Behind the USPTO's Working With Peer-To-Patent 39
Down-with-the-patents writes "As this community discussed earlier, the US Patent and Trademark Office is collaborating with the Peer-to-Patent program to stop bad patents from issuing. Brigid Quinn, spokesperson for the USPTO, explains the motivation of the USPTO to open up to the public what has been a behind-closed-doors process. Groklaw's Pamela Jones notes that 'when it comes to software, there is more knowledge outside of USPTO than inside it.' While some of Jones's readers are staying away from the pilot program, hoping that the patent system will just collapse of its own weight, Jones says that's a goal she understands but doesn't view as realistic. The project seems to be doing pretty well with over 1,000 active participants, and plans to replicate it in other patent offices starting with the UK next year." Slashdot and Linux.com toil for the same corporate overlord.
Oh, the humanity! (Score:1, Funny)
I think it's pretty safe to say that there's plenty more knowledge inside the USPTO than there is in the collective brains of Groklaw's readers. When the patent office runs low on nasty nicknames for obscure tech journalists, though, the screeching ba
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Admitting the Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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You think this would be simple, yet its amazing how many people wouldn't want to admit this and then move on.
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I love my sysadmin (hi Rob!), worth his weight in gold!
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As I see it, a large part of the problem with the USPTO is the perception that "I can patent anything - even a perpetual motion machine!" - which in turn yields an enormo
Re:Admitting the Problem (Score:4, Informative)
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He didn't work for the USPTO, but he did work for the Swiss Patent office before getting his landmark papers published in 1905. He didn't write patents, he was a patent examiner.
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I have read two biographies on Albert, he was a tad eccentric but was far from "socially awkward" as demonstrated by this speech [peperonity.com] he gave before he left Germany.
"I'm pretty sure Einstein never worked for the USPTO"
Correct, he worked as a clerk for the Swiss patent office in 1904, roughly 30yrs before he came to the US. While at the Swiss patent office
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That day, hopefully, the people @ patents office will understand the pain of useless patents, where one guy patents Linked List and another patents FOR LOOPS. Atleast after that, there should be some step towards agreement as to what is patentable and what not.
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Re:Admitting (part of) the Problem (Score:2)
I think that this problem extends beyond the realm of software.
I predict by the time Linux takes over the desktop (Score:1)
Not trying to be a grammar nazi (I promise) (Score:2)
The project seems to be doing pretty well with over 1,000 active participants, and plans to replicate it in other patent offices starting with the UK next year.
I'm having some trouble deciphering this. Should there be a "there are" between the words 'and' and 'plans'?
I'm not asking to be a PITA, I just want to make sure I understand it correctly.
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From the summary:
The project seems to be doing pretty well with over 1,000 active participants, and plans to replicate it in other patent offices starting with the UK next year.
I'm having some trouble deciphering this. Should there be a "there are" between the words 'and' and 'plans'?
No other words are needed. Read it more like this:
The project seems to be doing pretty well with over 1,000 active participants.
and
The project seems to be doing pretty well with plans to replicate it in other patent offices starting with the UK next year.
Hope that helps.
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Gaming public review (Score:1)
Re:Gaming public review (Score:4, Informative)
This can certainly be explained by the (very) small population of contributors, but at the same time I think trolls would be easily identifiable and just as easily disregarded. Since the prior art that is actually evaluated by the USPTO is determined by the community (I believe they submit the top 10 highest rated prior art examples to the patent office), I believe that there is a sufficient corrective force in the community based system to prevent people with profit-driven agendas from significantly changing the judgement of a patent.
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Both of you raise good points though on how to avoid the problem. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
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The valid patents are worst (Score:3, Insightful)
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It is effectively strengthening and legitimising the (extremely bad) current legislation.
A far better use of the volunteer effort would be in political campaigning to scrap the whole concept of patents for software.
Not either/or (Score:1)
"A far better use of the volunteer effort would be in political campaigning to scrap the whole concept of patents for software."
I agree and I have been putting my efforts into lobbying to abolish software patents. However, I do not see this as an all or nothing issue. Solutions which only partially solve the software patent problem are also useful and it is not illogical to participate in more than one. One example of a person working on multiple solutions simultaneously is Richard Stallman. Richar
Re:Any Truth Microsoft Update Caused SKYPE failure (Score:2)
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Build and Generate Revenue to get a full patent. (Score:2, Insightful)
Trivial/obvious patents are a bit more difficult since many things seem obvious or trivial after the fact.
Some ideas to avoid patent misuse (Score:3, Interesting)
Just some thoughts.
1. Cost of patenting based on the wealth of the patentee. This should help the small garage inventor + actual real good innovations. Patent trolling will be less effective.
2. Patent to be supported by product within a period of 3 years. It is the responsibility of the patent holder to provide proof that a product that was created by his patent has been made after 3 years. This product has to be a) made by the patent holder or b) the patent holder has given license to the company which creates it. Otherwise the patent lapses. This would again take care of the patent trolls + help actual good inventions
3. The cost of patent to be borne across the years. Every 5 years the patent has be re-issued with quite a high fee (again based on the wealth of patentee). This means that only good useful products are under patent for the complete duration of the patent. This again will support the basic idea of patenting, i.e. really good useful ideas not to be kept under wraps, and not the small ideas.
I guess these ideas should help modify the patent system so that
a) Patent office gets more money which means more people, which means better results
b) Small guy inventor is supported
c) Real good ideas can be patented for the whole duration
d) Company still can work freely without struggling with frivolous patents, while producing real good products under patents themselves.
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"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
It's interesting to note that initially Jefferson thought it was a really bad idea to give out a monopoly. He should have gone with his first thought.
There are other ways of promoting the progress of science and the useful a
The problems with Peer-To-Patent (Score:3, Informative)
There are two problems that I've identified with the process so far. The first is that the examiner who's assigned to the patent doesn't seem to take part in the discussions around the patent. That would be extremely valuable to keep discussions on track, so that we as a community can help find more relevant material. A lot of discussion that I've seen starts off with "I've read the abstract, I don't like the idea, here's why" without actually producing anything of value in terms of admissible prior art, or evidence of non-obviousness. That starting point is almost completely useless - it's just noise, especially if the points raised are easily countered simply by reading the first couple of claims. If there were more dialogue visible (especially with an examiner at the wheel), I believe that would happen less. This brings me to the second problem.
There just aren't enough people taking part. We need more people. The range of the patents being discussed is really quite broad. A population of 1000+ just doesn't have enough people in it to guarantee that someone with a deep understanding of the area of each patent is going to be present. However, I think that this is caused by how few patents are actually in the system. People arrive, hearing about the project from articles such as this, see that none of the patents particularly interest them, and leave. It doesn't help that the sign-up process is tricky to navigate. I hope that this will change over time as more patents are added into the system, but the risk is that in the intervening period the project will be seen as not being effective and will be canned. That would be a crying shame - it has the potential to make a real difference.
double, double, toil and trouble (Score:2)
I read that first as Slashdot and Linux.com troll for the same corporate overlord. Whups.