected the first time they get submitted. However, you can keep resubmitting it ad infin
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:3, Insightful)
I rely on two points:
* First, that review fees are placed on the patent holder in the case of an invalidated patent.
* Second, that there will presumably be fewer bogus patents to deal with if there is no reason for folks not to invalidate patents that they know are invalid. Right now, huge numbers of bogus patents are issued because they aren't going to get shot down under the existing s
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:1)
I guess the point sytem is the government's way of keeping track of how much "work" their employees are doing.
My understanding is also that patent examiners can't even do Boolean searhing on their own patent database. This has to ma
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:1, Informative)
Not true. The patent office's search system is incredibly nice compared to others that I have seen. They can use: AND, OR, NOT, WITH (same sentance), SAME (same paragraph), ADJ# (second term is # of words after first term), NEAR# (first term is within # of words of second term) as well as limiting the searches to certain sections of a patent, the database, a certain inventor, company, date ranges a
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:2)
I do think that the external improvements I'm suggesting would still be worthwhile, though.
I'm curious as to what the effect of giving each examiner a 'point' upon rejecting a patent would be. I'm not sure whether an examiner is expected to identify all the issues with a patent when it is submitted -- if so, this obviously wouldn't be great, since it would mean that there is incentive to identi
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:2)
No, thank you for your time and knowledge. It's the knowledgeable people that pop up with criticism and information that few people have to hand that make Slashdot really worth reading.
but you seem to have a reasoned view of the issue, unlike the all too typical
Thanks again.
Re:Retaliatory fees a bad idea. (Score:2)
Re:Fixing the patent system (Score:2)
The problem is that there are a vast number of processes that are very straightforward modifications of existing processes that have not been used before that *will* be used.
When the Web came around, a large number
a patent for the wheel (Score:5, Interesting)
the lawyer patented the " circular transportation facilitation device". so that means anyone who ever produced car, bike, even unicycle in australia would have to pay royalities.
dont believe me, well check the BBC [bbc.co.uk] or CNN [cnn.com]
personally this is a prime example of intellectual rights gone amok. i would rather convert my car to square wheels before paying any damn royalites on a wheel. but i dont think it will be a problem. but just in case, im going to go patent the spherical rolling device. lets see MR. Keogh drive home without any ball bearings.
Try reading the articles you link to... (Score:4, Informative)
I just like to point out that Mr. Keogh applied for his patents to highlight the fact that so many bogus patents are allowed to stand.
Not to try and grab royalties from wheel users.
So show him the respect he deserves for standing up for common sense instead of trying to sound righteous about his nefarious act.
Re:a patent for the wheel (Score:2)
Speaking of bogus patents, here's some prior art (Score:3, Interesting)
I was so confident, I went with "feeling lucky". Sure 'nuff, the very first hit, automated TODO lists in 1999, From Tulane University.
Re:Speaking of bogus patents, here's some prior ar (Score:2, Informative)
I've actually read this MS application, and it is VERY narrowly worde
Problem started in 91 (Score:4, Informative)
I got called for a job once when some friends had a patent and wanted me to dummy the technology in Flash - they already had the patent(?!), which I scrolled through, and some fun double talk about the technology. I said this was the 'Artist conception of flying car' patent. We haven't built it, but we want to sue you if you figure it out.
Rubbish (Score:2)
this is good news for small software companies (Score:3, Funny)
we are a small software company developing a new open instant messaging-based support application and i'm sure we are already "infringing" on many patents that would hold NO water if they were actually challenged.
http://www.qunu.com [qunu.com]
Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:5, Insightful)
This project might help an awful lot in proving that something is rotten in the state of patents.
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:1)
Yeah, that woudl be nice, but the slashdot crowd is part of the small percentage of people who realise what a farce the patent office is. Maybe if we try hard enough, we can evenually spread the word.
Does any one else try and e-mail out articles to peopel they know who are politically active?
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:1)
Democracy is overstated... the effects of campaign financiers and lobbyists is understated. Lobby groups are formed by those with money to put that kind of pressure on politicians in the first place, and they're paid a lot better than grass roots campaigns.
Not that grass roots campaigns are a waste of time, but they don't work as well as the lobbyists.
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, if only.
It has turned out to be simpler to block [usccr.gov] the people most likely from voting a certain way so they can't vote at all [uaw.org].
The legislators will really do anything for... a campaign contribution.
Unfortunately, most people can be counted upon to vote for the incumbent, or the slate from the same political party with which their parents identified themselves. And patent reform is too esoteric of a subject to capture the interest of most folks.
Democracy was great, in theory...
<grrr>
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:2)
You're right. In my opinion, election law should work like this: Only registered voters can donate money to a candidate or party.
This would would eliminate organizations and businesses from tainting the political process, since they cannot vote. Every donation made would be tied to a voter ID number, to ensure that this law is not broken.
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:2)
It is far from perfect, but would be a great start.
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:2)
Also, it's just about as
Of course, Goo, corporations are "persons", here... and how can we deny them "fair representation" ?!?
<grrr>
Re:Use the force (of democracy) Luke (Score:2)
This is deliberate corruption. (Score:2, Insightful)
The EFF apparently does not realize that the crazy patents are caused by deliberate corruption. Not allowing enough money for an agency to do its job is a deliberate strategy of those who want corruption in the U.S. government. When corrupters don't want government oversight, they just reduce the operating funds. Those who want corruption don't mind if they destroy a thousand things to get one thing they want.
Those who want corruption will introduce bills that, if passed, would give the EFF what it wan
Re:This is deliberate corruption. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are saying what I was saying. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are saying what I was saying. The government is starving the PTO of money.
How was what I said in the grandparent post a troll or flamebait? It is documented very well by links to articles at a university and at the Washington Post.
Was that a case of "I don't want to believe, so I will mod down?"
We could review them? (Score:2)
I understand that patent officers can't review profoundly every patent, especially when software patents swarm in great numbers.
Why not to use power of the Internet to review those patents. Similar to grid computing, but using users' brain capacity.
There could be either web pages similar to slashdot or networked review application. Hundreds of thousands users could review those patents
Re:We could review them? (Score:2)
There would need to be some incentive to discourage people from submitting poorly-documented prior art, or incorrect prior art examples.
Furthermore (and my own ideas fall prey to the same issue) while this may help invalidate patents based on prior art, it doesn't really do anything for the obviousness property -- where patents must be nonobvious to people in the field.
Sue the Patent Office for negligence (Score:1)
It would also make patents extremely expensive due to the new risks involved for the patent officials and the insurance they would need to take out.
Another approach could be to make the patent holder liable for any losses incurred to other businesses due to the enforcement of wobbly patents.
IMHO patents may have been a good idea once but right no
I know about the OpenMarket patent (Score:2, Interesting)
I worked at a company in the early '90s, which had one of the very first ecommerce sites on the early web. The public production prototype of the site was being used by a restricted subset of the public a year or two prior to OpenMarkets patent. This was back when the web was relatively small and ecommerce was a novelty. It was C language CGIs running on NCSA, the horror. This site included,
How to improve patents. (Score:4, Informative)
If your add to the page, remember to add a how not a just a what.
Knud
Patent no. 4,873,662 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Patent no. 4,873,662 (Score:2, Funny)
That will be hard to fight in court: we'd have to do all the legal stuff with handwritten documents, to avoid infringement of the patent...
Re:Patent no. 4,873,662 (Score:2)
Look only at the claims.
Re:Patent no. 4,873,662 (Score:3, Informative)
"covers", not "discovers".
Peer review (Score:4, Interesting)
don't forget CAPS LOCK patent issued june 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
This patent always bugged me (Score:5, Interesting)
I posted late on prior art last week (Score:2)
Actually it is a patent for a crimped bread sandwich that holds the insides intact. The patent is from 1998 and it has been on the market since the 80s in Japan, would this not be prior art? Called the manufacturer here in Japan to let them know but they are so behind they ca
What are the odds..... (Score:2)
an email to JS
"Mr, Schultz,
It is very clear to me that the #1 problem regarding invalid software patents, is the simple act of denial of what is in fact the fundamental basics of progr
Prior Art (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prior Art (Score:2)
For instance, if you came up with something which you considered to be patentable in the software realm (i hate sw patents) and something had been published more than a year before your filing in a computer journal, lets say.. communications of the ACM or something. The publication of this material would render your idea unpatentable.
The issue i