Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#51

Post by gohbgl »

drfuchs wrote: post #8
gohbgl wrote: post #4

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…

The whole original idea behind the patent system is that you would be granted a time-limited monopoly in exchange for making your idea “patent” (frequently pronounced “pay-tent”, and meaning “obvious”), rather than trying to maintain it as a trade secret (in the formal, legal sense). You can argue that the monopoly term is too long, or that patents are being granted on things that are already obvious, or that you don…

Adding to pbhjpbhj's reply: The name "patent" goes back to letters patent which, among other things, was the practice of monarchs granting monopolies to favored cronies. This resulted in the Statue of Monopolies in England 1624 that restricted the monarch to grant monopolies to inventors only. Going forward this would form the basis for the modern patent system in the United States. Saying that the patent system is primarily about disclosing inventions is a bait because it most often does not matter. How important is it that William C. Hooker who invented the spring mouse trap (patent US528671A) had to publish the invention? If you want to sell your invention you almost always automatically reveal the secret.

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#52

Post by nitwit005 »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #46
mschuetz wrote: post #5

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…

The patents are written with the most broad and generic claims as possible first. Then the claims are re stated like 3 or 4 times, that would seem identical, but each re statement of them adds like one or two words of detail or specifics each time down. (So maybe claim 2 won’t stand up in court, but claim 23, a derivative of 2, will, the idea that you sue for infringement of as much as possible) I’ve submitted a pate…

I read the patents that teammates filed. The lawyers were supposed to talk to the engineer to get the idea before filing, but I got the impression that process didn't always work, and they wrote something nonsensical.

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#55

Post by aloknnikhil »

I really like https://www.tdcommons.org/ as an alternative. Any idea can be published as a free for all disclosure. Additionally, it establishes prior art and prevents anyone else from patenting that idea and claiming royalty in the future.

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#56

Post by analog31 »

everybodyknows wrote: post #47
excessive wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you go to court, the presumption is that the patent is valid. The judge is unlikely to be technical, and he must assume the experts at the patent office did their job. Since the patent office basically rubber stamps anything you send to them, it's a very uphill battle to start with. In my case, we submitted lots of prior art (some over 100 years old) to the court, and of course they shared this with the plaintif…

> The patent office re-rubber stamped the new stack of paper, and the judge disregarded it during the trial. Not sure I understand this -- are you saying the judge took the PO rubber-stamp as proof that though the prior art might be related, it was not disqualifying?

Indeed, a granted patent includes a list of citations, and the presumption is that the office has found that the cited works are not disqualifying prior art. A published patent is assumed to not be self-disqualifying.

I'm not a patent lawyer, but I've been involved in this stuff, often conducting extensive prior art searches. The gold standard for prior art is a single document that teaches everything in the claims of the patent. Often, folks think that they've found prior art if they find one thing in one document and another thing elsewhere. Nope.

Now if you happen to find the pieces of a claim in different prior documents, then you may be able to demonstrate obviousness rather than prior art. For instance it's generally considered obvious to take two patented ideas and combine them together. But obviousness is profoundly harder to prove than straightforward prior art.

Meanwhile, anything that's taught in the body of the patent, can be added to the claims at a later date. Within some limitations of course. A patent can be invalidated in its entirety, and the holder can submit a completely new claim set based on the original body text.

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#57

Post by excessive »

analog31 wrote: post #56
everybodyknows wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The patent office re-rubber stamped the new stack of paper, and the judge disregarded it during the trial. Not sure I understand this -- are you saying the judge took the PO rubber-stamp as proof that though the prior art might be related, it was not disqualifying?

Indeed, a granted patent includes a list of citations, and the presumption is that the office has found that the cited works are not disqualifying prior art. A published patent is assumed to not be self-disqualifying. I'm not a patent lawyer, but I've been involved in this stuff, often conducting extensive prior art searches. The gold standard for prior art is a single document that teaches everything in the claims o…

Thank you for your reply, it does actually change how I see the prior art thing played out.

> Often, folks think that they've found prior art if they find one thing in one document and another thing elsewhere. Nope.

Still, I think there must be something profoundly broken if you find the exact math in an old book, and the new patent basically says, "do that math on a computer".

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#58

Post by echelon »

Johnyma22 wrote: post #3
paul7986 wrote: post #2

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…

If your goal is to exit early through (acquisition by a company with pre-existing complimentary war chest) then it's in your best interest to file for a patent as they can acquire and defend.

This is exactly what I intend to do with my current project. I've got a novel audio video app and want to get IP protection to help sell it.

Where can I go about finding a lawyer that knows what they're doing? How much will their services typically run?

Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy

#59

Post by Filligree »

saagarjha wrote: post #44
bnjms wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of something today’s scientists and engineers could not reverse engineer or make from scratch given a working implementation? Espionage and industry standard will get at most of it too. I don’t know trade secrets are the problem they used to be. I’ll give you moon rockets and the pyramids.

DRM software?

The same software that is regularly reverse-engineered and made useless within six months of release?
Post reply on HN