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Victory Lap for Ask Patents

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#121

Post by freyr »

zanny wrote: post #101
freyr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then every patent would receive a deluge of obfuscated examples of prior art. And the patent office would become even less effective. Perhaps a good thing, unless you believe some things actually should be patentable.

Can you give an example of a patent being helpful in producing innovation and prosperity in the last 20 years? IE, a patent that was an original idea, someone else tried to duplicate in a blatantly rip-off way before the patent expired, and the ensuing lawsuit lets the patent creator (who has their patent to-market in a useful state) take the copycat off the market?

You're assuming that patents promote innovation once they're defended in court.

Another argument would be that they promote innovation by (1) preventing blatant rip offs in the first place, (2) incentivizing individual inventors who invest their time and money with the assurance that their efforts won't be blatantly ripped off in the end by someone with more resources.

There are countless examples of truly innovative patents filed by individuals who devoted their lives to creating new things. Some of the inventors profited directly from their patents, others spent their life savings in court trying to defend their patents.

There are also countless patents for idiotic ideas, and countless idiotic patents that shouldn't have been filed in the first place. But saying all patents are bad might be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#122

Post by freyr »

bandushrew wrote: post #118
busyant wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely correct. I used to work in this industry, and one of the 1st questions asked when we were thinking about testing a drug to treat a disease was "Does someone else 'own' this drug or do we?" If someone else 'owned' the drug, then there was no point in pursuing it because the true "owner" would crush us if the drug ultimately proved useful in treating disease. Interestingly, the people writing the drug patent…

doesn't that mean that if nobody owned the drug, drug companies would be free to work on a wider range of research?

I think the idea is that then they couldn't charge exorbitant prices to recoup their investment costs. Drugs cost an enormous amount of money to develop.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#123

Post by freyr »

busyant wrote: post #106
DevX101 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pharmaceutical and biotech industry would be almost non-existent without intellectual property protection.

Absolutely correct. I used to work in this industry, and one of the 1st questions asked when we were thinking about testing a drug to treat a disease was "Does someone else 'own' this drug or do we?" If someone else 'owned' the drug, then there was no point in pursuing it because the true "owner" would crush us if the drug ultimately proved useful in treating disease. Interestingly, the people writing the drug patent…

> Interestingly, the people writing the drug patents use the same types of techniques mentioned by Joel...especially making claims as broad as possible.

Systems (legal, computer, etc.) need to be developed with the full expectation that people will do everything in their power to exploit them.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#124

Post by JohnsonB »

throwawaykf wrote: post #80

somewhat active on Ask Patents. In fact, I've submitted an answer that is pretty sure to kill at least one Google patent application, and possibly another from Uniloc. A few comments on this article: 1) This is a very unusual case; most answers (and almost all questions) from "lay engineers" completely misunderstand the scope of the patent, since they don't even know what claims are. And even if they do, they are ver…

>4) Most "software" patents (which can't even be cleanly categorized as such) are not crappy, at least with respect to all other patents. There are studies presenting this view [2, 3], but it's also based on my experience having read hundreds of patents. Almost none are revolutionary, but just as few are really as bad as the media portrays. The PTO has gotten pretty good at finding prior art (interestingly around the same time Google came around), and the really broad patents are dying out.

That's only a person assessment, not a fact, as you are making out it is. The consensus in the tech industry among almost everyone (from software developers to tech legends) is that the patent system is broken and continues to routinely pass invalid and valueless patents.

>The "crappy software patents" view is common mostly because tech media routinely publishes uninformed (or disinformed? [4]) rhetoric, mostly because they garner some easy rageviews, and audiences accept it without critical thought.

No, it's because it's actually the truth and the software community is not nearly as susceptible to junk journalism as you make out.

>I am not a patent lawyer or an agent, but I believe in the patent system, as I have actually worked for the mythical small-guy firm that was ripped off by the big guys and almost died, but eventually prevailed with patents.

For every example of a situation as you described, there are 10 of a patent troll shutting down another small-guy firm or making them work for slave wages.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#125

Post by pjdorrell »

Be aware that there is a backlog of "secret" patent applications in the US, where the patent application can be kept secret until such time as it is granted, at which point the easy invalidation described by Joel is not allowed.

For example the Twitter patent was granted, even though there is prior art (mine), and even though I submitted my prior art as soon as I found out about the patent. But I got a reply along the lines of "too late, the patent has been granted". It turned out that the application was kept secret until it was granted, thus guaranteeing protection from any prior art not already known to the patent office employee assigned to that patent.

The "new" US patent laws require an application to be made public after 18 months, but there could be thousands upon thousands of older patent applications benefiting from the secret option.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#127

Post by mdkess »

busyant wrote: post #106
DevX101 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pharmaceutical and biotech industry would be almost non-existent without intellectual property protection.

Absolutely correct. I used to work in this industry, and one of the 1st questions asked when we were thinking about testing a drug to treat a disease was "Does someone else 'own' this drug or do we?" If someone else 'owned' the drug, then there was no point in pursuing it because the true "owner" would crush us if the drug ultimately proved useful in treating disease. Interestingly, the people writing the drug patent…

For pharma patents - is there a requirement of trying to bring a patented chemical to market (at the very least, doing clinical trials, etc)?

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#128

Post by linuxhansl »

This! What the author describes is exactly what happens.

Our lawyers even admit that. The company I work for gets sued for a bogus patent every week(!), so we were all ask to file patent applications. I didn't, but I got involved in some applications as co-inventor anyway.

This isn't - and not been for a long time - about inventions.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#129

Post by DannyBee »

thecodeore wrote: post #120
DannyBee wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bountyquest (paid) - existed in early 2000's patentbusters - ditto Peer to patent - more recent Patexia - still exists article one partners - which still exists and pays I don't feel like trying to hunt down the rest, but there are/have been at least 10 or so crowdsourcing attempts, some serious, some not so serious.

THe key part is recent changes in the law have given much more weight to community/public commenting on patents, so where these may have failed in the past it is possible for them to have more success today. Further the patent climate has become more hostile towards bad patents in recent years, more so than at in point in modern history, this will also enable more possibility for success

Your assertion remains to be seen. There are still significant downsides to submitting prior art to the PTO that also existed when bountyquest was around.

The main serious issues are still the same, in fact:

1. If you submit prior art pre-grant, that's basically that. You don't get to argue about it, only the examiner does. If the patent issues, you've now lost a possibly valuable reference if the examiner didn't use it well enough.

2. If you challenge in any of the post-grant proceedings, you'll be estopped from suing on anything you raised or could have raised.

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