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EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

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Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#11

Post by rayiner »

transfire wrote: post #7
k-mcgrady wrote: post #3

How do other countries patent systems compare with the US'? Can inspiration for changes be drawn from them or are they just as bad/worse? I ask because I only ever hear of trolling in the US system.

I know of one important distinction between the US and India with regards to medicine patents. In India you can only patent the means of making a medicine, not the medicine itself. So if you can come up with a substantially different way of making the same thing you have equal rights to it.

This is a good law for India, because they have the capability to manufacture medicine, while lacking the capability to invent them. It's one of the many ways the world freeloads on U.S. medical R&D spending.

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#12

Post by themartorana »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #5
rogerbinns wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual retort to that is "so you don't want to cure cancer then". The pharmaceutical industry very strongly depends on patents, and would easily be able to convince government through money and "cancer" not to abolish it. The practical thing then is to come up with a solution for pharma, and then abolish the patent system.

Killing software patents would be a good start IMO.

I think this is the right way to go. Short of the argument against patenting math, I think you're hard-pressed to find anything that parallels pharma or hard-goods patents in software.

But with software should go business-process patents, which suffer from the same "patent a way of doing things" problems. Patents do well to cover the result of a process, and shouldn't cover the process itself. In software, you can have two patents end up with the same result, as long as they arrive there by different paths.

With hard goods, you invent inline skates. Someone can't declare another patent arriving at the same result but using a different manufacturing process to create inline skates.

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#13

Post by higherpurpose »

rogerbinns wrote: post #4
zanny wrote: post #2

The solution to the patent system is to abolish it. The whole thing. Seek compensation for the act of coming up with innovative ideas instead of trying to apply artificial state granted monopolies to them after the fact. It would be so much healthier to have money pumped into the R&D of common utility goods for the sake of the innovation than to continue to perpetuate patent warfare while trying to attach a flawed pr…

The usual retort to that is "so you don't want to cure cancer then". The pharmaceutical industry very strongly depends on patents, and would easily be able to convince government through money and "cancer" not to abolish it. The practical thing then is to come up with a solution for pharma, and then abolish the patent system.

Even if we keep patents for Big Pharma alone, they need a serious overhaul because right now they are grossly abusing them, too. It's not just tech companies doing it.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/patents-against-peopl...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-drug-that-is...

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/03/31/how-big-pha...

(there are many more such examples)

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#14

Post by frederickf »

This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner for everybody to benefit and still offer some protection to innovators.

Right now they're good for between 14 to 20 years (1) which seems too long to me. I'm not sure what the right number is, maybe between 5 - 10? Even that seems long, but then again I don't have anything innovations to patent so I'm probably biased.

(1) http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/312/how-long-are-...

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#15

Post by transfire »

This doesn't really go far enough. It's doesn't address the more basic problems of a for-profit patent office (the USPO has been required to be self-sustaining since Bush), nor does it address unfair practices of high upfront and ongoing renewal costs and worse, the inherently unfair practice of being able to buy expedited service. It is also counter productive to shorten the time span of patents b/c it means all the money required to develop it has to be recouped very quickly. Better to have longer periods, but with clearer and stricter requirements for what is actually patentable.

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#16

Post by transfire »

frederickf wrote: post #14

This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner…

It's not a good idea. Ideally rights should be for as long as the life of the inventor. Instead of a cut-off time, I've heard people espouse a system of valuation and, in some cases, taxation, so that over time a patent becomes increasingly affordable for others to buy out and put into the public domain.

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#17

Post by AnimalMuppet »

transfire wrote: post #16
frederickf wrote: post #14

This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner…

It's not a good idea. Ideally rights should be for as long as the life of the inventor. Instead of a cut-off time, I've heard people espouse a system of valuation and, in some cases, taxation, so that over time a patent becomes increasingly affordable for others to buy out and put into the public domain.

What is the basis for your "should" here?

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#18

Post by rhino369 »

transfire wrote: post #16
frederickf wrote: post #14

This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner…

It's not a good idea. Ideally rights should be for as long as the life of the inventor. Instead of a cut-off time, I've heard people espouse a system of valuation and, in some cases, taxation, so that over time a patent becomes increasingly affordable for others to buy out and put into the public domain.

>Ideally rights should be for as long as the life of the inventor.

I'm fairly pro patent, but I disagree. Unlike copyright where there is an almost unlimited amount of expression available, some inventions are just something people would independently come up with.

Nobody would organically and independently come up with Mickey Mouse or Sherlock Holmes.

But different teams would have invented the BJT transistor if Bardeen, et al. never existed.

Patents length acknowledges that by not giving exclusive rights forever. It's more of a challenge prize than a pure ownership of the idea indefinitely.

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#19

Post by schoen »

tzs wrote: post #10
omgitstom wrote: post #8

Man - this guy might have the best title I've seen in a while: Daniel Nazer Staff Attorney and the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents Electronic Frontier Foundation daniel@eff.org

Is that usage correct? Shouldn't he be described as the holder of the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, rather than being described as the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents? Also, every time I read about the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents I have a mysterious urge to watch "Zoolander".

The usage "is the ____ Chair" as opposed to "holds the ____ Chair" isn't that uncommon in the academic world (treating the Chair as a unique title, rather than only a position). A few random examples from Google:

https://www.design.upenn.edu/city-regional-planning/graduate... Professor Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Chair of Urban Research and Education.

http://www.thelancet.com/lanres/advisory-board Professor Klugman is the William H Foege Chair of Global Health at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.

http://www.bahaipeacechair.umd.edu/events/apr29-2015 Professor AMITAV ACHARYA is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and is Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C.

https://www.law.louisville.edu/faculty/interdisciplinary-cir... Professor Tony Arnold is the Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use.

https://www.american.edu/provost/human-rights/Faculty-SIS.cf... Professor Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies who studies American society through the experiences of the Muslim community.

Re: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

#20

Post by gombotzd »

transfire wrote: post #16
frederickf wrote: post #14

This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner…

It's not a good idea. Ideally rights should be for as long as the life of the inventor. Instead of a cut-off time, I've heard people espouse a system of valuation and, in some cases, taxation, so that over time a patent becomes increasingly affordable for others to buy out and put into the public domain.

i have to disagree to your statement, which misses foundation.

First copyright is always a life long idea, but the focus of patents have always been to incentivice long term research efforts that have budget constraint by having a mid-term monopoly

problem today: a lot of trivial design-patents and even patents that are used in the wars between big corps. as one of my advisor board state - screw that patent, we cannot defend it anyway Behind a lot of those patents there is no research in the sense but it rather came out of "usual" engineering.

i think that the proof of non-trivial has to be a part of the application and is better suited than discussion about life-time - because patents could still have a strong point in basic-research

Problem is what to do with the already existing bogus patents - any suggestions?

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