Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls • Hacker News Board

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#301

Post by asdff » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 4:50 AM UTC

adql wrote: post #37

commitpizza wrote: post #2

Maybe patents is a bad idea and should be removed.

The idea was basically "Let's give some legal protections to investment in research so someone can't just steal it the second you publish it". As it is common, the idea was fine, it even somewhat worked in few places, but applying it everywhere turned out to be silly. We have medical companies changing an atom here in there to make "same" but legally distinct drugs, and software people patenting half a day of work of…

It's really that the capitalistic patent driven research system is pretty terrible imo. So you have some need to invent some technology for the betterment of humanity and the world. The patent model requires that in order for that technology to exist, someone needs to have the idea out of the blue, and for it to go on to be produced at all it needs to be a convincing enough idea for people to part with their disposable income out of their own will to fund all the overhead of this business plus profit. That seems like a great way to invent a cash cow that the government protects on your behalf, but I'm not sure we would have invented and proliferated the wheel or the bow and arrow if we had this model all through out our human history. You'd have people dealing with really crappy octagonal wheels because someone is squatting on the round wheel patent and might not even have much of an interest to bring it to mass market.

There is another model for innovation, however, and that is the government research grant model. The government taxes wealth, the taxes accumulate into massive funds, government experts hired from the field identify compelling research topics that would benefit the collective, funds are made available and other researchers submit proposals of what they would do with that money, government experts choose the most promising proposals, money goes to things based on research merit versus the product or technologies potential to take money from people's pockets.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#302

Post by ajb » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

geraldwhen wrote: post #284

ajb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that patent examiners could make good decisions on software given infinite time. A couple of reasons: Let's suppose you had access to all the source code in the world. Given a description of a patented invention, is there any way to find out if it is already implemented somewhere? The answer is no , there is no decidable method for doing that. The proposition that there is, violates Rice's theorem.…

It doesn’t matter since Obama passed the America invents act. America is now a first to file country, not first to invent.

No, AIA doesn't remove the concept of prior art, or the requirement that an invention be novel. It's a rather technical change regarding who of two patent filers gets priority. An invention that was publicly disclosed, or on public sale, is still prior art, even if no patent was filed.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

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Post by quickthrower2 » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 5:32 AM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #191

lordnacho wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a patent lawyer who said the patent had to be filed using a fax machine. For those who are too young, a fax machine is this arcane device that used to be everywhere, like a remote photocopier. Got the US patent dated 2013. Was the lawyer pulling my leg?

What is the issue exactly ? AFAIK email to fax (and vice-versa) converters have existed for a while ? I'm much more annoyed that in 2022 we are still misusing pdf, treating it as a digital-first format rather than one more appropriate for archival of paper documents... (and with the associated "pdfs cannot be modified" myth)

PDFs are sort of lazy/arcane. Easy for author hard for reader. Layout your information for a print size and forever it shall stay. Bad for reading on most devices.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#304

Post by cycomanic » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 6:04 AM UTC

jmugan wrote: post #216

cycomanic wrote: post #179

I find the framing of the conversation around problems with the patent system to largely be about patent trolls quite disingenuous. This might sound controversial, but patent trolls are pretty much the only way for a "small inventor" to monetize a patent (note not invention). If say IBM violates your patent an individual or even a moderate startup or company has absolutely no chance of defending it, because IBM will…

The small inventor is supposed to monetize a patent by building something useful for society. That's the whole deal. The patent itself shouldn't have value beyond protecting that path.

Why? They might be much better at inventing things than starting and running a business. The stated goal behind patents is to advance the sciences not to create businesses.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#305

Post by nicolas_t » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

Completely unrelated but because having a patent is a significant plus in a lot of visa scheme what is the easiest and cheapest way to get a patent in the next two years? I wouldn't use it for trolling, wouldn't use it to protect any ip but would just use it to get the points on the visa application when moving to Japan.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#306

Post by undersuit » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:22 AM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #77

williamcotton wrote: post #6

It is too easy for people to hide behind corporate entities and to the detriment of public accountability.

Unfortunately, anything short of a constitutional amendment explicitly stating that corporations and other collective entities do not have $list_of_rights that one may possess as an individual would be very difficult to keep in practice. Of course, this also would have to be limited to collective representation, not a group of people in person (such as at a physical protest). It could be very messy at this point. And…

Corporations were made without a constitutional amendment, they can be regulated without one. Don't like it? Lots of ways to run a company without using the government vehicle/definition.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#307

Post by valleyer » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:32 AM UTC

nicolas_t wrote: post #305

Completely unrelated but because having a patent is a significant plus in a lot of visa scheme what is the easiest and cheapest way to get a patent in the next two years? I wouldn't use it for trolling, wouldn't use it to protect any ip but would just use it to get the points on the visa application when moving to Japan.

Think of the most intrinsically complicated computer program you ever wrote (that's not owned by someone else like an employer). Then contact a patent attorney and pay them to prosecute it.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#308

Post by smeagull » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 7:48 AM UTC

nicolas_t wrote: post #305

Completely unrelated but because having a patent is a significant plus in a lot of visa scheme what is the easiest and cheapest way to get a patent in the next two years? I wouldn't use it for trolling, wouldn't use it to protect any ip but would just use it to get the points on the visa application when moving to Japan.

You can get a patent on practically anything - they only test in court, which is why these trolls have power. The cheapest way to get a patent is to apply, and make the claims very specific and complicated.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#309

Post by smeagull » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 8:36 AM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

That's silly. The incentives need to be flipped. Before the target of a patent suit pays a dollar in court costs the filer needs to pay through the nose proving that the case is worth hearing, with the potential to lose the costs if they fail, before any defense occurs at all.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#310

Post by disillusioned » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 8:49 AM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #306

tracker1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, anything short of a constitutional amendment explicitly stating that corporations and other collective entities do not have $list_of_rights that one may possess as an individual would be very difficult to keep in practice. Of course, this also would have to be limited to collective representation, not a group of people in person (such as at a physical protest). It could be very messy at this point. And…

Corporations were made without a constitutional amendment, they can be regulated without one. Don't like it? Lots of ways to run a company without using the government vehicle/definition.

Corporations are people, my friend.