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AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

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Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#21

Post by dfc »

njl wrote: post #14
dfc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I have to say that your "rational strategy" is a terrible suggestion. This strategy only makes sense if your desired goal is to reduce treble damage risk. Moreover it completely ignores the risk of devoting a ton of resources to developing a product that is already protected by a patent.

They're all protected by patents. All of them. I can pretty much guarantee you that any of IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Intellectual Ventures, and many others have sufficient patent coverage to be able to sue you for anything you could possibly build that involves software in any way. [edited to scope it to software]

You do realize that the world is bigger than just software development?

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#22

Post by sathyabhat »

golden_apples wrote: post #5
m_myers wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like http://parenting.stackexchange.com ?

Ha! By far the worst of the stackexchange network sites I've seen. My wife and I sometimes read it for laughs.... Funny that people who can come up with a dozen ways to solve a trivial programming problem, when confronted with a parenting issue, invariably offer some useless brute-force based advice like ”show the kid who's boss”, or ”keep them in line”...

so spend a few minutes posting an answer which is not so bad?

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#23

Post by dfc »

ck2 wrote: post #10

It's a shame the patent office cannot/will not crowdsource patent research before approval. I bet if an examiner posted each patent application during review, within 24 hours prior art would be posted for each one, most especially software patents. Maybe we can get congress to pass a law - ha, nevermind what am I even thinking...

  > "Maybe we can get congress to pass a law, nevermind what am I even thinking."
Because Congress never passes laws? Or because Congress never passes laws pertaining to constitutionally prescribed responsibility to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts?" Did you read the article?

"a tiny provision in the America Invents Act, the “Patent Reform Act” which, on the face of it, appears to have done absolutely nothing to solve this problem, but if you look closely, there’s a tiny provision in there, which says:

“Any person at any time may cite to the Office in writing prior art consisting of patents or printed publications which that person believes to have a bearing on the patentability of any claim of a particular patent…”

In other words, as of September 16, the USPTO is required to accept submissions from the public of prior art."

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#24

Post by dctoedt »

njl wrote: post #4

If you violate a patent unknowingly, you are liable for damages. If you violate a patent you know exists, you are liable for treble damages. The only rational thing for someone who actually makes stuff to do is to not read any patents, ever, as a matter of general policy. This might not be the socially responsible answer; we should all be fighting the patent madness in our industry. It is, however, the most logical c…

> If you violate a patent you know exists, you are liable for treble damages.

Not quite. First, in cases of willful infringement, the judge can --- but need not --- award up to treble damages. Second, a patent owner seeking to prove that infringement was willful must show, among other things, either:

(1) that the accused infringer knew, not just of the existence of the patent, but of an objectively high likelihood of infringement of a valid patent;

OR

(2) that this objectively defined risk was so obvious that the accused infringer should have known it.

If the accused infringer puts on a reasonable defense, it often negates the "objectively high likelihood" element.

See generally http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/standard-clarified-for-will...

NB: Issued patents are presumed valid until proven otherwise --- and according to the Supreme Court, that proof must be not merely by a preponderance of the evidence, but by clear and convincing evidence. That was the Supreme Court's holding in last year's Microsoft v. i4i opinion; see http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/06/microsoft-v-i4i-supr...

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#25

Post by Shog9 »

sathyabhat wrote: post #22
golden_apples wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! By far the worst of the stackexchange network sites I've seen. My wife and I sometimes read it for laughs.... Funny that people who can come up with a dozen ways to solve a trivial programming problem, when confronted with a parenting issue, invariably offer some useless brute-force based advice like ”show the kid who's boss”, or ”keep them in line”...

so spend a few minutes posting an answer which is not so bad?

But... Wouldn't that just keep the other answers in line by showing them who's boss?

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#26

Post by spolsky »

ajb wrote: post #19

This is a step forward, and I hope it is successful. However as it stands what this actually means is that finding prior art is an externality of submitting a patent claim. The cost of stopping a dubious patent from causing damage is borne by the victims, rather than the instigator. If these crowdsourcing schemes are successful, the next step should be to make filers of such patents pay a fee to those who found the p…

I love that idea!

Until that happens, we actually expect that companies in patent-happy industries will monitor filings by their competitors and spend some of their own money and resources blocking competitors from building bad patent portfolios (there was enough of this on Peer To Patent, a very small-scale experiment, to give me confidence that it will happen)

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#27

Post by veidr »

Fuck yeah. Applying crowdsourcing to prior art discovery is probably the most viable treatment for improving the USA's patentile dysfunction problem, due to:

a.) low-cost

b.) high potential for busting garbage patents

c.) low potential for abuse/trolling/making-things-worse

With respect to (c), the most obvious attack vector for Myhrvoldian corporo-fascists would be DOS/dilution-via-huge-numbers-of-paid-shills. But I think that's why Stack Overflow's backing is exciting; they are Internet-scale.

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#28

Post by sirtaptap »

dfc wrote: post #21
njl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all protected by patents. All of them. I can pretty much guarantee you that any of IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Intellectual Ventures, and many others have sufficient patent coverage to be able to sue you for anything you could possibly build that involves software in any way. [edited to scope it to software]

You do realize that the world is bigger than just software development?

Well, this is a site for developers. It's reasonable to assume one's talking about "building" software or something tech related.
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