11–20 of 76 posts
(patent application) = (original science/engineering document) + (lawyer) In my experience, the (lawyer) part of this fucks the document up so much that it's too depressing to contemplate, and I just let whatever meaningless bastardization of the original go the patent office.
These are pure evolutionary pressures from rational entrepreneurs that are subject and victim to this IP system
Patents are primarily about getting a limited time monopoly. Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system. So please stop marketing it like that. In many cases it is completely irrelevant because the invention is sold and can be reverse engineered. Also: > Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole poi…
Nope. Patents have always been about encouraging public disclosure of secrets. This has been the case since they were invented by the Venetians in order to break trade guilds and their literal on-pain-of-death secret maintenance.
The idea was to offer the secret-holder a deal: if you reveal your secret, you get a significant but temporary government-enforced monopoly on use of that secret. If you don't reveal your secret, then you'll just have to hope it doesn't get leaked.
The monopoly is the tool of patent law. But the purpose of patent law is disclosure of information.
Patents are primarily about getting a limited time monopoly. Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system. So please stop marketing it like that. In many cases it is completely irrelevant because the invention is sold and can be reverse engineered. Also: > Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole poi…
Before patents, businesses depended fully on trade secret, meaning developments would be made and lost over and over, and progress on a particular technology would be a lot slower because nobody could ever build off of eachother's work. The patent system today is not really what it was meant to be, but the original patent system I think was an improvement over the status quo of the day.
Patent law, like many other economic interventions relies on claims and arguments that have little to no evidence.
I do research in computer science and in the last few years, lots of trivial and dumb patents in my field appeared out of nowhere. However, I can only assume that they really are trivial because they are written in a way to claim a lot without actually describing how any of it works. These patents have 0% information in them. What's more, they all read like a rewrite of papers that were published years ago (before th…
On the flip side, patents exist probably in part exactly because trade secrets are incredibly hard to keep. People are pretty good at reverse engineering things.
(Note: I am not trying to convey an opinion about patents with any of this conjecture, but if you want mine, I think software patents are fully bunk and other patents should not last nearly as long as they do.)
This seems unnecessarily stiffling. Can't we change this so that anyone can still use the patented tech, but at a reasonable price?
I do research in computer science and in the last few years, lots of trivial and dumb patents in my field appeared out of nowhere. However, I can only assume that they really are trivial because they are written in a way to claim a lot without actually describing how any of it works. These patents have 0% information in them. What's more, they all read like a rewrite of papers that were published years ago (before th…
I suspect the real big driving motivation is actually just to make sure the patent isn’t too narrow. If you are sinking time and money into patenting everything, it makes business sense to make it as broad as you think you can. On the flip side, patents exist probably in part exactly because trade secrets are incredibly hard to keep. People are pretty good at reverse engineering things. (Note: I am not trying to conv…
Unless you have a war chest behind you getting a patent is a huge gamble especially when your invention becomes successful. When it does those with a war chest jump in and use the PTAB to invalid your patent. You can even hear judges on Shark Tank like Damon John say/ponder on the show is a patent worth getting as he notes the PTAB issue. Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined th…
Unless you have a war chest behind you getting a patent is a huge gamble especially when your invention becomes successful. When it does those with a war chest jump in and use the PTAB to invalid your patent. You can even hear judges on Shark Tank like Damon John say/ponder on the show is a patent worth getting as he notes the PTAB issue. Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined th…
> Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined the pockets of congressmen/women to change the law from first to invent(those with money) to first to file(the true inventors with little resources/power). But it seems like the vast majority of the world uses first-to-file.
With the change in the system, my understanding is now it is 6 months after publication to challenge a patent with prior art. And thanks to the way they are worded... good luck actually finding one when it happens.
No, I've not at all done this but it would be interesting to see the percentage of patents in the US filed by individuals versus companies over the last 20-30 years.
I do research in computer science and in the last few years, lots of trivial and dumb patents in my field appeared out of nowhere. However, I can only assume that they really are trivial because they are written in a way to claim a lot without actually describing how any of it works. These patents have 0% information in them. What's more, they all read like a rewrite of papers that were published years ago (before th…