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Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

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Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#81

Post by joemullin »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #64
joemullin wrote: post #56

I work for EFF and wrote the text of this blog post and action. On here I speak only for myself, but a couple points I want to add. 1) EFF has only filed one IPR ever, (linked in the post), against Personal Audio, to invalidate a patent asserted against podcasting. This was crowd-funded by hundreds of people. It required years of litigation beyond the IPR process itself. 2) Patent challenges should be open to all. Th…

IPRs are pretty useful for challenging bad patents and should be very broad. However, I found myself in favor of this change, and honestly questioning the EFF's motives given how strong and personal (speaking specifically to the EFF's ability to challenge patents, not a generic third party) your expressed opinions were in this piece. I am very sympathetic to the argument that Unified Patents and other folks who offer…

I'm aware that there are allegedly "bad" IPRs including the OpenSky case. The alleged "extortion" here is that VLSI, a non-practicing entity, I believe backed by a hedge fund, would lose their 20-year government monopoly and no longer be able to seek billions of dollars in court.

I have no idea who or what OpenSky is, and I don't weigh in on huge corporate cases like VLSI v. Intel where everyone has plenty of money for their own representation.

But it's really wild to me that this alleged "abuse" (that could lead to the loss of... a patent) immediately got the attention of officials, who are taking rapid action. Yet there are thousands of victims of patent troll extortion every year. These extortions are real, and documented, and hurt businesses that are much much smaller than VLSI. (and operate actual businesses, which AFAIK VLSI does not).

But here's the value proposition: It's just not wrong to challenge a government subsidy or monopoly. Period. Especially on computer software and hardware, because they're often wrongly granted.

Even if you accept that the OpenSky situation is the moral equivalent of patent trolling (I absolutely do not), it's happened to patent owners ONE time. (Maybe a few others, but it's a count-on-your-fingers thing). I wish people extorted by patent trolls for real money got 1/100th the attention of the tiny numbers of patent owners who lost (or almost lost) their patent monopolies.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#82

Post by gorjusborg »

BSEdlMMldESB wrote: post #13

so which is it? "patents" being used by trolls? or American Corporations protecting their investments? I remember when I realized why software patents are not going away any time soon; it was the same thought that I had when I tried to consider the quantity (amount) of dollars represented as 'valuable assets' in IBM's finances; assets which are just software patents.

This is one of the problems with 'Corporations are people' and 'Money is free speech'.

Once a revenue source is generated, there are now 'persons (corporations)' with very loud 'speech (money for lobbying)' that start attempting to influence law.

Governments are a collection of people that are hopefully optimizing toward the benefit of the people. I don't see how patent trolls benefit anyone that doesn't draw a paycheck directly from it.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#83

Post by [deleted] »

hutzlibu wrote: post #51
contravariant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it is the obvious choice for medicine, but is it really the best option? Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? Is it worth prioritising new patentable discoveries over other ones like making drugs cheaper or using them more effectively?

"Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? " We have. Public funded (also via universities) and donation based research. But investment money is kind of big and if it would suddenly disappear, it will hurt current research as most (?) of it is dependant on it. But all that money would not necessarily disappear, when patents suddelny gets abolished, as there is also the option of increased secrecy. Meaning…

[deleted]

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#84

Post by varispeed »

myshpa wrote: post #6

Why Software Patents are Bad, Period. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0027 Patents are out of control, and they’re hurting innovation https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/patents-are-out-of-control... Economic and Game Theory Against Intellectual Monopoly https://web.archive.org/web/20120121014753/https://levine.ss... PATENTS AND INNOVATION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2016-moser.pdf Historical rec…

Hardware patents are bad too. Even more bad are those that cover both hardware and simulation of hardware in software domain.

For example, someone "invented" a circuit that lets you control an analogue filter parameters in a certain way. Then also was granted patent for a software that mimics behaviour of such circuit. As if someone found a loophole to patent mathematical formulas.

Either people that grant patents are dumb or I don't know.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#85

Post by kevincox »

d--b wrote: post #74
linuxhansl wrote: post #68

I have a challenge out to all my friends: "Show me one, just one, software patent that is not obvious to someone skilled the field, and I will stop my annoying diatribes about how bad software patents are." To this day I have yet to see to a useful software patent.

Patents become obvious the second they're out. This is exactly why they exist. But coming up with the stuff in the first place is what's hard. I worked in video coding back in the day, I can assure you that there are stuff in the HEVC codec that are pretty far from obvious. AlphaGo is pretty high up there too if you ask me. Whether patenting software is useful or not is a different debate...

I completely agree.

Patents should be contrasted with trade secrets as that is their main "competitor". Is it useful to the general public to be shown the details of a new technology, but have it's use restricted for 20 years? Or is it more useful to prevent blocking of technology but these are going to be kept as trade secrets instead?

From my point of view patents are probably harmful here. Having people be inspired and come up with alternative (or rediscover the same) implementations is probably going to lead to much better for the public than actually learning exactly how the original company did it in exchange for 20y of exclusivity (and all of the pain that enforcing the exclusivity brings).

Remember that unlike copyright patents are not about encouraging the creation of work or innovation. They are a trade of information to the public for a period of exclusivity. For software that tradeoff seems far to far in the inventors favor.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#86

Post by GoblinSlayer »

dathinab wrote: post #16

If I where a US citicens I would want whoever is resposible for it to be fired and investigated for corruption. Because you need to either be severely incompetent to a point of by far not being qualified to do your job or corrupt to come up with that. If you do a bit research into the patent system it becomes clear that if anything challenging being to difficult and expensive is a problem not the other way around.

AIU USPTO is corrupt by design: its incentive is its own commercial interest.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#87

Post by Blackthorn »

xahrepap wrote: post #52
rocqua wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could imagine patents limited to physical designs, with a lifespan of say 5 years to actually be beneficial to innovation. Perhaps also a requirement to license patents at a 'reasonable rate'. I'm thinking of the 'sawstop' and 'festool domino' woodworking tools here. Which are important innovations that were probably motivated by patents, but whose patents have run long.

I actually think that Sawstop (in general. Might be some details that are bogus) is a great example of the patent system working as intended. The inventor reached out to several saw makers to license his new invention. None of them took it seriously. So he went and started a company with his new patent and became successful. Then other companies (Bosch specifically) tried to rip his tech off after they saw how effect…

Sawstop is a fabulous example. After the patent expired too, what are those other companies doing? Well, when I looked into European table saws last year, they started using it as a market segmentation tactic and putting stop tech only on their upper tier of $$$ saws. Disgusting. Felder, go fuck yourselves.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#88

Post by CodesInChaos »

yebyen wrote: post #55
ImHereToVote wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well obviously. How else could publicly funded research be price gouged?

"Obviously." I like how this is the argument for drug patents, and if you don't just simply agree with this, the only real other option is to accuse the person arguing that it "obviously" is the right decision of arguing in bad faith. ...because it's an argument in bad faith? I too don't see why drug patents are "obvious" or clear case that it is helpful enough to be in the public interest to maintain drug patents. I…

I believe the original insulin is cheaply available. But newer, faster acting, variants which are easier to administer are still patented.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#89

Post by GoblinSlayer »

gregman1 wrote: post #14
myshpa wrote: post #6

Why Software Patents are Bad, Period. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0027 Patents are out of control, and they’re hurting innovation https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/patents-are-out-of-control... Economic and Game Theory Against Intellectual Monopoly https://web.archive.org/web/20120121014753/https://levine.ss... PATENTS AND INNOVATION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2016-moser.pdf Historical rec…

There are no software patents in EU (maybe even in the whole Europe) with exception for specially designed hardware. Idk how that works.

When hardware is designed to be controlled by software, then you can't exclude software from the patent, because such patent would describe nonworking hardware. But that software isn't patentable separate from hardware.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#90

Post by Zigurd »

wongarsu wrote: post #78
lend000 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have enforceable NDA's, keep things as trade secrets, and have a well built organization that simply continuously out-innovates AND out-executes the competition. I think patents are okay, but the maximum duration should be 5 years and there needs to be some proof of utilization of the patent to sue for damages. 20 year patents are ridiculous, and it seems like even in the 1800's that should have been cons…

It should probably depend on the product type. I get 20 year parents for medicine where research is expressive and time-to-market is long. But for most fields 5-10 years is plenty to make back your R&D investment and make a profit. And after your patent expires you still have the first-mover advantage

Pharma "research" categorization of expenses is maximized. In part to create sympathy for long patent terms, in part to obscure the role of government funded research underlying many pharma products, and in part to maximize tax benefits.
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