The USPTO is still granting software patents despite Alice.
Is there a way to make them stop?
Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
181–190 of 219 posts
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patentable tech doesn't have to be from the ground up. If you design something that solves a problem that wasn't solvable prior to your invention - regardless of the tech it is based on - it definitely qualifies for a patent.
> Patentable tech doesn't have to be from the ground up. If you design something that solves a problem that wasn't solvable prior to your invention - regardless of the tech it is based on - it definitely qualifies for a patent. I asked twice what specific patentable tech they invented and you declined to answer. It is a straw man to suggest I was arguing against about any specific thing being patentable.
I thought it was clear it was the whole architecture, piping deep neural nets and monte carlo search together and using reinforcement learning on the whole thing is not something that had been done before.
That guy:
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3459018A1/en?oq=EP345901...
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I see where you're coming from, but I would suggest that this is pretty much an extremist point of view on intellectual property protections. It's easy to say that the online shopping cart is a dumb patent (because it is, an…
>By the way, VLSI is the remains of a real technology company that went out of business... because its IP was blatantly copied. They had no choice but to sell out to a patent troll. Ding ding ding - people don't seem to understand how the business model actually works... real inventors have to sell out, because unless they sell their stake in a litigation to a financier, they outright cannot afford to litigate an inf…
This. A patent is a ticket to a court battle. If you can't afford the court battle then the patent is worthless.
All this talk of "small, inventor-led businesses" is bullcrap because no small business can afford to enforce a patent.
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#184Why 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…
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.
That’s a different problem entirely. It used to be stores had to carefully source the products they sold to make sure they weren’t selling something that wasn’t allowed to be sold in the US, with the advent of Amazon that all went out the window, now the name of the game is defraud everyone you can and claim innocence on the backend when caught. “Our algorithm didn’t catch it, we stopped selling it as soon as we were made aware it was definitely illegal”.
The funniest hypocrisy of Silicon Valley/tech culture is that it’s full of people who think the rules and laws don’t apply to them but they vote every year for more and more regulations, that they then brazenly flout and act all indignant that the government has failed to do the things they voted for (and thus we need more government) but then refuse to actually follow.
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> software patent that is not obvious to someone skilled the field Small but significant correction: software patent that was not obvious to someone skilled in the field AS OF THE FILING DATE (or priority date).
The filing date is often a year after the provisional was filed, and the invention was already marketed. That doesn't mean that the provisional wasn't novel.
Yes, I understand and agree. I was correcting the OP of this thread, and got downvoted. I'm a patent attorney, what do I know. LOL. So many strong opinions about patents flying about.
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
> Is there any evidence that drug patents can actually enter the public domain productively at their end of their expiration period? Practically all generic drugs are available because the original drug is off-patent. You picked one (insulin) and ignored all the others: https://www.healthgrades.com/right-care/patient-advocate/dru...
I picked the one that was donated on purpose by its creators though, and it's still making profits for the drug companies 100 years later. So why do we need patents, then?
From the page you linked:
> While these drugs are nearing the end of their patent term, the release of generics may be delayed due to litigation, acquisitions, or other exclusivities. As a result, some expected generics from previous years may still be in progress.
The point about the PBMs is that apparently, drugs have to be profitable or they are not made anymore. So even the generic companies need to position themselves in a way where their products are profitable, not only for them but for the insurance (or they will be dropped by formularies, and nobody's insurance will cover it.)
If patents are the only way for firms to protect the profitability of their drugs then we are doomed.
I picked one, sure, and you provided a list as counter-example. But the FDA also ships its own list... of off-patent approved drugs without an approved generic (and the current publication is a full 16 pages of drug names):
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/abbreviated-new-drug-application-a...
If the pharma companies can make a change to the formula so that the new formula of a drug is no longer covered by the original patent, they can get a new patent. I'm not an expert, but this is how I've understood the problem through reading about it. Yes, we have generics, but what doctor will prescribe "worse-pirin" when there's a better aspirin on the market now? What insurance company will cover it?
So, with 20 years of head start and a deep war chest, the companies you mentioned can all iterate, stop research on the previous drug, put up legal roadblocks in the way of their competition, put out a new drug which cannot be copied, while it costs a lot of money (and time) for competition to get their generic form of the drug tested and approved. It's not as automatic as the term "patent cliff" might suggest.
I'm just saying that the intent of patents in general is for innovations to enter the public domain after the period of exclusivity on the idea that enables their creators to enjoy profitability and a legally protected (temporary) monopoly on the idea. It seems like a fair question to ask, is that really what's happening? (What percent of time does it happen like that, what percent of time does it go down some other way?)
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#187Patents are supposedly granted to inventors, yet the preamble of each patent independently lists 'inventor' and 'assignee'.
So what part exactly does the assignee play other than to represent capital? And clearly capital is valued over innovation, as it is the assignee that actually 'owns' the patent, not the inventor.
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#188Why 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 ar…
USPTO patent examiners are notoriously not granted enough time to review all submissions.
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
> 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. I see where you're coming from, but I would suggest that this is pretty much an extremist point of view on intellectual property protections. It's easy to say that the online shopping cart is a dumb patent (because it is, an…
They aren't making a noticeable change to the system at all. This method challenges roughly 350 patents a year while roughly 300,000 patents are granted per year. That's in the area of 0.1% of all patents. I think these numbers are very consistent with the predominant use case being the challenging of bad patents and there are very few examples of people trying to overturn good patents.
Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bad example though, because everyone knows who Apple are. There's no point inventing anything as a new company if an existing one can just copy it and outspend your marketing.
And there's no point inventing anything as an established company if you can just aggressively buy IP and leverage existing property. There's a balance to how much IP protection actually encourages innovation, and we're far on one side of it.
If companies choose not to innovate and purchase their innovation instead that still creates a market for innovation and a source of funds for doing so. I'm far from convinced this is the case as most big tech companies have entire research divisions regularly producing papers and patents and we've seen some big AI products recently launch out of internal big tech initiatives.