Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t patent licensing optional? I believe you can’t compel a patent owner to give you a license. If a patent owner decides it’s in his interest to keep anyone form using his patent, he can do so.
It doesn’t work that way with songs. A songwriter has the legal right to choose who can release his song first. But after that, anyone can release their own version of the song by paying the songwriter a fee. The songwriter can’t pick and choose who sings his songs and can’t pull a song off the market.
Yes it’s optional. An inventor can leverage a license if someone was caught infringing- pay a license or we sue- but it’s absolutely optional on both sides.
I’m completely unfamiliar with how the music industry works.
All you need to get a patent is to file the patent paperwork. There is no need for a working prototype or implementation of any kind. I think they only require a prototype for extraordinary claims like a perpetual motion machines and stuff like that.
And no one else sees this as a problem? If you don’t have a prototype, not even a few experimental mockups of the basic functions, how can you be said to have invented anything?
Anybody can toss out ideas like “rocket powered fishing pole” but basic ideas aren’t (or at least shouldn’t be) patentable. How can you distinguish between ideas and inventions without at least some evidence that the idea has been tried? Some verification that the basic functions have been shown to work?
In my opinion, if the concept is simple enough that you can verify it works without any experimentation or prototyping at all, it shouldn’t be patentable. This is how we get stupid patents like “lists of products for sale… but on a computer!”.
I would have a usage time limit after which a patent expires. Say 7 years after the filing. At the end of this period you have to show actual use by yourself or through license , and if you do the patent then continues to be valid for the full period otherwise its in the public domain.
Patents have maintenance fees to keep them in effect. So if your patent hasn’t been turned into a money making product it becomes expensive to keep it in effect. Much more for the individual than a large coporation but then that is true for the patent system as a whole.
If the invention doesn’t work it really doesn’t matter if anyone builds one or not. Patent protection is supposed to be an incentive for inventors to invent. Without such protection inventors are less likely to produce, or even publicize their invention. There are a lot of reasons an inventor may not produce the invention, it may not be practical to construct, it might be an intermediate step towards another invention, there may be no demand, it’s rare that a useful practical invention is not produced.
One of the problems here is pharmaceuticals, where between clinical trials and lab testing you could burn up most of your 20 year patent before you bring it to market.
I think just making a good faith effort to do so should be enough. If you’re still building your factory, if you’re still presenting the concept to manufacturers, if you’re still working out kinks in the lab, you should still get the patent. It’s when you just sit on it with zero effort to create the invention where you should forfeit the patent. Or at least, like I said before, make “the patent owner has made zero effort to produce this for X years” a legal defense against patent infringement.
If it isn’t practical to construct or there’s no demand, then what’s the harm in someone else producing it?
My concern isn’t that the patent won’t work, it’s that the patent owner didn’t even try to find out. If you don’t even put your idea to the test, you can’t be said to have invented anything. Making sure it works is a necessary part of invention.
I can see how one might want to file for a patent before the kinks are all worked out. But that’s different than making zero effort to produce it at all. Your examples, using it as an intermediate step towards another invention, studying the market to see if there’s a demand, creating mockups to see if the invention is feasible to produce, etc., are all things I would consider “making an effort”. Evidence that you are doing so should be enough to rule out my proposed patent infringement defense of “not making an effort”.
A lot of patents are only really useful in combination with other patents. Lets say I file a patent for new touch screen technology, what do I market? Am I supposed to start my own cell phone company?
Or, lets say I patent a new way to encrypt and verify the transmission of 16 numerical digits, do I have to start my own credit card processing company?
Why can’t I simply invent stuff (what I am good at) and wait for someone else to come to me, instead of having to develop products based on that invention (something I may not be good at) or market those inventions (something I may very well be horrible at). After all anyone can go to the patent office and see what I invented, can’t they? Maybe they will have a cool idea about how to use my new technology that I never even thought of. Or is it too much to ask these multinational corporations to do that?
If I own the rights to the beatles songs, I can license it to an outfit like ASCAP or BMI to keep track of public performances of my music and collect and forward royalties to me (minus their fees). Outfits like BMI and ASCAP have so many licenses that I can go to them and license out practically any song I want.
However, the artist is not required to license their music to ASCAP and can pull songs from their portfolio (they can also ask ASCAP to restrict access to their songs so that people they don’t like can’t use it but ASCAP can tell them no and then the artist is left with either leaving the song with ASCAP or pulling the song).
Or at least that is the way I understand it.
So the only real difference is that there is a clearinghouse for song licenses that doesn’t exist for other songs.
Might a compromise be to put in some sort of “requirement to actually do something with it” only upon sale/transfer? That way if I invent a new way to do WiFi, I can hold on to it myself. Or I can sell it to a company that actually produces wireless equipment and that’s fine as well, since they’ll presumably make things with it. But those companies that just sit there and buy patents in order to license and/or sue for settlements, those guys would go away because they are neither the actual inventors nor are they actively making things with it.
Well, there’s something in that. If somebody had beaten Edison to primacy on the electric filament light we might never have had practical home electricity. Inventing the bulb was one thing, but Edison might have been the only person with the vision to put together the plan, the financing, the marketing campaign and so on (and, it has to be said, he might have been the only one with the killer instinct).
The linked website does discuss some limits. First, this is all based on American law; other countries have different laws. Second, songs from musicals and operas have different laws. Third, you must cover the original song; a license can be denied if you make changes. Fourth, this only covers performances and recordings, it doesn’t cover other usages of a song; a songwriter can deny the use of his song if the cover is being used in a movie or television show, for example. That requires a synchronization license, which can be denied.
Perhaps all patents should be process patents. I believe that would cut down on patent trolling. Instead of patenting the idea of say email delivered to a handheld device, one would need to patent the process for making that idea happen. If someone else innovates that process in a way that is substantially different than the existing patent, then boom problem solved. With pharmaceuticals, it would no longer be patenting a compound, but rather the manufacturing process for making that compound.
This. I have four patents, none of which would ever be a standalone product. The people in my group at Bell Labs filed oodles of patents (we got a plaque for the first one, then a framed certificate) none of which were products per se. People in this thread seem to have the cartoon/19th century view of an inventor sitting in the patent office with a box. That isn’t how it works these days.
Modern products contain tons of patentable processes and components. And probably violate tons of patents. These are seldom challenged unless by patent trolls or for significant significant business reasons (Apple versus Samsung.) It is a very expensive procedure.
Extremely highly likely. One of the first things you learn when working on a project is never, ever look up patents you might be infringing. Infringing knowingly is worse than infringing without know of prior art. In many cases it is hard or impossible for a patent owner to look inside a complex product to see if there is infringement or not. It would be expensive and have a low RoI. Especially because they are probably infringing themselves.
25 years ago my patents and the patents from my group always got rejected the first time we submitted them for prior art. Then we worked with our patent attorney to show that the examiner did not understand the differences, and we almost always got it approved the second time. (The best case was when the prior art was from another member of my group. My patent attorney loved that one.)
10 years ago both patents I filed went through the first time. My understanding is that the PTO now lives on filing fees, and thus does not want to discourage filing. So, the approve and let the courts decide if it ever comes to that.