Congress to Overhaul Patent Law 377
karvind writes "According to story at law.com, 'lawmakers in Washington are considering changes to the patent code that would bring U.S. law closer to intellectual property standards in the rest of the industrialized world.' The stated result of Patent Reform Act of 2005, HR 2795 is supposed to make the system work 'more efficiently' and be 'less prone to litigation.'"
Sounds Familar... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds Familar... (Score:2, Interesting)
More efficiently? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More efficiently? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More efficiently? (Score:2, Funny)
(Oh who didn't see that one coming...)
Re:More efficiently? (Score:4, Funny)
(Oh who didn't see that one coming...)
Not me
Does that mean all other commercial websites... (Score:2)
Comments on the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Changes the current "first to invent" standard to "first to file," which means patent rights go to the first inventor to file for a patent who can provide sufficient evidence for a claimed invention.
Biggest mistake, in my opinion. All of the patent infringement cases that I have heard of in the news as of late have not been by an inventor that has thought that another person had stolen his idea, but rather
by companies, with questionably vague patents, suing infringers, or rightful blatant patent infringement, usually perpetrated by larger companies.
Eliminates the subjective "best mode" requirement from 112 of the Patent Act, delineating objective criteria that an inventor must set forth in an application
This seems fine to me.
Imposes a duty of candor and good faith on parties to contested cases before the patent office, eliminating inequitable conduct as a defense of patent unenforceability.
Don't know what this means exactly. Kind of scary that you'd have to legislate "duty of candor and good faith though"
Reduces the scope of willful infringement by raising the standard of proof required, and limits the amount of damages a patentholder can collect from an infringer
Like any damage caps, this is good and bad. Good for the little guy getting sued by MegaCorp., terrible for the little company MegaCorp. is doing patent infringement on.
Limits patentees' ability to get injunctions, directing courts with jurisdiction over patent cases to stay an injunction pending an appeal if it finds that the stay neither will cause irreparable harm to the patent owner nor the balance of hardships from the stay favor the patent owner
Like the previous step, good and bad, like any legislative tool.
Authorizes the director of the patent office to regulate continuation applications -- subsequent patent applications filed by the same inventor, based on information included in an earlier application, but containing different claims
I don't understand this, why should there be continuation applications at all? New claims? New patent. Old patent should not expire earlier.
Establishes a new post-grant opposition system in the patent office
How does this work? Can anyone file to get a patent looked at? How does this lessen patent litigation?
Allows members of the public to introduce new information to the patent office up to six months after the date of publication of the patent application to challenge the patent and to provide a final quality check (10).
Might be good to allow this any time a patent litigation suit is brought. Avoids submarine patents.
All and all, it is good that Congress is looking into this, but I think some of their remedies here are dangerous, and also, that the article has it right.
More money for patent examiners, and not allocating money based on patent acceptance/rejection (thus giving them an incentive to accept all patents) would
be a better use of their time and money. Not to mention, more enforcement of things like "obviousness".
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:2, Interesting)
Kinda, Sorta, Not Really (Score:3, Informative)
Kinda... sorta. Patents are national in nature. That said, there are a pile of trade treaties between various nations that in effect extend patents in one nation to another. Every time there is a f
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:4, Informative)
This is common in the medical field. You invent a drug patent it, right before it goes out of patent, you repackage the same drug as doing something slightly different and your patent has just been extended by 20 years. (I'm not sure if people can now sell generics under your old claim or not.. anyone care to clarify?)
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:5, Informative)
While true, continuations are not solely used for that purpose. In broadest terms, a continuation application allows an inventor to claim aspects of the invention that were disclosed, but not claimed, in the parent application. A continuation application must be filed while the parent application is still pending (i.e., before allowance).
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Bottom line. Bad. Bad. Bad.
as usual, uninformed and arrogant flaming (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, "the rest of the world" has had strong patent protection a lot longer than the US; US companies were infamous for flaunting patents.
Now, as for "first to invent", that's just bad policy. The patent system is supposed to encourage disclosure of inventions; if you don't disclose, you shouldn't get patent protection. But "first to invent" lets people sit on their ideas without disclosing them, and then sue people who actually went through the trouble of getting a patent. That just plain sucks.
It's just my opinion, but "first to file" looks like a good way to screw small inventors, of which I know quite a few.
Small inventors are already screwed under the current system; first to invent may help small inventors a little bit in a few cases, but it's a band aid on severed artery. In fact, you can bet that companies are already gaming the system with it, and that it's only going to get worse.
If we want to help small inventors (and I'm all for that, being one myself), we need to rethink fundamentally what we want patents to do and what we want patents to be. But a good first step is to make patent law more rational, and this bill seems to do that.
Re:as usual, uninformed and arrogant flaming (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:as usual, uninformed and arrogant flaming (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, you won't be able to patent your own thing, but that's how patents work. First to file doesn't make it a race -- it means that a company has to invent it and then can file.
As I understand it, since our system is "first to invent" you can get a patent on most anything, and then try to invent the thing in question. If someone else invents it first, they can file a conflicting
good solution (Score:4, Informative)
That's a problem in the US with "first to invent", which gives you up to one year after publication.
I believe patent reform will fix that even in the US: once it's been published, it becomes unpatentable immediately.
First to publish would mean that the person publishing it gets an exception to that, so they have a chance for patenting the invention for a limited time after publication (say, 1 year). I think that would be OK, but I don't see any compelling reason for it either.
Re:good solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:as usual, uninformed and arrogant flaming (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, as for "first to invent", that's just bad policy. The patent system is supposed to encourage disclosure of inventions; if you don't disclose, you shouldn't get patent protection. But "first to invent" lets people sit on their ideas without disclosing them, and then sue people who actually went through the trouble of getting a patent. That just plain sucks.
If you have something you've invented do you have the $10,000 or whatever it takes to file for a patent? What if you don't have the money to file
Re:as usual, uninformed and arrogant flaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, do. Farnsworth had clear priority on filing date. RCA engineers read his patents, visited his lab and discussed his patents with him--which he felt free to do because he had patent protection--and then mined old notebooks for things that they could claim were sufficiently similar to Farnsworth's work to give them priority. Having tied him up in legal challenges, they then proceeded to steal his ideas, keeping him stalled until after his patents had expired.
Under first-to-file they would have had a much larger legal incentive to license Farnsworth's patents. The whole legal smoke-screen that RCA used was dependent on first-to-invent.
The book, "The Last Lone Inventor" is a very good history of Farnsworth's tragedy.
Re:as usual, uninformed and arrogant flaming (Score:3, Insightful)
You: "First of all, "the rest of the world" has had strong patent protection a lot longer than the US; US companies were infamous for flaunting patents."
It appears that the uninformed, arrogant flaming is yours. Cringely's comment is absolutely correct. "Much of the rest of the world" does EXACTLY what he said, as he said.
If you had simply added that there were countries that had had strong patent protection l
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Comments on the article... (Score:4, Informative)
Please read section 101 & 102 of HR2795, patent claims are still invalidated by prior art.
Re: Duty of Candor and Good Faith:
This section mostly relates to the duty of the applicant to disclose relevant information in the application (e.g., possible prior art, dates of research, etc.). Willful failure to disclose can lead to unenforceability of the patent, and/or sanctions against the filer (up to $1 million per infraction).
Of note, a motion to oppose a patent claim (post-grant or not) is also subject to the duty of candor.
The duty of Candor and Good Faith exists to keep patent fraud suits out of the courts and in the hands of the patent system.
well (Score:3, Informative)
continuation applications are important. typically an inventor gets one patent per invention, but if multiple inventions are disclosed within a specification, an applicant files multiple cases based on the first application, thus establishing an earlier priority date.
ill give you a hint, as an examiner, I get paid the same
Re:I don't think it's a mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they didn't *WANT* to pay money for disclosing it? Maybe they decided that it wasn't really patentable, and that it would be dishonest to try to patent it.
The mistake in your logic is that you believe that everybody who invents something is going to want to file a patent, and that everybody who files a patent has something that's honestly innovative (think about Amazon's "one click" BS.)
I've got a better idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need lawyers to solve this problem, we need psychiatrists.
Re:I've got a better idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Monopoly IP profits was never intended to be the primary goal of the patent system.
There is a natural tendency for powers to become increasingly concentrated and self-destructive. Fortunately, such power systems finally break down. Unfortunately, the breakdowns are often disruptive, and sometimes even violent.
Re:I've got a better idea.... (Score:2, Insightful)
But doesn't your rant against "corporate profits" ignore the fact that the "supposed to encourage innovation" part works by guaranteeing the inventor exclusive rights to profit from their invention? The profiteering is the encouragement. You should be blocked if you are going to infringe on
Re:I've got a better idea.... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, there's no requirement they do so. Some companies really try to use patents to encourage innovation--and they are usually penalized and often crushed by less scrupulous companies.
If you wa
Re:I've got a better idea.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong. Patents were supposed to encourage disclosure of innovation so that others can build on it. A blanket "encourage innovation" idea has been used to argue that it should provide control for people to make a lot of money which was not the goal.
Re:I've got a better idea.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents were supposed to encourage disclosure of innovation so that others can build on it.
Ummm... to build on something, you first need to use said something. But using it means infringing on the patent... which means building on it is either a losing proposition, or an impossibility... at least for 20 years.
Mind explaining what I'm missing here, please?
Patents were originally a means of rewarding favors by a despot. The despots used to take land from people who didn't have the power to resist the theft and give it to those people who did something for him. But once all the land had been given to his warlords he needed something else to give to these people. The idea of granting monopolies on the import or manufacture of stables such as salt then occured to one of these despots and the patent was born. Later when patents were choking the economy, the warlords banded together and forced the despot to limit their granting of patents to goods that were new to commerce and patent legislation was born. When the insurgency in the English colonies wrestled power away from the government and won their independence, the capitalist faction in the new power structure couldn't get patents eliminated completely but won the language in the U.S. constitution today. They believed by restricting patents to those things that would encourage innovation and limit the time a patent could be granted for it would eliminate the threat of patents to the free market. They were wrong, the 'encourage innovation' language has been considered so vague by the courts that they have left it up to the federal legislature to interpret the law. Of course this means that the law is completely meaningless. Combined with the high level of corruption in the U.S. legislative and executive branches this results in laws by and for the patent grantees; essentially the economic leaches are writing the law to maximize their ability to extract every last drop of blood from the productive industries.
Oh boy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Same story, bankrolled by the taxpayers instead of the corporations, with no juries, no appeals, and thus no risk for said corps.
Re:Oh boy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Money (Score:5, Interesting)
And even if you do, your lawyer better handle it faster than the lawyer for a multi-billion dollar multi-national with 100,000 employees and more resources than most nations?
Yeah. This totally seems fair and entirely within the spirit intended by the originators of the system. *cough*
Re:Money (Score:2)
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
Since any administrative review process will natrually be unnavigable by any person with a normal, full time job, the only real way to protest under the new 6 month administrative review period is to hire a patent lawyer. But since our altruistic (or just plain poor) inventer didn't have the cash or time to file in the first place, he/she won't have the cash/time to contest after the fact.
It's like IP, served on a silver platter to the paying (Washington, D.C.) guests. How can we lose?
Re:Money (Score:2)
Re:Money (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering all the wisecracks around here about how the USPTO will grant a patent on just about anything, I'm surprised I find myself having to say this, but: You can easily get a patent without an intellectual property lawyer. There are books about how to do it ranging from lawschool text
Re:Money (Score:2)
Patents are the province of those with the money. They have *never* had anything to do with the 'little guy'.
A good attempt, but the devil is in the details (Score:5, Interesting)
1) How will the system handle cases where an idea is stolen from an employee by a corporation or by another party?
2) Because of the implementation of method patents, how will the USPTO handle prior art for business or coding methods?
3) Will the bill also put the USPTO fees in a lockbox to stop patent examiner losses?
4) What little abuses and other nastiness is hidden within the bill?
Call me cynical (Score:5, Insightful)
Five bucks says the unstated continuation of that reads '...to make the system work more efficiently and be less prone to litigation, on behalf of our benefactors and major contributors to our campaign coffers. With any luck at all, the proletariat won't make the connection.'
--
When we fear the .sigs, the .sigs have already won.
Prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, will the changes be retroactive, thus throwing out the plethora of obvious patents we've seen recently???
Re:Prior art? (Score:2)
In this case, Congress isn't so much criminalizing or decriminalizing something so much as cutting the legs out from underneath litigation in progress. My head hurts just thinking about what sort of case law
Re:Prior art? (Score:2, Informative)
RTFA. It turns the US from a First-to-Invent country to a First-to-File country.
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
Totally and completely wrong.
There seems to be a misconception on this site over what the terms "first to file" and "first to invent" actually mean. I'll clear it up.
Let's say there are two inventors. Inventor A invents his product on January 1, 2005. Inventor B invents the exact same product on January 10, 2005. Inventor B gets a patent application filed on February 1, 2005. Inventor A incurs a slight delay and files a patent application on March 1, 2005.
In a "first to file" country, the question of who invented the product is simple--whoever files the application first is the inventor. Therefore, Inventor B obtains the Patent and Inventor A is SOL.
In a "first to invent" country, circumstances are different. The patent office will tell Inventor A that Inventor B invented it first because he filed the application first. But if Inventor A can prove that he actually invented it first, Inventor A gets the patent, not Inventor B.
These two terms have absolutely nothing to do with prior art. If inventor Z invented the same device on December 1, 2004, but chose not to file a patent application, he can still show that neither Inventor A nor Inventor B deserve the patent because Inventor Z is the actual inventor of the product.
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the work done by Inventor A would be by definition prior art, so how is prior art unchanged if Inventor B is granted a patent merely by filing first?
In a "first to invent" country, circumstances are different. The patent office will tell Inventor A that Inventor B invented it first because he filed the application first. But if Inventor A can prove that he actually invented it first, Inventor A gets the patent, not Inventor B.
Prior art, in effect, as things are (theoreticaly) currently.
These two terms have absolutely nothing to do with prior art. If inventor Z invented the same device on December 1, 2004, but chose not to file a patent application, he can still show that neither Inventor A nor Inventor B deserve the patent because Inventor Z is the actual inventor of the product.
Sounds like they have everything to do with prior art, one of them negates it. In the "first to file" scenario you pose, Inventor B _STILL_ holds the patent simply by being first to file, despite prior art by both Inventor A, and now, Inventor Z.
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
Only if A published the invention. The whole system is supposed to encourage publishing of inventions. If you invent something and you don't care about making money, simply publish the invention without patenting it. Nobody else can patent it after that since you have prior art. If you want to make money, patent it (by which act you also automatically publish it). If somebody invented the same thing years ago without publishing it or patenting it, just sitting on it and waiting, tough luck for them.
I thing this new system does what it is supposed to do much better than the old one. The problems I can see are:
1) what does it mean "publish"? If I describe my invention in some totally obscure journal that nobody who works in the field is ever likely to read, does it count?
2) Filing patent application is supposed to publish the invention, however nowdays there are so many application being filed that it is easy for an individual invention to get lost in the noise, especially if the invention is intentionally described in some obscure way.
Are these two things somehow addressed?
Re:Prior art? (Score:3, Informative)
Prior art is not affected by first-to-file. You can still invalidate any patent with prior art under a first-to-file system. The bill (at least in the version I read) also allows unrelated third party prior art challenges, which weren't allowed before.
conception and reduction to practice/interference (Score:3, Informative)
In particular the requirements of 35 USC 102 F and G.
The parent poster is describing exactly the following situtation:
Occasionally two or more applications are filed by different inventors claiming substantially the same patentable invention. The patent can only be granted to one of them, and a proceeding known as an "interference" is instituted by the Office to determine who is the
So now we must patent all new inventions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Goodbye trade secrets. (Score:2)
As I recall they now can publish denied applications. If that's correct, this would create a double-bind that destroys trade secret.
Re:Goodbye trade secrets. (Score:2)
Then your competition patents it and sues you?
Cringely already covered this (Score:4, Informative)
Make it better? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would suck, some person working for years on a new device, only for someone to learn about it and file a patent first and get away with it.
We should be tackling the real issue, which is allowing patents for "a method to put numbers in a box" and the like. Obvious patents should not only not be granted, but if it's blatantly obvious, they should be fined or at the least admonished for wasting time and resources on it.
Re:Make it better? (Score:2)
Under the new bill, existence of prior art will still void a patent, though the definition of prior art has changed slightly.
If anyone tries to read the linked version of HR2975, go
already taken care off (Score:3, Informative)
apple just has to show conception and reduction to practice prior to microsoft and show due dilligence
see 102 F and G
Cringely thinks it's a Bad Idea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cringely thinks it's a Bad Idea (Score:2, Funny)
Discussed on Groklaw (Score:5, Informative)
And by Cringely (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, the bill is bad. It reflects the worst kind of special interest law-making that hurts us all. And I mean REALLY hurts us because it will only act to discourage inventors. Record and movie companies beating-up on music and film pirates don't save or cost lives, but discouraging new medical inventions literally does cost lives.
Re:And by Cringely (Score:3, Interesting)
No, Cringely, you shouldn't be able to stop people from using your invention just because you do
Quite true (Score:5, Insightful)
The real key there is "To promote the progress of". The whole reason they are allowed to make IP law is to promote science and the arts to progress. The reasoning being, we are a capatalism, and so there needs to be a profit motive. For that, you can't have people simply copying your work at no charge.
However the other end of that is an obligation for you to make your work available. To simply use it as a tool to keep your work for yourself isn't helping progress.
That's one of the things that annoys me about many people (including many politicians) is they seem to think the constution is some quaint little document to be ignored when they don't like what it says. No dammit, it's the supreme law of the land, the one to which all others must subordinate. Well, often powers that are deligated are done with limits. It doesn't say congress has the right to establish laws to give people unlimited rights to their IP, it says they can give them rights for limited times, and only those such as to promote the progress of the arts and sciences.
Personally I'd like to see a use-it-or-lose-it clause for patents. That if you file a patent you are obligate within a reasonable amount of time, say a year, to either bring a product to market that uses the patent, or license it out to those that want to. You can't just patent something and sit on it, hoping someone else will make something and then try to sandbag them when they do.
I'd also like to see it changed to you have to enforce your patent, or you lose it, like a trademark. So if someone brings a product to makrket that you should reasonably be aware of (meaning it's not like only sold in one small store or something) you are obligated to enforce your patent. You cannot wait until they have a huge established market, and then attempt to extort them. You have to be up front about it, or you lose the patent.
Re:Discussed on Groklaw (Score:2)
From the review:"I'm reading this sad tale, and all of a sudden, it hits me. What would happen to Apple in identical circumstances if Congress had already passed the Patent Reform Act of 2005? That proposed legislation, now working its way through Congress, proposes to change the US sys
Who wrote it? (Score:2)
Re:Who wrote it? (Score:2)
Co-sponsors [loc.gov]
Re:Who wrote it? (Score:5, Informative)
Co-sponsors:
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28] - 6/8/2005 Rep Boucher, Rick [VA-9] - 6/8/2005 Rep Cannon, Chris [UT-3] - 6/8/2005 Rep Carter, John R. [TX-31] - 7/28/2005 Rep Coble, Howard [NC-6] - 6/8/2005 Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] - 6/8/2005 Rep Goodlatte, Bob [VA-6] - 6/8/2005 Rep Issa, Darrell E. [CA-49] - 6/8/2005 Rep Lofgren, Zoe [CA-16] - 6/8/2005 Rep McCaul, Michael T. [TX-10] - 7/28/2005 Rep Schiff, Adam B. [CA-29] - 6/8/2005
Word in DC is that major changes are expected before this even makes it out of committee -- look for changes that benefit both the patent law industry and the corporate interests.
Oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)
Since a patent is nothing more than a license to sue, making the system "work 'more efficiently'" implies making it MORE "prone to litigation".
IMHO if they want to "harmonize" it with the rest of the world's systems, they should start by making both business methods and software unpatentable.
We also need a rule: A program which simply automates or simulates a well-known process (absent something truly novel and innovative about the WAY it automates that well-known process) should fail the test of being novel and innovative. Straightforward automation and simulation are techniques "Well known to people versed in the art" (of computer programming).
Crazy idea: Dissolve the patent system... (Score:5, Interesting)
For starters: The patent system was supposed to originally protect the individual inventor. Those days are LONG past!
Anyone who thinks that the lack of a patent system would mean no more viable businesses is simply not applying their imagination. It would truly create an even playing field. YES businesses would need to change, but that does not mean that there would be no more drugs, or software, or whatever your version of "the sky would fall" is. All of these things would continue but the WAY they would continue would be completely different. For me I would like access to practically free prescription drugs.
Unfortunately, most who read this "crazy idea" will not "get it", but I'm putting it out there anyway.
Re:Crazy idea: Dissolve the patent system... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's nice. How do you expect drug companies to survive when it costs about $1 billion to develop a new drug?
Maybe the current patents last too long. But no patents at all will destroy private research. That's a bad thing.
Re:Crazy idea: Dissolve the patent system... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullpuckey. Plenty of individual inventors get patents today. My brother-in-law patented a new type of bow fishing system and collects royalties on it. Without patents forget it.
that does not mean that there would be no more drugs...
The answer to your question is simple if you go back into history, or look at how non-patentable ideas are protected today. Trade secrets and licensing would rule the day. This would generate far more litigation than the current patent system, plus restrict the flow of information because no industrial researcher would ever be able to publish again. With patents you have protection if you publish, without the only answer is a black hole of secrecy.
Patents were instituted just before the start of the industrial revolution, and a case can be made that it was cause and effect; patents made it profitable for inventors get funding to market technological innovations.
Re:Crazy idea: Dissolve the patent system... (Score:3, Informative)
Nope, that was never the idea behind patents. Inventors were doing fine before patents came along. All inventions were trade secrets. Your competitors would try to figure out your secrets (as they do today). If they succeeded, you had no legal recourse for the "theft" of your idea, and they went into business.
Patents are a bargain between the inventor and the government. The inventor agrees to disclose
Re:We've been over this... (Score:3, Informative)
A little IR, NMR, GC/MS, and some experiments to verify the stereochemistry, and you've reverse-engineered the drug for far less than what it cost to originally research. A little extra investment and they can probably develop a better synthesis too.
Re:We've been over this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, any sophomore chemistry student can "reverse engineer" a drug. I imagine it never occured to them how generics are made?
The naivete of these people absolutely astounds me. Matched only by the certainty that they actually know what they're talking abo
Re:We've been over this... (Score:3, Informative)
I hate replying twice, but I forgot to point out that there are already plenty of businesses that are based solely on making generic drugs. They do very well, even though they have to develop or reverse-engineer the filler. Without patents they'd be able to compete with the original developer almost immediately.
Re:We've been over this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I didn't know that it cost Coke a cool billion plus to make a new drink, or even reformulate one of their current ones. Taste testing isn't exactly the same thing as multi-tiered drug testing with controls. If Coke's scientists guess wrong, people end up with a bad taste in their mouth. If a drug company's scientists guess wrong people c
Patent attorneys welcome the reforms... (Score:5, Funny)
OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT...EJECT! EJECT!
Looks like Microsoft wants Apple (Score:3, Informative)
To me this change to who files first is Microsoft using it's Washington connection to change the law so Microsoft can go after Apple for the iPod, which Apple did before Microsoft files a patent.
Seems to me the inventor, not neccessarly the first filer aught to have some rights. Or this whole system goes to the lawyers who file trivial and fradulent patents while others try to make our life better.
Slashdot, be sure to patent your "blogging" or Microsoft will come for you...
Has a ring to it, "Whatcha going to do when Microsoft comes for you..."
Re:Looks like Microsoft wants Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Given iPods were shipping and easily accessable before the application, Apple basically "published" the invention. So prior art still stands.
Seems to me the inventor, not neccessarly the first filer aught to have some rights. Or this whole system goes to the lawyers who file trivial and fradulent patents while
Isn't it time to write another.... (Score:2)
What we have here, in the US, is fraud in the claims of software being patentable. If this isn't bad enough, now they want to remove the incentive from inventors and pass it to the theives of inventors.
Except for software which is by far more based upon the unique human conscious ability to create and use higher level abstractions. That which falls into the category of what is not patentable in all r
Noooooo!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
-russ
Re:Noooooo!!!!!!!! (Score:2)
-russ
Shouldn't be hard... (Score:2)
Well lets see, the current system takes years for a patent to get a rubber stamp from the USPTO. Then it is up to the courts to determine whether or not it is a legit patent if, sorry, when someone challenges it.
At least Congress is now setting reachable goals...
How do they define "invention"? (Score:2)
So Called Patent Reform (Score:4, Informative)
careful of political babel... watch for bit .... (Score:2)
Such as statement of getting inline with the rest of the world and claims of supporting the "common view"
Neither of which has anything to do with what the by far majority of the population of the world wants but rather is a back and forth game between the few at the microphone trying to dictate what the world wants via telling you lies about what the world wants.
The jump on the band wagon that doesn't actually exist, in an effort to make it exist.
thes
I have a better idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Its switching from suck to blow (Score:3, Insightful)
This sucks - write you congress critter (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm for going further away from standard "world practice" and going back to the 19th century Patent Office where you have to provide a working model along with the application. How it used to be. No more BS-ridden unreadable application that want to change your paradigm of life by synergized the future. Just cold hard proof of either a new idea or not.
Lets not forget "process" patents - i.e. Katz (Score:4, Informative)
One condition (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll take first-to-file with one condition: if anything the patentholder claims infringes on their patent can be shown to have been described either to patentholder or in public prior to the patent's filing date, the patent's automatically invalidated. If the patent application disclosed the prior description, only the claims alleged to have been infringed are invalidated. If the patent application failed to disclose the prior description, it's considered evidence of bad faith and the patent's invalidated in it's entirety (but remains on the record and counts as description for purposes of other patents).
I'd also add a patent filter process. The end result (not the methods) described in the patent is presented to a randomly-selected half-dozen or so people competent in the field. They get 5 working days to come up with ways to achieve that end result. If any of them come up with the method described in the patent, without having seen the patent's description of the method, the patent is denied on the grounds of obviousness.
Abolishing corporate ownership of patents... (Score:5, Interesting)
This got me to thinking about the number of real, honest to gosh inventors that get screwed by big Corporations. If you work for a Corporation, you typically sign away all of your rights to invented technologies to that corporation (at least, when they're invented on company time).
So here's an interesting proposal, and y'all can debate it at will:
* As stated, remove the ability for Corporations to hold patents.
* Allow individuals to file patents on things they've invented while working for a Corporation (don't flip out just yet, I'm not trying to screw the Corporations, either!).
* In exchange for the above right to file for the individual, they MUST assign perpetual, free-and-clear USE RIGHTS to the Corporation. These rights, however, are non-exclusive: the actual inventor of said technology may license the technology to anyone else he or she chooses, absent a specific signed contract stating otherwise. By law, the contract must specifically mention the patent number involved.
* Make it illegal for the above mentioned specific contract to be a condition of employment in any way, shape, or form.
The end result that I'm trying for here is simple: individuals invent things. The company can use them. But if the Company wants exclusive rights to the intellectual property that said individual developed, they must PAY FAIRLY FOR IT.
I think this would have the following effects:
* Eliminate corporate patent abuse, as they can no longer hold patents.
* Transform corporate IP litigation into much simpler Contract/License litigation.
* Compensate brilliant employees fairly for their work, thus better distributing wealth where it belongs.
There are (obviously) some potential issues with such a system that would have to be dealt with, but this is just my dinnertime brainstorm presented as text.
Have at it, flame me if you must.
--S
[reading this through, I wonder if maybe we just need to prevent corporations from FILING patents, and still allow them to OWN the patents. Then they can just purchase them from the actual inentor...]
Pessimism (Score:4, Insightful)
'more efficiently' => 'patents go through even faster and cheaper, now with less review!'
'less prone to litigation' => 'no one can sue over ridiculous patents anymore'.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist; I can only hope I'm not a realist; does that make me an optimist?
Re:call me a cynic... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I sure hope not (Score:5, Informative)
The US is one of the few (if only) remaining countries that uses a "first to invent" system.
It does NOT mean 1st to file gets awarded a patent in spite of prior art. You can still invalidate a patent issued to the "first person to file." But once a first person files, no one else can get a patent for that same invention even if they invented it first, since they were not "first to file."
Re:I sure hope not (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether "first to file" or "first to invent" is better is not exactly the problem as much as it is the wording of the "Prior-Art" section of TFA.
Because of the wording (ex: "the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or otherwise publicly known") you aren't really doing anymore than making bad patents more ironclad.
For example, if I were to invent a new type of object banking (for a distributed system, a decentralized version of something like CORBA... if that makes any sense to you) and then proceed to use it in an application, I would have to have either patented it first or published in some type of journal (ACM, IEEE, etc). Uh... problem there professor! Half of the "software patents" are just on things that the inventor never thought to patent. He may have been first but it seemed like an obvious thing. If you don't think that is the case, then ask yourself "How does Amazon have a patent on one click shopping?" Then some company [cough] Kodak [cough] (read the Sun case here [slashdot.org]) buys the patent and gets rights to my product (so I have to pay them).
This introduces a sort of stranglehold on innovation because I can't just make something, I have to wade through thousands of patents to see if one matches my idea, and if not, patent it! Due to the flexible nature of software design, software patents hurt innovation and ultimately the United States as a whole. I don't think they need to be abolished (software patents), but if you are going to offer them, you need to be sure that they are worth it! Perhaps that is the flaw of patent law in general, failed engineers who become patent lawyers miss the obvious differences...
Politicans are ruining the U.S:
Re:I sure hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is olso good case for open source, because I am sure that having the source available with your software would count as making it "otherwise publicly known".
Except rest of world has DISCLOSE=NO PATENT (Score:3, Informative)
So the first patent to arrive IS the inventor (because its not already out there - he kept it secret so this can't be someone else whose seen his idea and is trying to patent it), except for cases where prior art is hidden (e.g. software algo's, internal business processes etc.).
With that half done amendment, you will get patent companies based around the patent office reading the internet for things to pa
Re:Decline of Technology in the US (Score:4, Funny)
Only on /. would a someone say a country is being "left out in the code"!
Re:Who represents the interests of smaller compani (Score:3, Insightful)
The lobbyists from globalistic large corporations are seen as respectable persons that represent economic wealth and growth. The representatives of small companies and citizens, who are against such a system, are seen as activists and idealists whose voice you should hear but not necessarily take serious.
There has been a victory in the case of european software patents, but no doubt they will be back. Lobbying in the