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Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

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Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#41

Post by noobiemcfoob »

komali2 wrote: post #36
cityzen wrote: post #24

I recently watched the documentary The Patent Scam with the XPlane guy... it was disturbing to say the least. My question is this... With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"? I'm serious, these patents seems so stupid, I don't see why you couldn't j…

I really wish I could remember the sci fi book I read this in, but basically there was a guy who forewent currency, instead inventing things, patenting them, then giving them for free to people. In return the oss community supported him. But he'd also do this thing where he'd ddos via patent lawsuit evil companies, filing like hundreds of thousands of lawsuits against a single company in the span of a day.

The hero we need

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#42

Post by amanaplanacanal »

komali2 wrote: post #36
cityzen wrote: post #24

I recently watched the documentary The Patent Scam with the XPlane guy... it was disturbing to say the least. My question is this... With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"? I'm serious, these patents seems so stupid, I don't see why you couldn't j…

I really wish I could remember the sci fi book I read this in, but basically there was a guy who forewent currency, instead inventing things, patenting them, then giving them for free to people. In return the oss community supported him. But he'd also do this thing where he'd ddos via patent lawsuit evil companies, filing like hundreds of thousands of lawsuits against a single company in the span of a day.

Sounds like Accelerando by Charlie Stross.

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#43

Post by monochromatic »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #40
monochromatic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

So Invalid patents are prior art, but content in valid patents outside of the claims section is NOT prior art?

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or...

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#44

Post by fipple »

cwkoss wrote: post #31
fipple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say with confidence that >90% of new small-molecule pharmaceuticals would not be created in a patent-free world. Now, not every new small molecule drug is important, in fact probably the majority aren’t. But those that are, save a lot of lives.

Counterpoint - it would drastically reduce overprescription of ineffective medications that have strong marketing

Not sure why it would. Companies would still market the drugs they had.

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#45

Post by rayiner »

This post is really quite misleading. Better coverage here: https://patentlyo.com/patent/2018/07/diagnostics-provisional...

The EFF writeup makes it sound like material appearing only in the specification of an earlier published patent does not count as prior art, that it must appear in the claims. That’s not true in the general case:

> In the simple case outlined above, the courts all agree that the disclosures found in an issued patent or published application count as prior art as of the patent’s filing date.

Ariosa addresses a very different issue. Generally, patent applications are prior art even before they are publicly disclosed—they count as prior art starting from the day of filing. Ariosa addresses what happens when you have a provisional patent application:

> In this case, the Federal Circuit ruled that a published application can count as prior art as of its provisional filing date — but only as to features actually claimed in the application. According to the court, features disclosed in the provisional but not claimed in the published application will only be prior art as of their date of public disclosure.

The EFF writeup is in fact completely inaccurate, because it starts by talking about a “published” patent application. Once the application is published, all agree that it is prior art. This case is about what happens between the date if filing of a provisional, and the date of publication.

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#46

Post by bitwize »

cityzen wrote: post #24

I recently watched the documentary The Patent Scam with the XPlane guy... it was disturbing to say the least. My question is this... With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"? I'm serious, these patents seems so stupid, I don't see why you couldn't j…

> With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"?

I believe that IBM actually has a patent on this, to whip out in case a troll decides to step to Big Blue.

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#47

Post by otp124 »

cityzen wrote: post #24

I recently watched the documentary The Patent Scam with the XPlane guy... it was disturbing to say the least. My question is this... With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"? I'm serious, these patents seems so stupid, I don't see why you couldn't j…

Funny, I recall seeing a post on HN that such a patent did in fact exist. From the NPR [1]:

> It turns out, a couple giant companies — IBM and Halliburton — have been working for years to patent what patent trolls do.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-...

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#48

Post by lisper »

cityzen wrote: post #24

I recently watched the documentary The Patent Scam with the XPlane guy... it was disturbing to say the least. My question is this... With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"? I'm serious, these patents seems so stupid, I don't see why you couldn't j…

> what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"?

Absolutely nothing other than your willingness to pursue it and pay the fees.

As an exercise, I once applied for a patent on a device that would violate the laws of physics (specifically allowing faster-than-light communications) to test the theory that you can in fact patent anything. The result was receiving U.S. patent number 7126691.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US7126691B2/en

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#49

Post by rayiner »

pitaj wrote: post #19

I haven't seen anything good about patents in years. Maybe the government should just get rid of them, along with copyright. The idea of granting someone a monopoly to an idea is crazy to me.

The cell phone I’m typing this on is fueled by two patent-powered business models: ARM’s and cellular companies’. Also, a substantial fraction of all modern computing paradigms came from PARC, which was fueled by Xerox’s patent monopoly.

Re: Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public

#50

Post by gumby »

monochromatic wrote: post #37
gumby wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by the USPTO's peculiar definition of what constitutes prior art.

.

That is not at all clear to me, on two grounds. Indeed 35 U.S.C. 102(a) does say that a prior patent or non-recent application (which would naturally be the case for an issued patent, whether the patent was invalidated or not -- it clearly had an application) count as prior art. However if the patent is invalidated does it count as issued? I'm not sure under _Stalego_ that it does. As for the applications, regardless of the text of the US code, also under _Stalgeo_ cancelled matter in the application (but weirdly, not in the wrapper!) is inadmissible, and presumably the subject of the application is itself cancelled, per code, rather than abandoned.

Patent law is super arcane and I do not practice in that area specifically but I would be surprised if the people who down voted my comment (to which you are replying) are really steeped in the peculiar minutiae of the operation of the PTO.

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