Submitted by “The House on Wednesday took up the most far-reaching overhaul of the patent system in 60 years, a bill that leaders in both parties said would make it easier for inventors to get their innovations to market and help put people back to work. The legislation, supported by the Obama administration and a broad range of business groups and high tech companies, aims to ease the lengthy backlog in patent applications, clean up some of the procedures that can lead to costly litigation and put the United States under the same filing system as the rest of the industrialized world.” In other words, more protection for large companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, and an increasing number of nonsense patents due to faster application procedures.
It’s going to make it easier to file for patents. It isn’t going to fundamentally change the applicability or usage of patents.
Unfortunately the press release had no details at all.
Given the direct reference to the major software companies, I guess this reform is aiming to officially recognize software patents in the US (previously they were never explicitly permitted by congress, they just evolved that way through case law).
<sarcasm>Thanks for watching out for public interests; More corporate ownership of software ideas is just what we need to spawn job creation.</sarcasm>
…although honestly it reads to me as quite slanted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_Invents_Act
The main positive in this, IMO, is making it easier to challenge bogus patents out of court. It also seems like patents will be more liberally granted – moving to first-to-file seems to provide incentive for rapid filing. The question is how these two elements will work together: will the net result be fewer enforceable patents of questionable value or more?
As I’ve opined here before, I don’t believe large tech firms stand to benefit from large numbers of enforceable patents. The large tech companies have formed a coalition which aims to wind a lot of this back considerably. See
http://www.patentfairness.org/learn/who/supporters/
http://www.patentfairness.org/learn/what/
I don’t see it ?
In the new system you do not even need to invent something. You can just patent someone else ideas, because that someone just was willing to give it the to world and don’t want to make money for it.
And than ask the inventor to pay for a patent for using his own ideas.
Why is this a better system ? looks like a ideal system for patent trolls ,or for companies with a lot of money but no original inventions.
Or do I read the text for the new system wrong ?
This system is already in use in most countries.
For over 50 years Mercedes-Benz has allowed all their safety patents (eg passenger safety cells, anti-burst locks, seatbelt pre-tensioners etc) to be used by other manufacturers free of charge. MB only patented these inventions to prevent other less scrupulous manufacturers lodging similar patents.
In Sweden you cannot patent something that is “out in the wild”. If you give a public demonstration before filing for the patent then you are screwed. Once its out its out.
I thought this was common sense and standard procedure…
There are some days when i wish the ENTIRETY of the rest of the world was as sensible as the those in certain parts of europe
Acknowledged.
Reminds me of how I usually take all good features from my favorite applications and put them into a single application that has all the features I want.
Maybe we shall do so with a nation… If only the hard life offered the same ease of creation.
The concept you are referring to is called “prior art” and is present in the US also, with the slight caveat that the original inventor has one year from the public demonstration to file for the patent.
Yes, of course. But how would this change prior art? If I am to understand korrel correctly then it would drastically change this.
If there’s one change I want to make to the judicial system in the US it would be this:
Make the looser pay for the winners costs in civil matters.
If you threaten me with your patent and I feel that your patent is bogus I can challenge you and if I win, I won’t loose any money, which I shouldn’t, because when the patent was declared invalid so was your threat and thus, it shouldn’t have costed me anything to call your bluff.
That’s the one change I would love to make. Oh, and do I need to tell you that we have it like this in Sweden. I may have a lot to complain about but there are some things that we actually do right.
In the US, it is possible to have the loser pay for the winner’s court costs. I don’t think it is an automatic ruling, but it is possible.
But that really isn’t the big problem. The big issue is that all parties have to get to the end of the court process to find out who the winner and loser are. Getting to the end requires resources. This is actually a common tactic, I think: a big corporation bogs the court process down in an attempt to “wait-out” the opponent who has less money. This turns into classic siege situation: the winner is determined by who has the most resources to intelligently expend.
So, you get threatened with a patent and you feel the patent is bogus; the only way to become the winner in the court room is to go through the whole court process. Yes, you may not end paying anything in the end, but you have to pay for the interim court costs until then (you have to eat as well). Having a guarantee that you will pay nothing out of pocket “in the end” to call someone’s bluff is not enough; you actually have to have enough resources to get to the end of the court process. If you don’t have the resources to get to the end of the court process, you give up and you lose and get nothing in return. In fact, you get double-screwed: you had to pay for a court process that ultimately netted you nothing except expended resources, and now you have to pay resources to be compliant with a “bogus” patent.
But maybe your system collects no money until the court process is over? A practice like that would help mitigate at least the financial resources required for a court process. There would still be the legal quagmire to swim through which may or may not require non-monetary resources to deal with.
I am also with the camp that is not sure how this new patent system will help. I will have to do a lot more reading to figure that out. However, of this I am sure: if there are any loopholes that allow big and private corporations to push around those with less resources, the system will be no improvement. Whatever benefits come from the system will be swallowed up by the exploitation of the loopholes.
Edited 2011-06-24 16:06 UTC
That’s certainly an interesting take. I am not sure how it works in civil matters but in criminal law you pay the lawyer after the trial if you loose. In civil matters it may be “pro bono” or not, or it may depend on the lawyer, I am not sure. But if it is up to the lawyer/law firm you may get it pro bono if the case is cut clear (which some of these extortions are). However, I second that the best way would be to always have to pay after the trial is over. But, this is the world, and not my personal utopia.
I believe they added “first inventor to file” to the bill. So, it is basically just like it is now.
This law will do *nothing* to change the patent system. It is congress wasting our money so they can jerk off.
Edited 2011-06-24 11:33 UTC