Is the patent system out of control?

Great Debates
1

Am I the only one who sees “intellectual property rights” being distorted from the premise of encouraging experimentors to simply a way for the rich to get richer?
I mean specifically that patents are getting longer in length all the time, and many patents are used mainly to keep competition out of the marketplace.

The original rationale is protecting the smaller companies from being overrun by deep-pocket competitors. Thus putting more different manufactures a place in the economy. But if it is used by monopolies for protectionism, then the result is less competition. Small companies with improvements on existing inventions are blocked from bringing out new products.

2

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s patents that are being extended, it’s copyright. The problem with patents is the expansion of things that can be patented; that is, it’s no longer specific implementations of an idea that can be patented, but the broad idea/process itself.

That said, yes, the system is broken.

3

Probably.

Patents are used to allow people and companies who invest the time and effort researching a new invention to reap the benefits from bringing that invention to market.

That is not the original rational. Patents apply to both individual investors working out of their garage and massive multinationals with billion dollar R&D budgets. Would you as a company be willing to invest millions in a new product if you knew as soon as you brought it to market, the entire world could just start making coppies of it?

Patents don’t prevent other companies from making improvements. If I have a patent on a car and all it’s original parts, that does not stop you from designing a completely new engine, or new tires that are compatitible with that car. What a patent does prevent you from doing is reverse engineering my invention, painting it pink and then calling it something else.
Maybe you could give some specific examples of what you are talking about.

4

Once again, can you provide some specific examples for discussion?

5

Amazon’s one click shopping comes immediately to mind. Then there is the recent attempt (not yet granted) to patent (I believe it’s patent; it doesn’t make sense to copyright it) a generic storyline. There was a MPSIMS thread about it, I believe. I remember a couple years ago, somebody got a patent for a software A.I. architecture that encompassed “ethics” (don’t have the cite, but still have the image on my hard disk). This is absolutely retarded; beyond the fact that no one knows how to implement such a thing, it serves to retard research in the field (which I happen to be in).

There are plenty of other examples, software and business processes in particular. If you really wish me to dig some up, it’ll take a bit; I have to finish up a paper that I’m behind on. I hope some other people will come along to fill your request in the meantime.

6

You’re setting up a strawman. He’s not arguing for abolishing patents, just that the system no longer reflects the original rationale.

And again, it’s the expansion of patents away from specific and non-obvious implementations that is the problem. Take one-click shopping; not only is it completely obvious to programmers and non-programmers alike, it is so broad as to limit any implementation. It’s not like one has to reverse engineer the process; it could very well be given as an exercise to any computer science undergraduate who could formulate their own solution.

7

Or, to allow complete lunatics to patent Space vehicles powered by “the pressure of inflationary vacuum state”.

8

Intermatic Timer didn’t explain very well, but he has a good point. Quite a number of software companies are taking these kinds of patents, or coming up with a ridiculously longwinded name for something really simple. In fact, they often blatantly violate patent law in making these applications, making them for things which they clearly can’t patent, because they didn’t develop them. However, the lack of review being what it is, they get the patent by default.

9

I hold a patent for strawmen.

In any case, I was simply trying to explain the rationale for patents, not make any implications as to the OPs intent.

I don’t know if it’s as cut and dry as that. If once-click shopping is something everyone is doing and Amazon decides to patent it, I don’t believe they should be allowed a patent because once-click shopping is already in the public domain. On the other hand, if they created something new that affords them a competitive advantage and everyone else is like “wow! I should have thought of that!”, that’s another story.

10

Can you give an example or two of ones that violate patent law but have been approved? I don’t know much about this.

11

Patents are supposed to be non-obvious and original.

The Amazon patent is the poster child of ridiculous patents due to it’s obvious nature.

The patent office is rubber stamping patents and only tossing them out after legal challenges.

12

There are a large number of valid complaints about the US Patent office, but the OP doesn’t really seem to have a clue as to what these are.

Certainly the patent office needs to offer more scrutiny towards incoming patents, although Orbifold, the patent which you’ve linked to isn’t nearly as stupid or general as you make it sound. Rather, it seems to be some sort of very complex EM space drive system rather than all rockets.

"6. The space vehicle of claim 1 wherein said upper rotating element and said lower rotating element are pivoted, urged to rotate by said upper means for generating an electromagnetic field, said lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and said electric motors.

  1. The space vehicle of claim 1 wherein said hollow superconductive shield is pivoted and urged to rotate by said upper means for generating an electromagnetic field, said lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and said electric motors.

  2. A method for generating pressure anomaly of inflationary vacuum state is claimed comprising the following steps, some occurring simultaneously:

providing a space vehicle comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a support structure, upper means for generating an electromagnetic field, lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, electric motors, a power source, life-support equipment, a flux modulation controller, and a crew,

generating electrical energy in said power source,

converting said electrical energy into an electromagnetic field in said upper means for generating an electromagnetic field and said lower means for generating an electromagnetic field,

converting said electrical energy into mechanical energy in said electrical motors,

rotating said upper means for generating an electromagnetic field and said lower means for generating an electromagnetic field relative to said hollow superconductive shield,

converting said electromagnetic field into a gravitomagnetic field in said hollow superconductive shield,

propagating said gravitomagnetic field outward, orthogonal to the walls of said hollow superconductive shield, and

forming a pressure anomaly of inflationary vacuum state in the area of propagation of said gravitomagnetic field, the pressure anomaly of inflationary vacuum state comprised of an area of relatively lower vacuum pressure density in front of said space vehicle and an area of relatively higher vacuum pressure density behind said vehicle,

whereby said space vehicle is urged to move from said area of relatively higher vacuum pressure density toward said area of relatively lower vacuum pressure density.

  1. The method of claim 8 wherein said pressure anomaly of inflationary vacuum state is a substantially droplet-shaped anomaly associated with lowered pressure of inflationary vacuum state provided by the propagation of a gravitomagnetic field radiating orthogonally away from the front of said hollow superconductive shield,"
13

But the EM rocket described in the patent does not yet exist, and there is no prototype to demostrate that is can exist. This is just some mental masturbation on the part of the “designer” hoping that someone, someday will fill in the rather large holes in his concept (can you say flux modulation controller?), and he can sue them for part of the profits.

14

It gets even funnier if you read some of the patents that are cited by patent 6,960,975. The earlier patents are only available as scanned images, which makes them annoying to read, but patent 3,626,606 appears to be a patent on a device to generate a “kinemassic force field” capable of generating useful work from a force other than the electromagnetic force. I haven’t read enough of the patent to be certain, but it may very well be a perpetual motion machine. (Of course, patenting perpetual motion machines is nothing new.)

15

Gosh, I don’t recall too many examples off the top of my head. But some include things like Amazon’s one-click shoooing things, or Rambus trying to patent all memories based off of an old patent which was so vague as to be meaningless.

These kinds of patents are fairly common in the tech industry. It’s not so much as case (as in the previous posts) of people patenting non-existent ideas, but people patenting things which exist only in a hazy, half-formed state. And then, of course, judges have to try and figure out if a real-time romostatic data compressor is a “device for enhancing digital whoozits with a whatzit thingamabob” from 10 years ago.

The real purpose is not patenting, either. Instead, companies use these like weapons to threaten each other and as bargaining chips. No one wants to get sued, so you try to avoid stepping on other patents. If you are sued, you want patents to counter-threaten. I’ve heard (but can’t confirm) that a few companies like IBM have used these for extortion. Oddly, Microsoft seems to be fairly honest about patents.

16

Sorry, I didn’t read it too carefully and I got the impression that they were talking about some sort of EM propulsion like the xenon/ion drive that NASA used in a probe a few years ago (Cassandra?), but this patent has expired by now anyway.

17

I’d say that the patent system is definitely broken when Bruce Schneier and Nils Ferguson in Practical Cryptography can advise, with a straight face, never reading a patent, as it would only open you to the possibility of triple damages if you are found to infringe. Their advice on how to begin fixing the system (focusing on IT specifically) is:

Seems reasonable to me, but I know very little about the matter.

18

Well approved patent violates patent law by definition, unless it has been overturned. But the complaints here have merit.

The patent office has moved from a funding from general funds model to one where patent application fees pay for the office. Examiners are thus under more pressure to approve patents quickly. I know the two patents I got ten years ago, and all other patents applied for in my group, always got an initial rejection due to some prior art. The two patents I just received, however, went through with no comments at all. From what I have read, this is common.

In the old days algorithms could not be patented, and most software was considered as algorithms. Now if you phrase your algorithm as a process, or write your application describing the operation of the patent on a computer, it becomes okay.

My old patent attorney said that non-obviousness in terms of patent law is not what the average programmer or engineer thinks of as non-obviousness, so I’d be careful about calling the one-click method non-obvious. I’m not a patent attorney, so I can’t speak specifically to this. A big issue with software patents is that prior art is not in the kind of publication the examiners look at, so someone can patent something that is well know, and they’d never know. Unless the patent owner sues, and the accused infringer fights, the patent will never be overturned. I’d expect most companies settle since it is cheaper, so the bad patents will never be exposed. I once was asked to look at a whole bunch of patents as an expert. (Nothing came of it.) From all I’ve seen, it wouldn’t surprise me if 50% or more of software patents granted in the past ten years could be overturned if there was a fight.

waterj2 is correct. If you are designing something, your attorneys strongly advise against you checking whether your new feature had been patented. Implementing it when you know about the patent is much worse than if you can show you did not know. Many design details hidden inside machines and programs could never be detected, so I suspect there are tons of infringements all over. Many large companies have agreements with other large companies, so at one place I was at they encouraged you to get patents to add to the number they had. I think at negotiating time they put all the patents from the two companies on a scale, and the one with the lighter stack paid.

With the correction that the problem is not term but what gets granted, I agree with the OP.

19

At the risk of being incredibly snarky, I’ll point out that there is a very good financial motivation for a patent attorney to point out to potential patent seekers that patent law as a whole is an issue that cannot possibly be comprehended by anyone other than a highly-paid patent lawyer.

I wish. Bruce Schneier and Nils Ferguson are correct. I merely grabbed a book off the shelf and mentioned what it said.

A twenty year term is a huge issue for anything dealing with software. Especially when accompanied by a legal process for resolving disputes that operates based on the concept of a twenty year patent. Simply put, in the world of software, it seems as if the party capable of paying more legal fees can extend any patent case to their advantage for longer than the life cycle of the product in question. So, I will contend that while the problem is not the problem, it is certainly a problem.