SCOTUS Set To Examine Combinatory Patents 116
eldavojohn writes "The Washington Post is reporting that businesses are split on the current situation with patents in the United States. From the article: 'The court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday on what's obvious when older inventions are combined to create something new. The law says an invention that's "obvious" isn't patentable, but the definition isn't clear despite decades of litigation. The ambiguity, critics say, has led to an explosion of patents as companies stake claims on everything in sight, from strategies for avoiding taxes to golf ball designs. The result has been extensive and costly legal wrangling as companies of all sizes fight over who's infringing what. In some cases, small companies acquire patents not to develop new products but to sue for a quick windfall.' This sounds like some common criticism of the patent system that often pops up on Slashdot. The last part of the article mentions that most legal experts are expecting some changes to come of this. Hopefully soon we'll see some changes to the patent system for a better concept of intellectual property."
The issue with obviousness is this: (Score:5, Insightful)
As a result of this, patent cases are often fairly random in terms of the results obtained. It's difficult to know what can be done about this, other then to allow the bench to call an independent expert witness.
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I think they need to look at something more radical than just "moving the deck chairs on the titanic", maybe get rid of the whole system - think outside the box - I'm sure that there is a better way of achieving their objectives
Re:The issue with obviousness is this: (Score:4, Insightful)
The objectives are the problem.
See also the FAT patent, a way of supporting long filenames on a filesystem that (almost uniquely) lacked this support. Why should MS be allowed to monetize a fix to a bad design through patent licensing, especially when the filesystem is only in use because of their illegal monopoly on the desktop?
How were long filenames not obvious, how was storing and retrieving data not obvious when the FAT patent was filed? That garbage patent even survived a recent appeal.
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I don't think I could come up with that, I haven't taken nearly enough drugs. (Seriously, volume labels? using random FAT fields as checksums?)
If discoveries cannot, why should inventions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The issue with obviousness is this: (Score:4, Insightful)
What about this: For each patent application that might be considered obvious, a small number of people skilled in the art in question are hired for one day. They are presented with the applicant's description of the problem that the invention is supposed to solve, but are not given any information about the invention itself. At the end of the day, they get to present a number of approaches that one might try in order to solve it. If they come up with something similar to what is in the patent application, then the invention is obvious.
By the way, if any of the hired practitioners knew of the solution already, well then we have found prior art, so that is OK too.
A weak spot of this scheme would be that often describing the problem in the right way is how you find the solution to a tricky problem, so entirely separating the description of a problem from the solution might not always be possible. But that, I think, is a small problem compared to all the ones in the current patent system.
Hello one-click, nice of you to drop by. (Score:1, Interesting)
Many combinatory software patents would fail an obviousness test if the problem was set for a 12 year old. US programmers should organize an amicus brief, reminding the court that with software, the USPTO has failed to apply the o
Re:The issue with obviousness is this: (Score:4, Insightful)
For software, there are some aspects of "obvious" that aren't applicable to physical device patents.
Any combination of a data object and a general purpose algorithm, data transport, data storage mechanism, or framework/library features should be declared obvious. For example, email transfers over IP. Any data transport can implement the IP functionality; using a particular transport (such as wireless) is not innovation. It's using tools the way they were designed by programmers and companies that encourage reuse -- something that is taught to first year students. Only lawyers and patent leeches can even try to argue that point with a straight face.
Reimplementing an existing solution in another language is not creating new technology, unless the languages are radically different (which would need expert opinion to determine how different programming languages are. I'm thinking in terms of procedural vs. functional.)
Any implementation using a technique, algorithm, or approach published in a textbook or research journal is not innovation. There may be a lack of research on the part of the development team if they didn't know about it, but that doesn't mean they came up with something "new" and patentable.
I firmly believe that software patents should require a functional implementation be submitted within 2 years of an initial application. Hardware patents require engineering diagrams; software patents should require very specific algorithm and data descriptions that are more easily expressed as code. The code in question should not be published by the patent office, but kept in archives to assist with any future dispute resolution by the courts.
Defense of a software patent may require comparison of implementation code. The patent holder making the accusation should be required to provide access to their development archives for the court's experts (not public.) Failure to provide a reasonable history archive should be considered sufficient to prove the patent holder did not take reasonable steps to protect their copyright implementation of the patent.
Like a trademark, failure to defend should result in loss of a patent, and it's previously protected content should become public.
Most important of all, the onus should be on the patent holder to demonstrate that they attempted a "good faith" negotiation to resolve their claim before filing with the courts. That includes demonstrating that they have prepared their evidence BEFORE court, not used the court as a fishing expedition to gain access to evidence that may or may not prove their allegations. The multi-year nightmare of SCO is a disgrace.
"Good faith" also implies the discussion of reasonable licensing terms for the patent, not using them to try to acquire, take over, or bankrupt the purportedly infringing legal entity.
Re:The issue with obviousness is this: (Score:5, Insightful)
I would propose that the code in question should be published if a patent is to be issued for it. It will already have the dual protection of copyright and patent. Isn't one purpose of patents to promote the arts and sciences by disclosing inventions, instead of keeping them trade secrets, in exchange for the temporary monopoly granted?
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Unfortunately the publication would mean that nations which ignore foreign patent policies would easily and happily rip the source code from the archives, use it, and thumb their noses at the fool who thought a foreign legal policy would stop them.
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So what? That's exactly how the situation is supposed to be now, with normal mechanical patents! Considering that removing the requirement for disclosure would defeat the entire purpose of patents, what you're actually saying is that we should simply stop issuing patents altogether!
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"Engineering diagrams" is a big overstatement of what hardware patents require. Most hardware patents contain sketches, but nothing any engineer would be willing to sign and stamp.
The digrams in patents are explantory, and for clarity of explanation they frequently leave out major features that would be required to actually build a device. The
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There are rare occasions where a patentable algorithm crops up. Distasteful though it was, the GIF patent was a valid definition of a specific data structure and accompanying algorithm descriptions for it's use.
On the contrary, a recent patent about double-linked lists of images is ludicrous. Double-linked lists are a very old general purpose data structure. The fact that they happen to be used for a general or specific image format is nothing new.
Had they come up with a new image compression algori
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Unfortunately
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Yeah, the patenting of currently non-workable devices can actually have a depresseve effect on development in the area.
I once had some of my own research killed by a newly-published patent that described in general terms what I had under development. The company
One day? (Score:2)
Bad patents is only half the problem.
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To discount 5-minute inventions is to discount things like "Eu
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You picked a bad example, because many pharmaceutical companies seek government grants (YOUR and MY hard-earned dollars which were subsequently extorted by the IRS) to pay for the R&D of these drugs. If ANY tax money subsidized the development of any drug, the drug should either be barred from being patented, else the company should be c
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Same for the
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If that was the case, though, why hadn't anyone created them yet? Clearly, it wasn't an obvious invention.
For the millionth time; being new is a necessary but not sufficient condition for something being obvious.
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Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
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Another key problem is that if there are 6 obvious ways of solving the problem and you hire 5 experts, you'll let one slip.
Another problem is that how do you know you've hired the right experts? Some problems are dead obvious to anyone
Patent review instead of jury duty? (Score:1)
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Re:Require Technical Judges (Score:1)
must be slow weekend (Score:1, Flamebait)
Then again it shows how the patent system seams to works today:
Take an idea that is new some where else and patent it to claim money.
Never thought Slashdot would become an annology of the something in the real world!
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It is annoylogy, you insensitive clod
CC
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No, it just seams to bes that way.
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CC.
legal systems and false positives (Score:5, Insightful)
If a country's legal system does not attain to this rule, then it is probably not deemed safe to visit there.
It is a principle well known to legislators, law enforcers, lawyers and citizens in generals.
And I think it should be applied to patents as well. Only if you prove beyond doubt that your patent is non obvious, innovative, and all the criteria apply, it should be granted.
In exactly the same way that nobody is (or at least nobody should be) sent to jail if there are doubts. If there are doubts then you are free.
The patents system is not flawed per se. The problem is that it is being abused with a high noise to signal ratio.
The founding fathers saw patents (Score:5, Insightful)
In exchange for opening the information, inventors were given a limited time monopoly on said invention. What the founding fathers wanted to get beyond were secretive guilds and the hording of information - instead encouraging a free flow of ideas. One historical objective is to avoid the technological stagnation that accompanied the middle ages.
But with the original aim of inventions in mind - now that it seems that there is a lot of unintentional infringing of patents - it suggests that the original intention is outdated - the patents are protecting knowledge not worth protecting since others stumble onto the ideas at roughly the same time, negating the need to open the information. Even if it is not stumbled upon, reverse engineering can and does often provide the information needed for someone to duplicate many of the results - again negating the original need for patents.
Could it be that patents should only have been training wheels for the industrial revolution until a technological society is achieved - because once a certain level is achieved, there is no easy way of going back, of ceasing the competition for better products, advances, etcetera? That they should have been discarded after a time?
Could there be another way to promote an open exchange of ideas? Which was the original intention of patents. Because it seems that patents, in their current state, are setting us behind other countries (China) in terms of the future, dragging our economies down, and not at all fulfilling their original purpose. And from what I have read - the purpose of the patent was an ultimately social function, not to protect businesses or let them rest on their laurel in perpetuity (Atari).
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Even if it is not stumbled upon, reverse engineering can and does often provide the information needed for someone to duplicate many of the results - again negating the original need for patents.
Shows the reason why a patent is needed. To allow an intentor the right to make reasonable return on his work.
Now a days with large mega-corporations, the use of patents should may be restricted. Since pharmaceuticals will patent one drug and just as the patent runs out changes a minor element and pate
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That was never the intention of patents. That was the reward offered to the inventor in exchange for his disclosure and it is a restriction to a free market.
The original poster was right, patents are offered to encourage the development of knowledge. If no such encouragement is needed any longer, then the need for patents is called into question.
Patents should be restricted in scope. (Score:3, Insightful)
They shouldn't include things like stories or tax shelters or mathmatics or software. That's just BS.
But practical sciences need them because the only way some things is going to happen is by throwing money at them. Stuff like automobile engine optimizations and safty improvements. Space flight. Drug research. Advances in electronic design. New chemistry breakthroughs, etc etc.
Patents are the only way your going to get certain technolog
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I have not seen a more ignorant comment in a long time.
Last I saw, drug ads only account for about 12% of of the expenses.
Also, Universities don't just fund the research on their own, they do it with outside money, sometimes private funds, such as through businesses and philanthropy, sometimes through public funds. For university research with pr
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might qualify for patent protection, which is whether what is being
patented falls within one of the four statutory [cornell.edu]
classes (utility) for which patenting is permitted. The KSR case
being argued on tuesday concerns the question of obviousness [cornell.edu],
more particularly if there is no single disclosure in the prior art
that exactly "reads on" the claims applicant/patentee make, is it yet
"obvious" over the "prior art" that did exist at the time the inve
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They should be restricted to practical engineering for physical objects.
They shouldn't include things like stories or tax shelters or mathmatics or software. That's just BS.
Software running on a general purpose CPU is often pratcial engineering for a physical object. Software + CPU + display can equal portable DVD player. Software + CPU + actuator can equal electronic stability control. Software + CPU + nozzle can equal ground penetrating intercontinental ballistic missile.
Often it is no longer
Re:The founding fathers saw patents (Score:4, Informative)
The system clearly needs reform. Talking about the founding fathers wanted with patents is a bit misleading though. Modern patents were invented (sic) in Venice in 1474 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_la
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Some sort of incentive system may be necessary. A patent system isnt.
Just as patents were originally covert taxation, their nature hasnt really changed; it's still a covert taxation of the economy for specific purposes. Only it serves those purposes even worse than usual taxes, hinders competition, hinders production of some combinatory inventions, slows down the rate of technological adoption, the effective 'taxation rate' is decided b
patent abuse and history (Score:4, Informative)
The actual lessons of history are often forgotten.
Current concerns about patent abuse, especially abuse of overbroad patent claims, somewhat reflect concerns that lay behind the 1623 English statute of monopolies. That was an attempt to prevent future abuse, and it specifically said that, in future, patents should not be granted or valid where they would be "contrary to the law or mischievous to the state, by raising prices of commodities at home, or hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient."
Wikipedia is rather misleading about patent law history, I'm afraid. Agreed, it has now become a commonplace to cite the 1474 Venetian ordinance about inventions as the 'progenitor' and so on of modern patent law, and chronologically it was the first. But it is only anachronistic hindsight reconstruction to say that it was also influential on the later developments -- because the Venetian history was only (re)discovered by scholars interested in origins of modern patent law within about the last century and a half. Way back before then, at the time and place of the founding fathers in the 1780s, nobody had heard of the Venetian history. What the founding fathers knew much more about then was English law. Many of them were lawyers trained in English law. The question they asked themselves was effectively whether they wanted patents on an English model. And in effect they said yes. The early US patent lawyers and judges looked to English legal practice for details of patent law or practice left open by the US statute. Fessenden's early US patent law textbook of about 1811, as well as Justice Story's Notes on Patent Law, make that very clear. (Even now, when the two systems have thoroughly diverged, it still occasionally has happened that senior courts in US, including the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court, have referred back to old English 18th-century and 19th-century patent law reports, as in the 'Markman v Westview' and 'Warner Jenkinson v Hilton Davis' cases.)
But in the US (as in England), the safeguards mentioned in the 1623 statute of monopolies became forgotten in law and in practice, and nowadays some patents do seem to operate as "mischievous to the state, by raising prices of commodities at home, or hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient".
-wb-
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Not to mention that whatever rationale was behind patents in Venice or England is entirely irrelevant since the one and only purpose of patents in the US is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts!"
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What bothers me more is that ideas are not supposed to be copyrightable or patentable. Only a manifestation of that idea. Traditionally, a patent's protection was limited to th
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But while that may help some few of those who are unjustly pestered by undeserving patent claims, I doubt if it w
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Yes, perhaps. I think the key difference between the 18th and 21th century, with regard to the usefulness of patents, is that today, through the advent of information technology, we have become a network society. It is now more important how information and ideas flow than the thoughts and inventions of each single individual. In the 18th century, a brilliant individual c
Limits on Intellectual Property (Score:2)
Perhaps patents should only be allowed to be held for an individual, and for his lifetime (or maybe just 5 or 10 years), same with copyrights. Where does it say that just because somebody has a good idea that his grandchildren should get rich?
And, I've said this before, NO corporate holdings of copyright or patent. Period. Let them pay license fees for those few years to the inventor, o
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It suggests no such thing. The original intent is still valid, to reward publication of good ideas (as opposed to trade secrets). The problem suggests that the curre
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"Science" in this clause has been interpreted to refer to creative works (i.e., copyright), while "useful arts" has been interpreted to include works of utility (i.e., patents). This is due to the changing definition of science, which used to be synonymous with just "knowledge" rather then use of
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First, founding fathers put not conditions on the patents and copyrights as vehicles -- the patent system as we know it evolved much later in the US (about 80 years).
Note that Article I, section 8, does not say anything about patents or copyright "Congress shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective wr
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The original intention was subverted when lawyers and the courts decided that the 100% ownership of a patent could be exchanged for an amount of money. After that it's only a matter of time until the segment of society represented loosely as landlords manage to hedge their tenants into enough debt such that the general gist of the conversation goes something like this:
"I see you're three months behind on rent. I see you've just invented a steam engin
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No, inventing something is a necessary part of the creation of a patent. To acquire one, you could simply buy one or employ people to develop one for you. Patents may be bought and sold like any other property (since that's what they are).
Patents and what is obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
For any device, meant to be controlled and travelled... inherently some way to navigate the device is in every way obvious. So, why are steering wheels patented?
It gets even worse, because somethings aren't "obvious" yet they remain inherent of the essence. Example: So a steering wheel for a car is obvious... but is a power steering device? Yes it is, for any person that has drivin a car without power steering, it certainly is.
Back a long time ago, there was much more sense and rationale. Another example, Henry Ford's claim to fame is not the car, but his development and application of an assembly line and in lesser known circles... a pioneer in the dawn of a viable credit system (Model-T, even from an assembly line was still too expensive for most people. Henry Ford was one of the first to develop and provide what we now know as "credit" so everyday people can have one).
I think most people have a hard time identifying what might be a legit claim on development. Sometimes, the claim would be far too broad. For example, not much of the details of space exploration is remarkable or what I might consider a legit patent. From the design of the shuttle, to the booster flaps... if you were a rocket scientist or astro-physicist all of it would make sense. However, what is remarkable is with all that together the ability itself to travel into space. You can't really pinpoint a cause or a crucial component for "space travel", and ONLY "space travel" in any and all the technology integrated to accomplish that task. Even to this day. Rockets were around for thousands of years before we took a human into space... so "rockets" obviously have alternative purposes and not soley for space travel.
But, here's the bottom line.
If someone found the cure to cancer, that knowledge and application is NOT their own property. Such property belongs to Man, as with any other detail or specific peace of knowledge. It's hard for people to understand what I'm getting at here, partly becuase they don't want to face the reality of it in fear that it would invalidate financial incentive, claims or some granted "Right" to legally extort money from someone else. Aspirin is aspirin, for example, but there is Bayer who will sue the crap out of you if you don't pay them for making and distributing it. Is that right? Such a basic biological compound, well known, and some twenty year old schmuck has the audacity to think it's HIS? Riiight. Noone owns their so-called "inventions", the moment you spawn an idea, in the end a thousand years from now, you're name won't be remembered but maybe the idea will be. That's becuase you never owned the idea, it's not yours, it belongs to everyone around you. Even now, while there are people that were alive before during and after landing on the moon, some history books broadly refer to it as "Man entered the space age". A thousand years from now, most "historians" won't even know "Neil Armstrong" to associate him to Space Flight, and if they did, it's probably they won't even pronounce it correctly. And they certainly wouldn't have a clue about much deeper detail than that; such as an Engineers name who came up with the one idea that made it all work. Today... how many names do you know that had anything to do with developing the technology for space flight? Zilch... don't bother looking it up, this is the reality of the situation, this is the point. But then again, go ahead and try to look it up. There were thousands of people that worked on it, you might find just a handful of names.
Point is, whether it's you, or some other guy... noone gives a shit as long as it comes to be. And, most things are destined to materialize from the efforst of Man... becuase THAT is WHY we are HERE!
As for the individual who finds the cure to cancer, he doesn't need to pull a patent on it. He would be very well taken care of, voluntarily by many people if for no other reason than to say "thanks", from across the world. So much, that there would be no roo
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no corporation is going to want to rely on the goodwill of the public to "keep them alive" bla bla socialism bla bla bla
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Henry Ford's car
Selling things on credit is a method of carrying on business, and so shouldn't be patented. That is certainly the case in Europe. Likewise, making things on a production line, though some of the specific items of machinery used might be patentable.
As for the cure for cancer, it will depend what the cure is. Treatment methods are not patentable in europe, however chemicals and equipent used in the treatment can potentially be patentable. Some drug compa
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Please supply patent numbers so we can determine the answer to your question.
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Yes, and the good thing about the patent system is that it gives an incentive to make sure it belongs to Man. There is an incentive to share the info (monopoly) and after 20 years (max), that . Even before that, any one is free to build upon the knowledge. As a side note, compare that to the copyright law where the artist 75 years after his death still has an incentive to create new
RE the aspirin example... (Score:2)
A century ago that may have been true, but the patent on acetylsalicylic acid expired in 1917 and the trademark "Aspirin" was ruled to be a generic name [wikipedia.org] a few years later. The history of aspirin, from Hippocrates' use of willow bark, through its chemical synthesis in the late 19th century, to the competing claims for that invention, shows that problems with prior art an
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Wernher von Braun and Robert Goddard spring immediately to mind. Just because you happen to be ignorant of history doesn't mean everyone is. The names Pascal, Newton, Pythagorus, Bernoulli, and Einstein are enshrined in history, familiar to every schoolchild, and barring the total collapse of civilization, it's not likely they'll be forgotten in another 1k or 10k years either.
It's true that
A favorable ruling from THIS Supreme Court?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the same Supreme Court that in Eldred vs. Ashcroft ruled, in essence, that a copyright term remains "limited" and thus is in keeping with the Constitution as long as it has a stated limit, even if the limit increases over time at the same rate that time passes? You must be on some other planet if you think that same Supreme Court will make any improvements (from the point of view of actual practitioners in the various fields, as opposed to the patent attorneys) to "intellectual property" (gad, how I hate that phrase) law.
I think it's at least as likely that they'll decide that "obvious" really means "obvious to even the greatest of morons in the field", and thus that pretty much anything you care to name is patentable.
Of course, that assumes that they'll issue any sort of meaningful ruling whatsoever. It's entirely possible that they'll simply say that it's up to Congress to define in greater detail what it means, and until then leave things as they are. Just like they did in Eldred.
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No, that Court no longer exists. We've got two young pups on board now. So, it's a different ball game. This is unfortunate.
Besides, it's Congress' plenary authority to determine patent law, not the Court.
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It's not the same Supreme Court, Rehnquist and O'Connor, who both joined the majorty opinion, aren't there any more. Not that I'ld expect Alito or Roberts to rule any differently in Eldred, but this case is entirely different from Eldred. Eldred was over the meaning of "limited time" in the Constitution's Copyright Clause. It was a decision about overturning a law Congress had passed, this is a decision on if the Court of Appeals for the Fede
Europe does it better (Score:1, Interesting)
A pr
Does Europe do it better? (Score:1, Informative)
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Given that your average patent nowadays is written in such a way to make it impossible to glean any useful information off it, one could just measure the amount of effort that it took a so-called "infringer"
Why this will never get fixed (Score:2, Insightful)
This is about vested interests, corporations, not individuals, trying to maintain a system that so far has been to their advantage. Most of them got to where they are by being good at the present set of rules and they're not about to radically change those rules and lose that advantage.
The only chance you have of radic
Jury of their peers (Score:5, Interesting)
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Except, obviousness is not determined by a jury. Courts have determined that patent claims are to be construed as though they were tiny statutes, so the meaning of the claim is determined as a matter of law---not fact so as to let a jury decide. Since obviousness is based on prior art, which is also based on statutorially interpreted claims, there is no "fact" for
spurious counterargument (Score:2)
Good, that's the point: there are millions of bad patents, and they must be invalidated. The longer we wait, the more painful it gets.
Somehow, these companies are using the same kind of arguments little children would use: at first "aw, it's not that bad yet, let's just see what develops" and then later "aw, but we have been doing it so long, we can't change now".
cause the r
The main problem with the obviousness standard (Score:4, Interesting)
When a patent is being applied for, the applicant is claiming that they invented something that others would be unlikely to figure out independently. Making such an assertion should require strong evidence and persuasive arguments to go with it.
Obviousness will always be a grey area, but for everything to be considered nonobvious by default is ridiculous.
I would go as far as saying that patents should be restricted to those things that are obviously nonobvious. If there is doubt as to its obviousness, don't grant the patent. It is better for 10 well-deserving patent applications to get rejected than for one undeserving one to get approved. Those with rejected patents can still produce whatever they developed without the patent; but when an undeserving patent is granted it prevents everybody else from producing the covered items, without requiring the grantee to produce it themselves.
Things that cannot be patented. (Score:3, Insightful)
Physical Phenomenon (also something beyond mans reasonable control and ability to enforce)
Abstract Ideas (that which has no physical property, though it may be expessed/communicated thru physical media).
Mathmatical algorithyms are a fourth but in essence math is an association, not a thing, between abstraction and accounting of the concrete.
Also that which is obvious to anyone skilled in the art of which the product is used.
Patents also require inventorship and originality. You can't patent something someone else did.
Same with copyright, if you are not the author, you can't copyright it, though originality is a little more flexiable with copyrights
(not its only because you can get a copyright on something not so original, but prior art can later overcome your copyrights - the copyright office does notr require you to submit prior art and leves originality up to anyone interested in challenging it - of course in court)
Exception to these is if the person of creation is employed to do so, for you. Still their name is attached.
You cannot patent what has been made public for a given time before a patent application is applied for.
Prior art issue apply in defence against originality.
Now there is also the need to be novel and useful, though useful today may mean using it's to earn you an income from an infringment lawsuit (which should be grounds to dismiss such a claim as it does not contribute to the founding fathers heart intent.)
Patents do not give you the right to produce the object of patent, as you can invent a bomb and it can meet all the requirement of patentability and you can even eran royalities off of it (perhaps selling a license to the government if they don't just take it from you), but you are not given teh right to produce it by being granted a patent. hat a patent does is give you the right to say "NO, you canno use" to others.
Its this grant of saying "NO" that is also the basis of the above things that cannot be patented. If you cannot reasonable enforce "NO" then what is the point of applying for a patent (regardless of those who think getting a patent to protect an idea, that it stay open and free.... well there are easier and less expencive ways to do such as mentioned above.)
The manifestation of the concept of granting a right to say "NO, you cannot use" has reached its apex of being more a tool to extract value, from others, then it is to earn directly off the product and sale of the product of the patent. Leave it to man to abuse others through the distortion and manipulation and interpretation of his own creation of laws, laws that other before him probably created.
About that which is not patentable.
Software!
It is by the natural laws of human capabilities to create and use abstractions. It is also by the human rights of men to communicate with each other via such abstractions and that it is through the use of abstract communication that man is enabled to create a great deal, from building physical things such as homes, roads, vehicles, cloths, medicine and treatment of illnesses, even laws that dictate how a traffic light is to work, etc.. These all are examples of physical phenomenon. Not the traffice light, cloths, homes, etc. but the physical phenomenon of abstraction application, the conversion from abstract communication to physical movement. It is a human characteristic, to some degree found in other animals but only of a lower level of abstraction ability.
Software is often argued to be pure mathmatical algorithyms and that this is reason enough for it to not be patentable. Though many might not grasp so easy the ideas that words can somehow be numbers too. But no-matter math and all other abstractions fall into the scope of what is abstraction.
Natural law, physical phenomenon, abstract ideas, mathmatic......All of these non-patentable facets and more apply to software, so wh
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Going for a full Google search, a search for "abstraction physics" yields about 100 more search results than "donkey physics". Further, it appears that you are the author of all the highest-rated links. Finally, you spend more time comparing your revolutionary approach to the switch from Roman numerals to Hindu.
When proclaiming a new, revolutionary branch of Computer Science? Physics? New Age Mysticism? it seems that you should at least mention that you are the only person studying
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Donkey Physics is not found on wikipedia, but it should be there for describing the action characteristics of human jackasses.
The link you provided has no results as Abstraction Physics was loosely judged by a couple wikipedia controllers as being original research and even I supported it's removal, due a distorted entry about myself lasting over a year before I found out about it
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I caught a whiff of the Wikipedia deletion "controversy". It's not at all controversial when you look at Wikipedia's policies towards novel research. Just because you believe your pet theory will eventually become successful doesn't mean that Wikipedia should be archiving it. Until "abstraction physics" has gone through a substantial peer review, and is at least deemed worthy of mention by a number of people in the relevant field, it really can't be calle
first (Score:2)
I think it's pretty clear that we want to err on the side of sometimes not giving out patents that perhaps ought to be valid. After that, it follows fairly simply that the standard for unobviousness should be pretty high, and that demonstrating obviousness s
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One of the reforms that I would back is a revision of the standard of obviousness which is set by current patent law to be pretty low - i.e. "obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art".
To me the case under litigation SHOULD fall into that classification. When I was pursuing patents as an inventor I'd always be looking to have some unexpected synergistic
Obvious Patents - Slippery Slope! (Score:1)
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Essentially, anyone skilled in the field knew that the technique didn't work for the application intended. As such, no one bothered patenting (or even documenting) it. Along came a professor one day. He used a limited sample, and concluded the technique worked great. If you expanded the sample size, the technique failed: in every test run we did.
The big problem for me
Combinatory patents (Score:2)
Is the patent system a failure already? (Score:3, Interesting)
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C//
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In fact the US will allow imports of such goods.
In fact, the US will not.
Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States, or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
35 U.S.C. 271(a) [uspto.gov]
The Medicines issue... (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't some of the protection currently offered by patents be made part of FDA and similar approval processes instead? I.e. make the investment needed to get a drug FDA approved: get an N-year monopoly on its sale?
What are patents really for? (Score:1)
In my opinion the problem is with the way the patent system as a whole has been warped over the years into something it was not intended to be. The patent system is not something that has to exist, it is something that we as a society agree to have in order to incent individuals and companies to perform activities that are of benefit to society.
There appear to be two basic uses for the patent system that unfortunately are sometimes at odds with each other.
Another use (Score:2)
Say you have three companies, called A B and C. The account for 99% of the widget market and all file assloads of useless patents. Normally you'd expect that if company A files a patent saying widgets are black, then the other giants in the field would fight it and have it struck down as obvious. Instead they can agree to cross license their portfolio and each pay the others a trillion dollars.
The end result is that it's impossible for a ne
Are we now going to have methods of combinatory (Score:2)
If So I claim patent rights on + (plus), - (minus) concepts and any complexicated use of them up to but not excluding any advanced combinatory method parralleling our most advanced methods of mathmatics or symbolic calculation equivilance. I license them to anyone under the same terms of which they either license their patents or in the event of a user, then the terms of the license of applied to their use of the patent that usinsh
Poor understanding of the subject (Score:1)
Obviousness: High or low burden of proof (Score:1)
Regrettable, courts defining ambiguous laws again (Score:2)
The impact has been that EU, Japan, and many other nations have been coerced and/or followed the USA down an economic dead-end road of corporatist Luddite-oppression (DRM, DMCA, software patents, stem-cell research, opt-out-privacy, vapor-process patents
The first thing to fix... (Score:2)
There is no (Score:2)
The only "IP" is a SECRET I know and you don't. As soon as I tell it or sell it to you, it's no longer "IP". That simple.
Anything else is trying to use contract law to control someone's behavior for someone else's benefit.
The proper response to that "someone else" is: fuck you.