Whatever products we use, I think we can all agree that the United States patent system and the US Patent and Trademark Office need a serious overhaul. Not only has the USPTO a history of granting ridiculous patents (massive prior art, obviousness, incredibly vague, the USPTO grants them all), it also has a backlog of about 750000 patent applications. The USPTO now has a plan to combat these issues – sadly, they once again display their utter incompetence.
The main issue the USPTO wants to address is the frankly laughable backlog of patent applications – 750000 of them, to be exact. It currently takes 35 months from application to grant; the USPTO wants to reduce this to just 12 months. Very ambitious, but also very welcome. What isn’t welcome, however, is their proposed solution.
To combat this problem, you can do one of two (or both) things. First, you can lower standards, and grant more patents. It turns out that the USPTO is indeed doing this: the amount of patents granted per week has jumped 35% since last year. This is a bad thing because the quality of patent applications surely hasn’t jumped 35% since last year, meaning more vague and troublesome patents have been granted.
Now, the second method to address the problem is to cut down on the number of patent applications, and indeed, this is where the USPTO is planning some potentially disastrous changes. They are planning to drastically increase the patent application and maintenance fees so less applications will be filed. The USPTO’s goal is to reduce the amount of patent applications by 40%.
Sadly, increasing the fees will seriously hurt smaller-to-medium businesses – while not posing much of a problem for large companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. This could prevent small companies from innovating, because they wouldn’t be able to pay for a patent anyway.
“Large companies become the beneficiaries because they have free access to the work of smaller companies, though the reverse would not be true,” writes Erik Sherman for BNet, “Large companies will be able to freeze smaller ones out, making the changes an innovative and competitive train wreck.”
Some of you might be wondering why I pay so much attention to things like this. Well, it’s pretty obvious; not only has a lot of competition moved away from the market and into the court room, it’s also the case that the technology industry benefits from a healthy environment in which innovation flourishes.
It seems like large companies are trying to do just about anything to create an environment hostile to innovation. In the meantime, the USPTO, most likely one of the most incompetent US government organisations, is trying just as hard to accommodate these large companies (intentionally or no).
If you value innovation and a fast-evolving technology world where the little guy can revolutionise the market, then you’ll most likely share my concerns.
Once again our government shows its incompetence. Personally, I suspect that at this point the only way to ever get the US government back on track is to purge it completely and start back at the original constitution. We’ve drifted so far away from the original intent of our government it’s outright laughable. Hmm, wonder how long it’s gonna take for them to come break down my door for saying that?
I think They will let you slide on that one.
It’s not like you posted pictures of a cellphone or anything like that.
rather than have the cost be the same for everyone, they should make it dependent on how much the company or person makes. They can then set patent cost at around 5% of ones yearly income and be done with it.
Alternately, we just abolish the patent system because it’s a huge mess that no longer makes any sense.
1. While there needs to be better screening of things, the patent system makes far more sense than the alternative.
2. Your idea of charging 5% of yearly income per patent is patently stupid: it will not at all help anything for the patent office, since as soon as you start putting such stupid rates in, companies will declare a tax writeoff, ad perhaps will go to such measures of filing all patents in a batch, keeping in mind that then they’ll claim they had no income, or (better yet) a loss, and therefore… what, getting paid for submitting patents? In addition, while it may seem at first to provide a leg-up for “the little guy” where do you think most of the worthless patents come from in the first place?
What? Stupidity has also been patented?
Yes, indeed. I think I am the patent holder, still. It is a hotly contested patent, with nearly 300 million others jostling for ownership rights.
Thankfully, or perhaps tragically, we all have the same lawyer: Obama.
–The loon
EDIT: hrm…
Edited 2010-05-09 02:38 UTC
And how hard would it be to cheat this system, dead simple. Actually whole situation would be worse since it would create more patent troll companies that exists merely to pump money from big corporates. Most of the patents are so hard to accomplish by mere person that it would choke of innovation.
And make millions of people unemployed? R&D is one of the biggest employer in western countries since production has moved to china and other cheap places. Patents protect those inventions. If it takes couple of years to innovate something new how long you think it takes to ape it, 5mins. What sane company would spend money or time on R%D when some chinese firm full of apes will come same product in 5mins? Compete with product that needs to cover R&D and production against something that has just production costs, which one you think is going to cost less? Or maybe we all can be employed by Greece goverment.
Stop awarding so many patents and people will stop filing patent applications every time they take a novel new shit.
If they have people trying to come up with ways to fix the backlog problem, and this ended up being their brilliant solution, they must have consciously rejected the idea of stricter patent criteria. They didn’t just not think of it – they actively rejected it.
Edited 2010-05-08 18:27 UTC
Higher patent fees would seem like a good thing. If they were very expensive to file, less frivolous crap would be patented. Perhaps we would have someone competent screening the patents as well.
If you need patent system to innovate, please stop innovating. World will be better off that way.
Higher pattent fees will not solve the problem. Microsoft has thousends of weak, vague, obvious, meanigfull patents ie: submit button ….
Have anyone looked current patent fees? Investigating journalist Thom? Anyone? Well fuck they are cheap! Actually it’s cheaper than in Europe(compared to fees in Finland). Plus they already give 50% of for small business! “OMG how did he find this!”, “It didn’t read in article?!”, “He must be magician or some guru”. Answer: “Use the intrenutz, n00bs!”
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september15.htm#p…
You call those small amounts? You do realise that to have an effective patent, you do need more than just the first filing fee, right? There’s maintenance, possible re-issue, patent search fees domestic, patent search fees international, and so on, and so forth. When put together, those add up.
I didn’t do the actual calculation, but adding everything up (and in today’s global economy, you’re going to need to investigate if your “invention” has been patented in Europe or Asia as well) it looks like 10000-15000 USD per patent. That’s a hell of a lot of money.
And certainly not “cheap”.
Ofc they add up, that’s the point. If your invention is really bad and don’t have much market value it shouldn’t be patented first place, system works. It’s same as starting own company, it isn’t cheap. And like in business you need to find financing outside, thus so called business angels. If you have really good invention you can get outside money to finance patenting and other stuff. Having high patent fees will cut out so called “patent fishers” who patent everything just to see if they get catch. Plus keep mind that all this paper work costs.
I’m prosecuting several patents at the moment. The USPTO fees are NOTHING compared to the attorney fees necessary to process a patent.
The USPTO fees would have to increase an order of magnitude just to double the total cost.
As for the backlog, I’m not convinced it is a bad thing to allow time for more prior art to be declared and accumulate.
That said, the US software patent policy _is_ very broken.
It’s a crazy situation we’ve got ourselves into. So here’s a crazy idea:
Why not invalidate all patents. That way the competition will only be on the quality of implementation (or integration). Personally, I think this would work very well for the consumer, and stop companies getting lazy on delivering a good product/good value for money just because they have a period of insulation from competition due to patents. It works in Open Source.
A less crazy idea – small organisations, individuals should get cheap patents. Patents should be prices in accordance with the size of the organisation. This would also stop the larger offenders from throwing too many silly patents at the patent office. Makes sense to me – it targets the problem, and doesn’t negatively affect the man in the street.
The USPTO doesn’t really want to solve the problem.
It’s obvious that they are in the pocket of big compagnies.
OMG OMG here is another crazy idea, why don’t you do some investigation before posting comments. Look small business and individuals already PAY LESS than big companies. Fuck you had crazy idea that they are already using it! Holyshit it’s fucking deja vu or some LSD trip.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september15.htm#p…
Or, we could go back to patenting only real inventions, and not let people patent business process or software. That would cut down the backlog.
If they are processing them at a rate 35% greater than before, then you would expect 35% more patents granted than last year. Without both those numbers its not possible to tell if their has been any change in the quality of the review process.
http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10007525/web-video-wars-apple-a…
Sorry, but no one is planning to kill off Firefox and Opera.
Too bad the author didn’t bother to realize Opera supports H.264 and the fact Mozilla refuses H.264 does not mean it’s a conspiracy to rid the world of XUL.
Whoever says the fees for the Patent office need to go up as a solution is only asking for the problem to become worse, not better.
If I’ve got $50 Billion to burn I’ll have no problem spending more on patent applications.
We all know the system is in dire need of an overhaul, but I don’t see it happening until the entire global patent system flushes out frivolous patents across the board and raises the standards to an agreed upon level of minimum requirements.
But with big application fees, the risk that someone competent reviews the application and rejects it is much bigger.
Look! It’s a unicorn!
Exactly how big is a “big application fee”? The most likely scenarios is that either it’s not big enough to deter frivolous patents or it’s so big that only big companies can afford it, leaving actual innovators unable to apply.
Considering the damage patents cause to other companies (reducing the innovation), it should be very big. If little companies can’t afford to apply, then they should just sell the tech to a big company that can.
If we use the following system :
-Have patents owned by some individuals who asked for one rather than immaterial things like companies.
-Make its property non-transferable.
-When every inventor is dead, put the invention in public domain, and forbid new patents on it
Wouldn’t it solve much patent issues ? Including raising amount of patents ?
I believe in the original intent of the patent©right system : allow original inventors of a product or technique to get some financial benefit for their ideas. That’s the capitalistic way of encouraging innovation, and it works pretty well without needing a complete government overhaul so according to Occam it’s fine. But the way it’s currently implemented, it slows down innovation instead of helping it…
Edited 2010-05-08 22:38 UTC
There’s a potential major problem with a patent expiring immediately after all listed inventors die, though perhaps you’ll think this is too much Hollywood: then inventors that patent anything worthwhile that’s profitable would have a much larger price on their heads, since killing them would make it easier to snatch that business. Then, of course, there’s the other solution: assign it to a business, which is an entity that (if run correctly) has a lifespan far exceeding that of any human. So, no, there would need to be some future expiration date beyond the last inventor’s death, at least up until the normal expiration date of the patent as currently done, or at least something consistent with all other patents. Remember, patents aren’t copyrights, and don’t keep getting extensions put on them.
I have two objections.
1/Maybe I’m being a little idealistic, but I don’t think that in the world where we live, companies would get to the point of killing people in occidental countries in order to make money, except in very rare occasions (e.g annoying politics).
2/What prevents several people from filling the patent ? It’s pretty rare that only one man/woman participated to the development of something…
Then, it’s true that if there’s already a length limitation…
…sounds fair. However non-transferability is needed in order to get rid of patent trolls and other big non-innovative companies.
What about min(life of the people involved, current patent lifetime), then ?
Edited 2010-05-09 07:26 UTC
Well, patents expire 20 years after the application was filed. That is 14 years for design patents. Once a patent expires, it cannot be granted again, and extensions can only be granted by a special act of congress.
I think it’s obvious now: the USPTO is all about money. It’s a self-supporting business. In order to remain profitable, they need to charge as much as the market will bear, and grant as many patents as possible, regardless of the horrible consequences for small businesses and independent software developers.
Just like all the fraudulent casinos on Wall Street (Goldman-Sachs, now-defunct Lehman Brothers, etc), software patents are good for the economy because they “create jobs” – for somebody. Everyone else comes out the losers. But in the end, the smoking ruin of the economy means we all lose.
Maybe they should go back to the way it used to be, where a person had to actually have a working prototype before requesting a patent. That alone would drop the load considerably. For software patents, they should be kicked to the curb anyway as there is only so many ways to do math.
The USPTO should have royalties on patents. When patented products are sold, the money goes to the USPTO….that money is used to hire more skilled people to review patents and reject any that are pure BS. Software should NEVER be patented…. it is already under copyright law. It should only be possible to patent a physical object or mechanism. They should also require renewal with additional review for each of the 20 years that they can be renewed, and the renewal should require a shipping product, or an updated prototype.
The best solution is to remove all patents. Products in the marketplace must be able to keep marketshare based on continuing innovation and brand name recognition, not because they’re literally the ONLY product of that type around (and the product hasn’t been updated since the patent was granted 5 years ago).
Competition is a good thing. Patents stifle it.
Well, I see a problem with that sir : how are you encouraging people to go into the research and innovation area ? Some people like me will want to go through the PhD pain just because they love it, but for most people, studying more in order to get paid less sounds quite idiotic. And it’s not better on a management side : innovation is, by its very nature, a very risky investment that rarely gets reimbursed. Without patents, it makes even less money and hence sounds even more risky.
This is not to say that this problem doesn’t already exist. To the contrary, about each time a brand got a monopoly somewhere, we saw innovation quickly disappear (e.g : see Office versions from the 90s to 2003, before OpenOffice started to look like a serious threat). Public research that is independent of any merchantability issue is the only way to get rid of this effect, but it can’t have a look at every research problem around. Patents are a workaround, but a needed one I think.
Edited 2010-05-09 07:11 UTC
I am wondering if it not a question of duration…
Shortening the duration of the software patents could be a solution?
This makes inventions taking advantage on a market, and then, as soon of the patent is closed, other companies can implement freely (yes, -really- without royalties) the invention.
The patent system comes from another age, more than two centuries, but today everything goes so fast, communications, etc., but also… ROI.
I agree with you. A car technology being patented for 20 years is not an issue, as an example, because car technology is already mature and probably won’t move any further (especially on these days where we begin to see that using fossil fuels is a bit nearsighted). However, computer science is still far from getting to this point.
However, how could you adapt durations in a non-arbitrary fashion ?
What about car computers are they part of mature car industry or computer industry? What about ECS, ABS and other new shit that they invent all time? What if aunt has balls doesn’t it make her uncle?
Of course it screws small companies, the current government doesn’t work for the benefit of the people or for small companies, it exists to help big companies increase their profits.
Why not privatize the patent office? Give these lawyers some real work to do by validating patents instead of just suing to invalidate them and/or defending them. That way things would get done faster, fees would occur with a bidding process and lawyers could offer a real enforcement mechanism with private patent insurance and other fee for services to defend the patent. The government can’t do anything as well as private business. Think of the people that could be employed in this new industry! If you need government oversight, you could have the government review the end product that comes out of the private review process. Makes sense to me at least.
Edited 2010-05-10 12:33 UTC