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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

#111

Post by jimmydddd »

moneywoes wrote: post #99
drschwabe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links. How do you suggest startup entrepreneurs work around the broader moral dillemma here? On one had, we shouldn't feed the flames but on the other hand - we may need a foundation of patents for defensive measure or to reaslitically compete against the likes of IBM who have a gajillion patents. And I'm aware of at least one government grant programs that requires patents apart of their application p…

> And I'm aware of at least one government grant programs that requires patents apart of their application process Any examples? Interesting, first time hearing about this

I worked with companies that were funded by DARPA and patent filings were required. This was all in defense related tech like vision systems, robotics, communications, etc. There's a special portion of a patent application where you have to disclose that government funding was involved, so it must be a common occurance. If the company decides to later change the strategy for handling pending patent applications, they needed to get DARPA approval first.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#112

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #54
dannyobrien wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative explanation is that EFF, having experienced incredible and well-funded push-back in its attempts to invalidate dumb patents, believes that this rule has been engineered to limit even further the ability of third-parties to challenge unnecessary patents. I mean, I don't want to be rude here, but it feels like "I've read the changes, I don't think they apply to EFF, so I guess the only explanation is th…

> The alternative explanation is that EFF, having experienced incredible and well-funded push-back in its attempts to invalidate dumb patents, believes that this rule has been engineered to limit even further the ability of third-parties to challenge unnecessary patents. I am expressing doubt about whether the EFF actually has a stake in these rule changes, as they very clearly state several times. The article here i…

> This rule change also came after someone essentially tried to use an IPR to extort VLSI technology and Intel.

the IPR process exists in part to combat patent trolling, which is worse than that, and happens more frequently than that, to greater harm than that -- unfortunately for the victims there, they usually aren't rich, politically-connected companies like Intel

> the new rules only limit IPRs for (a) for-profit companies (b) not currently engaged in litigation on patents that are in litigation (c) where said for-profit company is not in that field. All 3 of those have to be satisfied for your IPR to be tossed under those rules. Since the EFF is a non-profit, they should really have no problem with this.

(1) those limitations sound bad, when I want a for-profit company who is not currently litigating a patent to be able to challenge arbitrary patent trolls' IP via IPR without court costs being a barrier

(2) 'these limitations don't directly affect X, therefore X shouldn't have a problem with it' is only true if X cares about nobody but themselves, which obviously isn't true here, given EFF's track record

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#113

Post by patrec »

kbenson wrote: post #103
patrec wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US4405829A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7478074B2/en

From what I can gather, that's RSA, PageRank, and the idea of neural networks and how to train them (or some specific subset or advancement of that I think?). I agree these are novel and not something immediately obvious. I think what's happening (what always happens) is that people overreact and have a hard time finding nuance when they are upset. Amazon's one-click patent was ridiculous. Is Google's PageRank? Maybe…

Almost, the last patent is about SVMs which are a different ML learning paradigm (one that completely eclipsed neural networks for some time, for what it's worth).

> I think what's happening (what always happens) is that people overreact and have a hard time finding nuance when they are upset.

Yup. I agree that software patents, in the US at least, are a bit of a cluster-fuck, but it's evidently not true that nothing non-trivial was ever patented.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#114

Post by AlbertCory »

This seems to be an evergreen topic on HN. Everyone likes to rant, and nothing changes.

Besides @myshpa's references below, I've published several things myself, and one of them made the front page of HN:

https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/lets-vote-on-it

https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/no-source-code-no-patent (front page)

It's not inconceivable that Congress, even one as dysfunctional as this one, could eventually agree that software is not patentable subject matter. That's Ripley's "nuke it from orbit" solution.

Democrats: because software patents are a tool of rich tech companies to maintain their dominance.

Republicans: because they hate the trial lawyers, and some R's are libertarian-leaning as well. And because they hate the tech giants, too.

Write your congressman & senators. Or pick some other active form of political participation.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#115

Post by LorenPechtel »

Taywee wrote: post #67
xahrepap wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think that exemplifies why the patent system should at the very least not have the same rules and terms for physical products as for software, if it should exist for software at all. The time and capital investments to start up are just so dramatically different.

What I see is most physical patents involve something that is actually novel--the low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. Most software patents involve something that would be the expected product (or one of a small set of possible products) of assigning a software engineer to solve the problem. (To me the clearest example of this is blinking cursors. Draw by inversion or draw with a backing store--both are obvious techniques to any software professional, both were at one time patented.)

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#116

Post by shagie »

xahrepap wrote: post #102
Taywee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that exemplifies why the patent system should at the very least not have the same rules and terms for physical products as for software, if it should exist for software at all. The time and capital investments to start up are just so dramatically different.

I absolutely agree. My point was more that using Saw Stop as an illustration of the broken system is a poor one. Because I think the patent on physical tech enabled a real disruption to the status-quo. Allowing "the little guy" to establish themself as a real competitor to some huge names.

Another "working as intended" patent: Light-reflecting board game https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242

And the lawsuit over it: https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-milli...

> November 26, 2012 - Innovention Toys LLC, a company headed by a Colorado professor named Michael Larson, won its patent infringement lawsuit against MGA, Wal-Mart Stores and Toys "R" Us. A federal jury in New Orleans found that the defendants had infringed Innovention's patent on a strategy board game using lasers and mirrors.

---

Back in the days of http://www.gamecabinet.com being one of the primary sources for board games on the web you'll note a search on it: http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html

One of the things this let people do is find games that were patented, but never published.

Sid Sackson wrote in A Gamut of Games:

> The files of patents that have been granted are a fruitful hunting ground for forgotten games, although going through these files, as anyone who has ever been involved in a patent search well knows, is a time consuming job. Often the patented games are downright silly, such as a set of dominos made of rubber so that they can double as ink erasers (No. 729,489) or a sliding block puzzle with edible pieces so that a player who despairs of a solution can find collation in gratifying his stomach (No. 1,274,294). Often the patents are repetitious: There are over a thousand different baseball games.

The publishing of a patent maintains the ideas - even if they never got anywhere. If you know how to look, its an archive of decades of board games rules... written in patentease.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#117

Post by Blackthorn »

bluGill wrote: post #106
Blackthorn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US you can be sued if you have a safety system that isn't on some models and someone gets injured. check with a laywer for details. Note that despite the above, don't buy a tool without those safety features. Better to spend more now and live than get your heirs a pile of money.

Not sure about the details of that, you can definitely buy Hammer/Felder table saw products in the USA (not that I want to, given their shitty attitude about using this feature as a market segmentation tactic).

It's frustrating because I'd much rather have a proper European sliding table saw like the Robland CZ-300 II, but I don't want to give up the safety of a Sawstop system.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#118

Post by cycomanic »

JamesBarney wrote: post #39
judge2020 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to believe that all patents are at best ineffective, and at worse harmful in a globalized world, because it's not like airpods clones off aliexpress are actually being stopped at the port all too often.

I don't think this true of all patents. Patents for drugs are obviously necessary in the current environment. But software patents are definitely bogus.

It is funny that pharma is always brought up as an example for industries where patents "obviously" make sense. Pharma is in fact a pretty good example why patents don't make sense and hinder innovation.

Historically, before the homogenization of IP law, pharmaceuticals had different patent protection in different countries, ranging from very strong (the US), to weak (most of Europe) to excluded (Switzerland). The most successful and innovative pharma companies who were outspending everyone else on R&D were from Switzerland. Patentability of pharmaceuticals suddenly gave US companies a big boost and was really a lobbying success, so they managed to gain strong market positions without much innovation.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#119

Post by strbean »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #49
strbean wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rules say that a company cannot preemptively challenge a bogus patent before developing something that would infringe that patent. This would have a chilling effect on the challenge of bogus patents, which is bad for creativity and innovation, and therefore against the EFF's mission.

You should read the rules. They only apply to patents that currently have ongoing litigation and parties that are not involved in the litigation or likely to produce a product. They are a lot more narrow than you think.

> They only apply to patents that currently have ongoing litigation

No they don't. The allow the USPTO to prevent initiation of proceedings by denying petitions for IPR/PGR. The proposed discretionary denial criteria do not require that there is other ongoing litigation.

Contrived scenario:

- My company makes spoons, but I'm toying with the idea of pivoting into making keyboards.

- PatentTrollCo. is granted a patent on "a button that is connected electronically to a computing device."

- My company files for a petition for PGR on the grounds that this is not novel.

- The petition is denied: it meets all the criteria for discretionary denial listed in the comment above [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36198908

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#120

Post by Nezteb »

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…

Please set up a petition with https://resist.bot as well!
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