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Patents Science Technology

Patent Databases Complicate Life For Inventors 122

Posted by timothy from the just-let-the-ai-run-for-a-while dept.
karvind writes "New Scientists is running a story about how the move to electronic record-keeping is making it harder to check if a device has already been invented. From the article: '.. even though most online patent archives are incomplete, parts of the paper-based collections that preceded them are being destroyed.' We ran a story earlier on how to fix U.S. patents. Maybe I can patent the wheel again."
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Patent Databases Complicate Life For Inventors More

Patent Databases Complicate Life For Inventors

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  • We always have to talk about patents don't we? Someone will probably come up with an easy way to check patents...(easier..) Patents were a problem from the beginning.

    www.wikilessons.org - the online how-to (just starting, help us out)

  • Raises a simple question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:01PM (#12127607)
    If the online databases are incomplete, why are the paper-based archives being destroyed? Mismanagement? The article doesn't get into the details, so I'm left to ponder the stupidity of it.
    • They are being destroy cuz it cost too much too keep them. (Atleast that's the story I heard) It cost money to keep the storing those records (room, maintaince, security to look after the record, etc.) and if there are too many records, they would have to expand the area to keep up.
      • They are being destroy cuz it cost too much too keep them.

        Are we talking about the same patent office that makes money on every patent granted? Now suddenly that money is not enough to actually keep a f*cking record of that!?

        Look, we don't actually ask much of them. All they need to do now is sit there, rubberstamp incoming applications, and then keep track of them. Apparently even that is too much now.

        I guess this means part of the prior art is also lost, and we can go back to recycling old patents

        • Well, the money that "pay" is only "paid" once, however, the money need to keep/preserve the record continue to grow. On the other hand, I think "old patend" as in those that are already expired for quite some time. Those patend still need to be preserve for later comparsion with the newly filed patend. Those expired patend cost lot more money, and its really hard to keep track of millions (maybe billions as some claim, but not sure) of patends, keep them safe, and all the stuff you need.

        • They are being destroy cuz it cost too much too keep them.

          Are we talking about the same patent office that makes money on every patent granted? Now suddenly that money is not enough to actually keep a f*cking record of that!?

          Yeah, because the Board of Directors (read Congress) decided that the patent office is a cost center, and that the money it generates could be much better put to use in something else. Kinda like Google deciding that it should invest most of its money in something rather than Se

    • Because electronically hosted history is much easier to rewrite (see George Orwell's 1984, conservative biggots and current US govt for "Why should I rewrite history on a regular basis")
      • Don't be absurd. We've always been at war with Iraq.
      • I hate to tell you this, but many of the things that George pointed out are core practices of the democrat leaders.

        Think the three-minute hate versus Al Gore's speeches about GWB.

        I'm not going to excuse the republican's various problems, but at least the lunatics aren't running the asylum. (See Howard "The Scream" Dean
        • I call an armed libertarian rebellion by 2010.
          • I don't really want a rebellion or revolution. I just want the government to be remade from the ground up.

            It probally won't happen though, because the people who benifit most from the government system we have now are the people who are in charge of it.
            • If the government were remade from the ground up, it would probably be much more socialistic and would not protect our basic freedoms as well as the current one does. IMO America is what it is primarily due to being a fresh young country without a lot of baggage, and because the founders had the joltingly uncluttered perspective of having themselves fought in the revolution, and remembered very well what they wanted to be free from. Nowadays the majority thinks that a good job and cheap gas and social sec
              • A good job, social security, and health insurance are all basic rights, according to most people in the world.

                The right for cheap gas seems to be exclusive for the US (In my country we have always paid 1 US dollar a liter, and it's rising now that the US dollar is cheaper).

                From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html [un.org]):

                -------- SOCIAL SECURITY ---------
                Article 22.

                Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realizatio

                • Article 25.
                  [...]
                  (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

                  Yes.. because as men we are little more than sperm donors to the entire reproductive process.

                  Sorry, this makes my blood boil so much I can't think of anything constructive to say.
        • I hate to tell you this, but many of the things that George pointed out are core practices of the democrat leaders.

          So, since someone is critical of the current Republican government they are suddenly a Democrat? FYI there are other options available.

          The things Orwell pointed out in 1984 are extrapolations of what every government and politician do on a regular basis. The name of the government/party is unimportant.

        • "I'm not going to excuse the republican's various problems, but at least the lunatics aren't running the asylum. (See Howard "The Scream" Dean"

          Yeah, the scream. He was screaming because he was talking to a cheering crowd in a huge room, not to the TV cameras. Dean's problem wasn't that he was mad. It was that he didn't have "camera training". He didn't realize that his shouting would sould stupid on TV since the cameras didn't catch the enormous crown before him or the sound it was making. He learned hi

    • Let's wear our tinfoil hats: paper-based archives are being destroyed, so many little inventors' work may disappear, while special care will be taken to salvage big clients' patent portfolios.

      More recent archives aren't a problem if big clients' older patents are generic enough.

    • If the online databases are incomplete, why are the paper-based archives being destroyed? Mismanagement? The article doesn't get into the details, so I'm left to ponder the stupidity of it.

      Maybe its something similar to the last US elections, switching over to a computerised system just for the sake of it being computerised? Or rather, "hey, wouldn't it be far more efficient if we do it all on computers? Yeah, lets do that!" Then the people who made the decision move on and leave the small people to make

      • Are you kidding?! You're seriously questioning the practicality of digitizeing many millions of documents stored in a cave somewhere? Done right it would really help. Although I do think its stupid to destroy the originals.

  • Law Suit (Score:5, Funny)

    by HadesInjustice ( 872477 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:03PM (#12127617)
    Does this mean that there will be a lot more funny patent rights law suits I can read about??? I generally found them quite interesting and really funny. Also, does that mean I can try to patent the "eletronic patending system" by calling it the "patend facilitation device" ??? lol
    • "patend facilitation device" You are on to something. I once mentioned the following "invention"to a friend: System and Method for the automatic generation of patents In a nutshell: System comprised of: 1) A computer 2) the USPTO (yes, the patent office is part of the system) Method: 1) Method to retrieve patents, publications etc. from electronic databases, the internet etc. 2) Computer algorithm to randomly generate junks of text from documents retrieved by 1) 3) Computer algorithm to randomly conca
      • "Filter for valid patents"? Since when has the patent office had anything to do with validity? You give them the information, you give them money, they give you a patent. The information is optional. Of course, you wouldn't get anywhere... you'd have paid large amounts of money to get a large number of patents that virtually no-one is ever going to want to license or use without a license... I guess if only a few turn out to be useful you could get your money back, but it's quite a risk.

  • Brilliant idea. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Teddy Beartuzzi ( 727169 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:05PM (#12127623) Journal
    Maybe they should burn the Declaration of Independence while they're at it, after all, I saw a copy online somewhere.

    • Re:Brilliant idea. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:10PM (#12127657) Journal
      Maybe they should burn the Declaration of Independence while they're at it, after all, I saw a copy online somewhere.

      That is what I dislike, the idea of burning the original documents. Why not let some university house the original documents. There is a ton of cheap labor (students). I know my university was a federal depository, we had a whole floor on the library that was filled with federal court cases on paper, along with other legislation.

    • "Maybe they should burn the Declaration of Independence while they're at it..."

      For nostalgic purposes. :D

      I still have the five dollar bill I won from my grade 11 Electrical Engineering teacher because I managed to finish his midterm test in under 10 minutes and he didn't believe that I was going to get perfect on it.

      "I'm done"

      "No you're not"
      "Nono, I am"
      "You're not going to get perfect on it"
      "I am"
      "No you're not"
      "Wanna bet?"
      "Sure"

      Oh, good times. Although, to be fair, I did get 21/20 on it. Poor guy had

      • Erm ... you aren't *supposed* to obey the Declaration of Independence; there's nothing in it to obey! It's the Constitution you're thinking of. The Declaration is simply a declaration of "we think the King is an asshole; therefore, we are no longer British citizens, and this is no longer British territory".

      • Where on earth did you go to high school? Electrical Engineering in grade 11? Lots of high schools have electronics, but I've never heard of a high school electrical engineering course.

        • That's just what they called it, it was really just how different gates work, and assorted breadboard fun. "Make a counter with LED output, yay!"

          Wasn't very detailed, basically just allowed us to experiment.

          I'm taking a second year computer science university course now and we're basically doing the same thing, but with a bit more theory behind it (just a bit). And more types of circuits.

          I went to a public highschool in Ontario, Port Credit.

          - shazow
    • No, DON'T burn it !!! There's a treasure map [go.com] on the back !!!!!
    • Brilliant idea. (Score:5, Insightful)

      Maybe they should burn the Declaration of Independence while they're at it, after all, I saw a copy online somewhere.

      LMAO. Only on Slashdot would this be modded "insightfull". (Not down-grading the humour of this post, of course.)
      • The suggestion to burn the DoI wasn't modded insightful, it was the message implied by his sarcastic tone that was modded insightful.

        I don't often catch sarcasm in nonauditory mediums, but I did that time.
    • Patenting the wheel would be a most excellent
      idea, especially if done the Japanese way
      (by also patenting all conceivable potential
      uses for the patent). It is not as if the
      USPTO actually bothers with "prior art"
      anymore -- just have the cash on hand for
      patenting the wheel and all its possible
      applications.

      All of this business about destroying paper-
      based patents prior to their being digitized
      and put into their database(s) reminds me
      of the months of missing MSFT emails regarding
      a lawsuit they were involved in

  • I am worried (Score:4, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:05PM (#12127624) Journal
    This move from paper to computer records is troubling for me. I don't think I would be as worried if they also kept a paper record as well, but moving everything to a database could mean big trouble. Large companies, with IT budgets in the millions of dollars range have had computer problems, lost data, and have had hackers gain access to restricted areas. Paper offers more security. Unless someone can burn the documents, something will exsist. With a database, all you have is a computer record. Call me old fashioned, but I want important records on paper.

    It is like a library. If one day we decide to move all our books to electronic formats, who is to say a tyrant one day can't remove or change items, slowly, so that nobody notices. Maybe I am 1984-ish paranoid, but I want it on paper.


    • If one day we decide to move all our books to electronic formats, who is to say a tyrant one day can't remove or change items, slowly, so that nobody notices. Maybe I am 1984-ish paranoid, but I want it on paper.

      And paper cannot be changed??

      • Re:I am worried (Score:5, Insightful)

        by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:14PM (#12127678) Journal
        And paper cannot be changed??

        It would be much harder to change a paper record. First, you would have to get inside the building it is housed in. Second, with some of the older documents, you would have to match the type face. And you would have to match the ink. And you would have to make it look like it aged right. And there are finger prints on the original documents. There are more ways to verify that a paper document is an original than a computer record.

        • Just sounds like a complicated way of making a difficult-to-defeat authentication.

          There's lots of clever crypto guys who should be able to come up with something for digital data that is as tough to defeat.

        • Re:I am worried (Score:2, Interesting)

          by radu124 ( 871406 )
          public key signature works at least as good

          imagine you sign some documents and then you make sure you loose the private key for good, the documents can still be checked using the public key, but nobody will be able to duplicate the signature on another document. Keys can be changed each few months.

          I don't trust paper more than algorithms. Although you never know when they manage to break rsa. But that would be a global disaster and maybe patents will be the least concern.

          Also note that you can store disk
          • Hmm, so who would keep the private key's?

            So, now all I need to update a 15year old file is to bribe one of the record keepers and I can update as much as I want and nobody can find out. The advantage to paper is it's a easer to find out if it's been messed and it's both difficult and expensive to make a good fake. I have no problem with adding layers to security but saying using paper is worthless / not needed is a little silly.
            • the point was: loose the private keys every few months, and by loose I don't mean misplace them, i mean make sure they are gone for good. This way nobody will ever be able to fake an older record (unless the crypto algorithm is flawed). As for the records that are only a few months old, you can keep copies on paper if you like.
              • loose the private keys every few months... i mean make sure they are gone for good How?

                Ok yea I understand the idea, but my point was the people administering the system are the most likely people to try to break into your system. One of the most basic tenents of security is the idea that once a person leaves they should be unable to break back in, but with your system anyone about to be fired could just keep a copy of any key or key's and there would be no way to stop them. (You could make it hard but
    • My friend, you are not alone in this paranoid. I don't exactly trust turning a hard copy book into a bunch of 1s and 0s, either, but that appear to be the trend of the world.
      • The real problem is not digitization, but centralization. If all of the records are under the control of one source, then that source can alter the records. (It's more difficult with paper, but not impossible...especially if you can control who has access..."That document's too fragile and important. We can't let just anybody touch it! We keep it in a sealed nitrogen atmosphere case." Admittedly, it's much easier to change digital records. But what makes it possible is having the documents under the c
    • It is like a library. If one day we decide to move all our books to electronic formats, who is to say a tyrant one day can't remove or change items, slowly, so that nobody notices. Maybe I am 1984-ish paranoid, but I want it on paper.

      The easy solution to the problem, of course, is a secure crypto signature. If you want to verify, compare signatures with the authors copy, or maintain many registries outside of central control.
      • Well, if the record of the signature is electronic too, then that just means you need to change a bit more... or are you proposing that a record of the old signature kept by someone non-official would be considered worth anything...it's easy to just whip up 128 random bytes, and then claim that the current version doesn't match.
    • "Large companies, with IT budgets in the millions of dollars range have had computer problems, lost data, and have had hackers gain access to restricted areas."

      Yes, but if it the government we are talking about, then it is very likely that the databases will be redundant and spread across several states and subcontractors. And forget millions of dollars, it will be billions of dollars before their done. Oh and by the time it is all finished it will be obsolete and we'll still use it for 30 years. Oh an
    • I don't think I would be as worried if they also kept a paper record as well,

      Paper can be destroyed too, arguably more easily than an electronic file. There was a big fire at the patent office sometime in the 1800s, and many thousand patents were lost. I am not sure paper offers more security. I would prefer a redundant system, as you seem to, but storage is apparently a big part of the problem. It is not cheap to archive literally millions of documents. But digital storage is rather cheap, by comparison

  • May be (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:06PM (#12127630)
    "May be I can patent the wheel again."

    May be you can al so pa tent inno vative spell ing meth od, who knows?
    • I would think that you would have difficulties doing that, as there exists enough prior art(*). But then, nowadays it seems to be less a problem than it used to be.

      (*) Misspellings like "allein stehend" and "informatie balie", which you can probably see often enough in Europe, are as wrong as when you write "black bird" when you mean a blackbird.
    • In the article it does point out some in austriala patented the wheel in c. 2000 !

      He was trying to point out how bad the patent sytem is...

      Seems like he suceeded!
  • "Unless the authorities plug these gaps, the patenting process will descend into farce." "given the ongoing problems with lack of searches for non-patent prior art, this will contribute to a further drop in quality of granted patents" geez. Can't wait until we're yearning for the good ole days of the 2004-2005 patent season.
    • It can't descend into a farce, it's already there. I suppose it could get worse, but I don't have a name for it. Grummet, perhaps, or SNAFU. Unfortunately those have the wrong connotation, of everything grinding to a halt, where in the case of the patent office it just allows ANYTHING to get patented. Including duplicates. It's already pretty close, though, and this is merely another minor turn. (Standard patent language is sufficiently obscure that there have already been duplicate patents issued on
  • Online databases also make it much easier to find prior art. These days, patent examiners search worldwide patent databases, and also use Google. (I have filed patents, and have had prior-art cited against me that could only have been found by a Google search). So electronic databases usually make things better. Silly things still get through, of course, but imagine how much crap would get through without these massive patent databases.
    • Online databases also make it much easier to find prior art.

      Then keep the search tool. No reason to move the paper records to databases. I would think it a great idea to have a database that points to paper records. But destroying paper records and using a database to replace them is dangerous.

    • Interesting, but:
      How do they know the date of what they find?
      How do they know some part of the page hasn't be supplemented later?

      If that date doesn't precede yours, the publication shouldn't be detrimental.

      Bert

  • So what happens (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:09PM (#12127652)

    if a massive sun ejection of magnetic field bathed the earth with a high magnetic dose, we would be ok but would we lose all of mankinds knowledge ?
    digital data storage so far has proved itself to be unreliable (cd rot,hard drives failing after 1-3yr etc etc)
    yet we want to depend even more on it ?
    you have to laugh at the stupidity and short sightedness of humans at times, can you imagine if Da Vinci or Einstein or even the Wright brothers had encrypted their stuff with 4096bit 1 time pad or quantum encryption

    or do we always have to put our hands in the fire to find out its hot ?
    • Not so, what about optical storage. I've heard a few years ago about some guys making optical disks of glass instead of plastic, and even without a metal layer inside (just with air bubbles or something like that) - i think they were called eon, or aeon but a search revealed nothing. I think glass holds for 100k years+, which is a little more than paper

  • We should just burn them all and (Score:4, Interesting)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:10PM (#12127659)
    erase the online storage

    Those patent which have some idea can prove with a device, or physical object that they do, those who cannot provide such thing shouldn't be there in the first place.

    I wish it would be this easy...

  • If the issue is money, why aren't we eBaying old patent paperwork instead of pulping it?

    If the International Star Registry can get $49.99 for "Naming A Star" ... how very likely is it that the Patent Office could get as much that for GENUINE old patent paper? Surely some of the more interesting patents would get big bucks and/or donated to museums.

    While this is not as good as professional preservation of historical documents, since preservation is not in the cards, at least eBaying would preserve most of

  • Computerized database storage means... (Score:5, Funny)

    by OwenMarshall ( 779270 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:31PM (#12127775) Journal
    ... some read/write medium that can be accessed many times.

    Hard disks. Lots of hard disks.

    Want to solve the patent problem right away? Everyone converge on the Patent and Trademark office. Bring magnets.

    Big magnets.

  • New Scientists? (Score:4, Funny)

    by matt me ( 850665 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:33PM (#12127793)
    Are we referring to the popular science and technology weekly, New Scientist, or to a collective of magazines - the New Einstein, the New Newton and the New Bohr?

    Surely no-one here on Slashes' Dot would make such a mistake.

  • Uh oh... (Score:2, Funny)

    by civman2 ( 773494 )
    I think is is in violation of a patent I filed regarding "An electronic method to store and search documents detailing grants made by a government that confer upon the creators of inventions the sole right to make, use, and sell those inventions for a set period of time"

  • Heh! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis ( 629047 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @02:40PM (#12127838)
    Considering some of the patents they let through, if I was an inventor the moment I came up with any idea remotely good I would patent it immediately and see what happens..

    Think they'll actually read it/research it back?

    Remember guys.. 1-click shopping... i patented 'a method for the self-induction of pleasure' and am about to make bank..

  • Delphion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tezza ( 539307 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @03:00PM (#12127948)
    I've used Delpion now for a while. It replaced IBM's Patent search I believe.

    It is good.

    There is a function where you can collect lists of patents, and do Set Unions, Intersections, Subtractions and the like.
    My latest patent application is in the fields of crowd control, crowd safety. That was 3000 items that matched those terms. I could go through and sort out the misses.
    You could have a little thumbnail, as this was invaluable, as you can tell from the diagram often that it is a dissimilar device, or that the patent referrs to some way of joining/constructing such a thing.

    Web based Delphion is not perfect though. Nor any large web list checking application without powerful list management functions.

    I would dearly have liked a capability to colour the table cells that you had visited. Viewing 25 by 25 of the resultset was too confusing. But if you chose to display 500 at a time, then you tend to also loose track.

    But now salvation is at hand. Using Firefox, Greasemonkey [mozdev.org] and some hand written tailored javascript allows me to do exactly this.

    I meant to add as well, if the lifetime of a patent is 25 years tops, surely they only really have to be kept for that long? Then prior art and commercialised products could cover the basis for it having been in the Public Domain previously.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @03:07PM (#12127993)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • So, by negating the terms in the sentence, may I conclude that paper-based collections of patents make life easy for inventors then?

  • The problem with patents (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @04:17PM (#12128465)
    The problem with patents is that it's impossible to know if you are violating one. With paper copies, it's impossible to look through them all to make sure your technology is not patent infringing. Even electronic means which are much easier to search cannot garauntee that you are not infringing. What really makes me mad, is when companies sue other companies for violating patents, years after they have come out with a product. They really should have a limited time to sue a company. This way they can't be choosy, by only choosing products they can get lots of money from.
  • does the uspto have a patent on issuing patents??? this patent business could be big... better patent this!!!!!111!!

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