EU Patent Staff Go On Strike 116
h4rm0ny writes "Last Friday, staff at the European Patent Office went on strike. They protested outside for several hours and issued a statement claiming that 'the organisation is decentralising and focusing on granting as many patents as possible to gain financially from fees generated.' They also declared this as being disastrous for innovation and that their campaign was not for better wages, but for better quality patents.
Meanwhile, an article on it discusses the US's own approach to dealing with the increasing flood of patent applications: a community patent project to help identify prior art. It might sound like a grass-roots scheme, and maybe it is, but those roots include such patent behemoths as IBM. So it looks like on both sides of the Atlantic, some signs of sanity might be emerging in the patent world from those people right in the thick of it." Note, this was a half-day strike, not ongoing.
Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finally - Common Sense! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually these are bureaucrats refusing to do their master's bidding ... guess what their chances are ... I worked at the EU. The organisation isn't even democratic (the real power is in the hands of an unelected body, the european comission).
Any demands for accountability of the leaders will be shot down faster than it would have been in Iran, or on the Tiananmen square. The EU is all about how it looks. About the wages of the "fonctionnaires" (this is a word that will join a dictionary in 2050 with refere
Re:Finally - Common Sense! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually these are bureaucrats refusing to do their master's bidding ... guess what their chances are ... I worked at the EU. The organisation isn't even democratic (the real power is in the hands of an unelected body, the european comission).
The EU commission president is suggested by the heads of the governments of the member states (all democratically elected), and has to be approved by the European Parliament (democratically elected). The commission president then selects his commissioners, then the commission has to be approved again by the parliament. How is that not democratic?
I'm not saying it's perfect (few things in the EU as in many other institutions are), especially I think it's a shame that the EP can only reject the complete commission, not individual commissioners, bust seriously... not democratic? Are in your home country all ministers elected directly by the people - individually?
And saying that the commission is "the real power"... the commission can draft laws which they can suggest to the parliament and the council (which consists of the national governments). You make its sound like they run the EU alone...
Missing the point of international democracy (Score:1)
Having direct election of the executive would be a massive no here in the UK because all the tabloids would start banging on about how the EU is trying to become a proper federal democracy like the USA. I suppose it's also something that the governments of most member states would be keen to avoid because it could be a challange to their own mandates.
I think all the leaders in Europe find it convenient to have the EU around to blame whenever they all need to do something bad - not that I can actually think
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Good shot, but wrong! The EPO is not a subsidiary of the EC, it is not EU. The signatory states are not identical to the states of the EU.
The EPO has its own constitution, own salary scheme, own working regulations.
Not that I'd question your general line of arguments, just to be correct on the dot.
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Ehmm. But doesn't the European Patent Organisation reside outside the European Union? ...in Munich, the city of the movement....
Re:Finally - Common Sense! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, there seems to be far more incentive to obfuscate what the patent is actually saying. Either so you can claim it covers almost any conceivable scenario, or so that nobody can identify that you're patenting something trivial and obvious.
Most patent summaries I've ever seen read as bad (if not worse) than legal documents. It also seems the more trivial the patent, the more ridiculous the verbiage.
Cheers
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Which seems to be a more modern phenomena. I've seen some of the old patents from BBC Research they were written as clearly as possible and with all relevant detail. They were apparently told to do this so that if a case came to court it would be easy to explain the content to a jury, who are unlikely to be technically minded.
Thank god we have lawyers these days who can translate all the obfuscation for us, and hence patents can be completely unreadable.
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The bad verbage of patents is not necessarily the patent writer's fault. When I tried to submit a patent, it came back three times demanding that I rewrite it until it made no sense. Then, it was denied because I used the phrase "A person may use..." instead of "A person can use...". In patent-speak, the word "may" means "may not". So, I applied for a patent for an idea that people may not use.
Re:Finally - Common Sense! (Score:4, Informative)
I think you misunderstood the explanation. It's a little more complicated than saying "may" means "may not". Using the phrase "a person may use X" implies that the person ALSO "may not use X" and still perform the invention. In other words it implies that the feature is optional.
Patents are legal documents and in the same way contracts use strange legal speak, patents use legal language so that there is no doubt what they claim. While it may look like obfuscation when read properly they are actually quite clear.
Re:Finally - Common Sense! (Score:5, Informative)
Patent agent here.
An abstract is a requirement. An applicant has to provide one. If there is something wrong in the application and correct in the abstract, the applicant is not allowed to rely on the abstract to fix the error in the application. Guess what, patent agents spend as little time on the abstract as possible. Personaly, I appreciate clear abstracts, so I may tend to do a bit better than average, but still it isn't at the top of my priority list. Having said that, I never propose a drawing to go with the abstract, as that involves more work (providing reference numerals etc.). Sincere apologies to the rest of the world. During the PCT phase, the Examiner often picks one, and adds the numbers. Thanks.
As to clarity of the application. Unfortunately stupid US case law (which stupid people from a country that shall not be named defend, because doing otherwise would be probably considered unpatriotic, or something) favours unclarity and incompleteness. (It is like that famous: "Everything you say can and will be held against you?". ). A US patent claim is like a bag of loose wrist watch parts. A (proper) European claim details the relationship between the parts. Such a claim is harder to write, and leads in the US to more problems. Guess what US patent agents do?
There are even courses for European patent agent to learn how to write obfuscated claims for the US. I refuse to give in, and try to write my claims as clear as possible. The patent system is a deal between society and an inventor, where the inventor reveals his invention in return for an exclusive right for a limited-time. I make this clear to my clients and the invention is written down with that in mind.
If my sticking to clarity means I overlook something and it falls outside the scope of protection, too bad. I hope my approach protects my clients from unnecessary lawsuits where they have to prove that something is within the scope of their poorly-written claim or some scumbag thinks he can reason himself out of the scope. So far, no lawsuits (I don't want to imply that all my claims were so well drafted to have had this effect. Perhaps I - and my clients - were just fortunate).
Bert
Examples of silly US things:
If you describe an experiment in past tense, you have performed it. If you write it in present tense, you haven't. Uhm, how does this writing in present tense undo the fact that an applicant actually performed the experiments, again?
If you discuss literature, you admit that it is prior art. Well, everything before the filing date is prior art, isn't it, so what is the problem? Oh, you mean relevant prior art limiting the scope of my claims? Well, what I write and read in a particular publication KNOWING THE INVENTION OF MY CLIENT isn't necessarily the same as what a person skilled in the art at the time of filing would read in that publication. In the US, you have conceded that it is known. In Europe, you can get back from what you said earlier (if there is a fair reason for that). In Europe: If I said that I saw Jesus yesterday, and today I say I was mistaken, it is OK if now stick to the latter. In the US it is solid legal proof that Jesus was here yesterday. Sigh.
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Re:Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
Conversely, if this DOES lead to some fixes, and then patents have to be really innovative and the system works as planned you can bet your ass the big dogs will push hard to go RIGHT back to the previous practice of patenting everything under the sun after a few small guys stick a big enough thorn in their side. Small guy comes up with something truely innovative, patents it, and now the big dogs are on his leash if they want to use it... Yeah...that will last long...we already saw it collapse once.
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The current state of patents in the US, at least in software which is the area I am familiar with, is that they are like nuclear weapons in their destructive power. It doesn't matter as much that the big companies have a vast arsenal, they can still be hit hard by a rogue company with the right patent at the right time. Whilst the US patent system does create a strong barrier to entry that protects the big players against the up and coming to some extent, I think they are coming to the conclusion that they
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Don't hope too much. It's Europe, where common sense was actually invented.
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Suddenbreakoutofcommonsense?
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We wouldn't even have flames.
Partial Patent Solution - Hang All The Lawyers! (Score:1)
Re:Partial Patent Solution - Hang All The Lawyers! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I believe it was Q.
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It was Picard that said that (to Q) in Encounter at Farpoint.
I recognize this "court" system as the one that agreed with that line from Shakespeare, "kill all the lawyers".
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It was Picard that said that (to Q) in Encounter at Farpoint.
I recognize this "court" system as the one that agreed with that line from Shakespeare, "kill all the lawyers".
Doh!
You win the geek cookie :)
did anyone actually notice? n/t (Score:2)
Patents were always a money making scam (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, they've been harmful to innovation since they were introduced.
Of course the EPO staff are correct but the underlying issue runs much deeper. The first step in stopping patent expansion is to deal with the lawyers. These people contribute little to human knowledge and make a fortune gaming the system. Neither the public or fabled inventor benefits from having a legal tax on innovation.
Re:Patents were always a money making scam (Score:4, Interesting)
Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin but since patent laws were weak at the time he actually made very little money off of an innovation that revolutionized the textile industry by making cotton much cheaper to produce and much more widely used in manufacturing as a result. Even with the weak patent system at the time, we was eventually able to enforce his patent and get some money from those that were producing rip Cotton Gin's without license.
I agree that the patent system is currently doing more harm than good in many cases, but that doesn't mean it does no good. I think the major points that need to be revised are a shortening of the protection period, Automatic rejection of patents that are vague, a reasonable limit on the amount of time between opening of the patent application and finishing the submission, and a return to previous situation where software and business methods could not be patented.
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Here's the U.S. history on the cotton gin:
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Women were not eligible to receive patents in the early U.S., and Greene may have asked Whitney to obtain it for her.
not that patents are bad, but that she was ineligible to patent it herself. Besides if you are going to lift text from Wikipedia without citation, try doing so and maintaining context. The rest of that section goes on to indicate that Whitney did invent the Cotton Gin.
While the Watkins story had some romantic adherents, and still others have credited Hodgson Holmes, later publication of certain of Whitney's papers, including letters to his family during the invention process, showed the claims to be lacking foundation.
Many people attempted to develop a design that would process short staple cotton and Holmes was indeed issued a patent for an "Improvement in the Cotton Gin". However, the evidence indicates that Whitney did invent the saw gin, for which he is famous. Although he spent many years in court attempting to enforce his patent against planters who made unauthorized copies, a change in patent law ultimately made his claim legally enforceableâ"too late for him to make much money off of the device in the single year remaining before patent expiration.[3]
Wikipedia.org
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Historically, the invention of the cotton gin and its introduction to the south made slavery mucch more profitable in the United States, expanding both cotton production and black slavery all over the south. This exacerbated one of the major conflicts that caused the Civil War.
Also note that Eli Whitney developed guns manufactured with interchangable parts, greatly decreasing the costs of making firearms.
So you might say that Eli Whitney enslaved thousands, caused the American Civil War, and then sold the
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I can agree with your final paragraph but I didn't say that patents never did any good. The point I was aluding to was that, on the whole they don't. I said that patents were a legal tax on innovation and there's countless examples to support this (Bell, Wright bros, Watt), regardless of the other typically contentious issues involved. Whitney pretty much failed to enforce his patent, you say patent laws were weak back then yet it's still an immense undertaking for a sole inventor to take a wealthy and powe
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The Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier was invented at Southampton University in the UK. Due to issues getting the patent, they have lost quite a serious amount of cash:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/B/C/university_of_southampton_341_15kb.pdf [hm-treasury.gov.uk]
(page 3)
These guys and their department (although i'm fairly sure they aren't short of cash) would probably have done a lot of good things with the royalties that they should have received.
That's europe for ya ! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's europe for ya ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Got to admit, it's kind of impressive to see a strike/demonstration for the right to do a quality job, as opposed to the usual wages/hours stuff.
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Proves that in the US, the quality is usually right ;)
EU (Score:1, Troll)
If they blow this, will we still have to hear about the superior wisdom of our sophisticated European Overlords?
The US program is a sham (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you believe the hype on slashdot, maybe. In real life the PTO actually denies a lot of patents. A friend of mine is a patent lawyer and her job wo
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This one?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/28/1711237 [slashdot.org]
Of course patent beheamoths are behind it (Score:4, Interesting)
It might sound like a grass-roots scheme, and maybe it is, but those roots include such patent behemoths as IBM.
The patent system is quickly becoming a joke, and if that happens, IBM's patent portfolio is devalued. They also don't want to have to fight frivolous patents, so it's win-win for them. Plus, they've already helped themselves to the patent banquet to the point of morbid obesity. It's easy to shout "no more caviar!" at the party when your plate and belly are full.
Everyone wants 'opportunity for all'...until they've had theirs. Immigration and import policies the world over are also a great example of this.
Do we need patents at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how the patent system in the UK or other parts of the world work, but in my country (USA) it seems to me fundamentally all right, with four possible areas of necessary reform that I can see:
The patent system here isn't nearly as fuX0red up as copyright. Copyright reform is far more badly needed than patent reform.
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Patents cost WAY too much. It is virtually impossible for a middle class person to obtain a patent on anything.
Eh, it doesn't look to be more than a few thousand dollars in fees. That's reasonable for a middle class person.
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A copyright is free, twenty to register. Why should a patent cost more?
A few thousand dollars is way out of my reach, and I'm a creative person who has let good ideas die for lack of same.
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A copyright is free, twenty to register. Why should a patent cost more?
In theory patent applications are screened by highly trained clerks who reject those which are insufficiently novel, non-trivial, capable of industrial application, or eligible for patent protection. Without getting into arguments about how well this corresponds with practice, it's certainly the case that the patent office has a lot of bureaucracy which must be paid for somehow. The only reasonable options are that everyone pay for it (via taxation), that the owners of profitable patents pay for it (which w
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it should be possible to form a legislation that would punish you maybe not to death but to serious financial & public work amount.
properly enforcing it on all obviously lame patent applications should cut them from you to 0 in the coming year.
let's say 3 hours of public work for very obvious claim, and 48 hours for software patent ;)
and if an applicant has exceeded some 100 assigned public work hours, his supervisor gets the overlow, and so on =)
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If you're not capable of convincing someone to invest a couple of thousand in one of your ideas, your ideas were either shit or you're incapable of monetising an idea. The cost of a patent application are minor compared to what else you need to invest to get a product to market.
A patent is not a conditio sine qua non to enter the market. So, if your ideas were any good, you'd have the first mover advantage. If you went bankrupt because other people saw your idea, copied it and were more successful with it,
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If you're not capable of convincing someone to invest a couple of thousand in one of your ideas, your ideas were either shit or you're incapable of monetising an idea
Everyone has different talents. I personally suck at selling; I couldn't sell a hamburger to a starving man. My lack of sales skills made it hard to get work, since to get a job you have to sell yourself. I'm glad I'm close to retirement and don't have to worry about that any more.
My late uncle went into business with a guy he was stationed wit
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I live in a country that is trust-based. That is not to say I've never run into a case where an invention was stolen, but it is really very rare. And as to IBM, I think I'd trust them. While they would survive a USA-TODAY article on "IBM steals invention from small-time inventor", the people you're dealing with are probably too honest or at least weary of the hassle it gives if they were to take something from someone away.
I sent an idea of my own to Kodak once. They had a strict policy when it came to unso
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I've made a buck or two from my creativity, mostly from my employer. Unlike my uncle (not my grandpa, I'm old, grandpa was born in 1896) I'm not much better a gambler than a salesman. I like my five day a week no overtime job.
Patentable ideas that don't relate to my employment I generally don't worry about selling, I just post them on the internet somewhere. I don't need to be rich, but I hate it whan someone takes my work and my ideas and calls it their own; I've had quite a bit of stuff plagarized.
But I'd
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"Unlike my uncle (not my grandpa"
Sorry, did quote from my head.
Patentable ideas that don't relate to my employment I generally don't worry about selling, I just post them on the internet somewhere. I don't need to be rich, but I hate it whan someone takes my work and my ideas and calls it their own; I've had quite a bit of stuff plagarized.
Possibly. I do recall reading a book about starting a business (did that before I started my own company some 5 years ago) where a guy related his story about starting a
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Depends on what you call middle class.
In some studies anywhere from 53 to 80 percent of people consider themselves middle class.
I consider myself to be lower middle class and make about 70K for my household. I don't know about you but enough of that is taken by the banks and government that even $1155 is a pretty big chunk of change.
Some people in the $200,000 range consider themselves middle class, I think $1155 is a bit easier to come by for them.
http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/706/middle-class-poll [pewsocialtrends.org]
http: [msn.com]
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A lot of Economists define middle class in the $100,000 per household range. Two people working $50,000 jobs = $100,000 per household.
Since my income is the only one ot support my Wife and family I see us as a bit below the $100,000 range.
But this just plays into my original point, Middle class as a definition is murky at best.
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I disagree. Patent reform is stifling innovation far more than than the music wars.
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Regarding patent fees, please look at the fee schedule [uspto.gov]. For a small entity filing an electronic application with = 20 claims and = 3 independent claims, the total fee examination fee is $435. If the application is allowed, the issue fee is $720. There are maintenance fees at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years that are $465, $1180, and $1955 respectively. By the time the third year arrives, the assignee would know if the patent should be maintained. This is affordable to a middle class person/small entity.
And what about the workers? (Score:1)
Patents cost WAY too much. It is virtually impossible for a middle class person to obtain a patent on anything.
So it's alright if a working class person (or whatever you term someone who earns less than the middle class) can't afford a patent?
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Respect (Score:3, Informative)
Commendable behavior on their part for actually standing up for what's right and not pulling the douchebag move of trying to milk more money out of it for themselves.
Tough luck, guys (Score:2)
Note, this was a half-day strike, not ongoing.
While you were gone, I patented the process of returning to work after a strike.
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While your European patent application for that is still in the secret 18 months phase, you forget that THEY can read it. So, as you could read in the post, they had their strike on Friday, circumventing any problems, even for future strikes.
Bert
Patent agent
And just as farcical (Score:1)
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I want to know what a limited-time strike is supposed to achieve.
It's supposed to attract news media attention and publicize the issue. I imagine this worked better than a dull press release about patent reform.
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It made the news... helped make the public a bit more aware of the problem, perhaps? I'd think it's better to focus on what you can change and affect instead of on what you can't.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike [wikipedia.org]
In the Writers Guild of America, we have employees whose work is directly relevant to the general population's interests, even if in a behind-the-scenes manner. Nonetheless, in 2007-8 they were on strike for 100 days before they and the AMPTP reached an agreement and thus returned to work.
Negotiators for the striking writers reached a tentative agreement on February 8, 2008, and the boards of both guilds unanimously approved the deal on February 10, 2008.[6] Striking writers voted on February 12, 2008 on whether to lift the restraining order, with 92.5% voting to end the strike.[7] On February 26, the WGA announced that the contract had been ratified with a 93.6% approval among WGA members.[8]
The guilds were on strike for 14 weeks and 2 days (100 days).[9] In contrast, the previous strike in 1988, the longest in history, lasted 21 weeks and 6 days (153 days)
Now read this:
Several opinion polls gauged the public's response to the strike. One national survey conducted by Pepperdine University from November 7 to November 9 found that 84%, or more than four out of five Americans, were aware the strike was in progress.[247] While 75% of respondents [75% of that 84%, or of the total?] were found to have little to no concern over the strike, nearly two-thirds of the sample sided with the writers...
Three-quarters of the general population couldn't care less. And that's in a conspicuo
Applying the European Patent Convention might help (Score:2)
Cheryl Milone, Founder, www.articleonepartners.com (Score:1)
Europe a few decades years behind (Score:1)
As is often the case, Europe is a few decades behind the US. You can expect the patent system to deteriorate in Europe until whatever the fix that the US comes up with will be adopted in Europe as well.
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You evidently were never proper introduced to Miss Alotta Fagina.
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