Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
wwws.whitehouse.gov
Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#2Why?
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#3IANAL, but I don't think the executive branch has the authority to do what the petition is asking. The patent office merely interprets what Congress and the courts tell it - while there is some interpretational discretion, I don't think it extends to the point of rejecting all software patents and certainly not to the point of retroactively invalidating all of them.
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#4This is a nice idea, but I can't sign a petition where the grammar is that bad.
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#5Good lord, can we petition them to write the petition in English first?
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#6Why?
There is much debate over whether software patents encourage or discourage innovation. There are a lot of arguably obvious software patents (e.g. "Method to retrieve backups from the internet"). Since the USPTO only started issuing software patents in the late 1990's, some or most of these patents are predated by plenty of examples of prior art. Imagine if a movie screenwriter were suddenly able to patent the romantic comedy, or the buddy-cop movie and then use these patents to sue anyone who tried to make a similar film? How many movies would not be made just because of the fear of litigation?
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#7Dupe from earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3028999
Same complaints on that thread. We as a community seem embarrassed to sign something which has such awful grammar.
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#8Grammar aside, I think this should be signed at the very least to show interest in IP law change. You have to admit that any developer with any sense of the litigation battlefield currently represented in the law should jump at the chance to bring more focus to the subject. I would rather fight big business on a competitiveness basis than over the tremendous threat of litigation with the large legal team overlords cutting up every concept and locking it down.
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#9Is this "petitions" feature on whitehouse.gov brand new? I've heard of a couple of petitions today, and never before.
I see right now that there are only 32 petitions there, and every one of them is either a neutral or leftish cause. The only completely nutty one is the UFO one, and there are no troll ones either (I thought "Stop Animal Homelessness At Its Roots" was a clever troll, but apparently it's talking about abandoned pets rather than wild animals).
Have conservative activists not yet got wind of this? Has 4chan not yet got wind of this? Or is the White House carefully curating what petitions it allows to appear on its site?
Re: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents
#10IANAL, but I don't think the executive branch has the authority to do what the petition is asking. The patent office merely interprets what Congress and the courts tell it - while there is some interpretational discretion, I don't think it extends to the point of rejecting all software patents and certainly not to the point of retroactively invalidating all of them.
The President can certainly sign an executive order saying pretty much whatever he wants to say. The President doesn't really have any explicit authority to issue executive orders, but historically executive orders are treated the same as Congressional legislation (although the courts can certainly overturn one).
That said, I would much prefer a proper legislative approach to an executive one. The Patent and Trademark Office is part of the Department of Commerce, so I don't think it would be frowned upon too much for the executive branch to enact some reform. Still, I think a legislative approach would be more robust and less controversial.