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Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

galenward.com

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Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#51

Post by icebraining »

nemof wrote: post #36
zanny wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies with deep pockets existed because there was no way to internationally organize around a monetary research fund cause and get live information about the progress in both a transparent and not prohitively expensive way for the organization to operate. Ten years ago, you would have to mail dvds because internet speeds weren't fast enough to live-stream the office surveilance camera. Twenty years ago you…

Do you really think that people can afford to crowdfund multi-year complex research into illnesses and diseases? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551949/ > It often takes more than 10 years to deliver a final, licensed vaccine,5 and requires not only excellence during research and product development but also managerial and funding commitment throughout the endeavor. The cost of developing a vaccine—from…

Do you really think that people can afford to crowdfund multi-year complex research into illnesses and diseases?

Of course they can. Where do companies get their money from? Thin air?

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#52

Post by mnutt »

Zigurd wrote: post #34
mdsteph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that non valid patents should be killed. If a patent is valid perhaps its usefulness in monetary terms to the community is still worth more than the present value of what trolls and legitimate patent holders could expect to earn by holding it.

Aren't patents that issue assumed to be "valid" no matter how kafkaesque that might be?

I was using 'valid' to mean that the community thinks they're valid, not to mean that the USPTO thinks they're valid.

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#53

Post by chasing »

The flaw, here, I think, is that's it's still prohibitively expensive. If it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to invalidate a patent, we're probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars to invalidate all of the patents that could be used for trolling.

That's part of the problem, right? For each patent we hear about being killed, there are ten, twenty, or a hundred more waiting in the wings to take over. And why wouldn't there be, since there appears to be little financial downside for the trolls.

Anyway: Having the community spend millions upon millions upon millions to fix this problem would just be another financial drain on the industry. This is a situation where the government needs to step in and do its job, because there's a busted system and the players involved are simply not capable of fixing it without the government's help.

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#54

Post by prodigal_erik »

galenward wrote: post #30
VandyILL wrote: post #15

I really don't understand what you're advocating or what mechanism you hope to develop. You basically want to put out bounties for law firms to take cases against patents? What patents would they target? What adversarial setting would they defend / attack patents in? Couldn't this result in a race to the bottom about what things people want in the public domain - ie. a bunch of people petitioning to have a law firm a…

My argument is based on the premise that most software patents are bad for our economy. Amazon's One-Click patent is a perfect example. Amazon would have developed one-click whether or not it was patentable. By granting the patent, we granted Amazon a monopoly and didn't get anything in return. I LOVE the shorter patent idea - particularly for software patents. It wouldn't work for pharma, but that's okay.

The monopoly is supposed to be compensation for disclosing how the invention works, not merely creating it. If one-click were so amazingly hard that nobody else could have done it for another twenty years, we might have derived some benefit. But when any of us could do the same in hours, the patent is merely obfuscated drivel.

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#57

Post by burntsushi »

chasing wrote: post #53

The flaw, here, I think, is that's it's still prohibitively expensive. If it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to invalidate a patent, we're probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars to invalidate all of the patents that could be used for trolling. That's part of the problem, right? For each patent we hear about being killed, there are ten, twenty, or a hundred more waiting in the wings to take over. And…

> This is a situation where the government needs to step in and do its job

That's what they're doing right now. And that's the problem.

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#58

Post by chasing »

burntsushi wrote: post #57
chasing wrote: post #53

The flaw, here, I think, is that's it's still prohibitively expensive. If it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to invalidate a patent, we're probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars to invalidate all of the patents that could be used for trolling. That's part of the problem, right? For each patent we hear about being killed, there are ten, twenty, or a hundred more waiting in the wings to take over. And…

> This is a situation where the government needs to step in and do its job That's what they're doing right now . And that's the problem.

No. The job of the government is to use patents "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Says so right in the owner's manual. Patent trolls are exploiting legal loopholes to do the opposite of "promoting progress," so the laws need to be adjusted to fix this. As far as I'm aware, private entities cannot pass laws. So. The government needs to be involved. And they need to do a better job.

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#59

Post by burntsushi »

chasing wrote: post #58
burntsushi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a situation where the government needs to step in and do its job That's what they're doing right now . And that's the problem.

No. The job of the government is to use patents "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Says so right in the owner's manual. Patent trolls are exploiting legal loopholes to do the opposite of "promoting progress," so the laws need to be adjusted to fix this. As far as I'm aware, private entities cannot pass laws. So. The government needs to be involved. And they need to do a better job.

I think we'll just have to disagree. It is my opinion that answers of the form, "well the only problem is that the laws are just a little off and it can all be fixed with a few tweaks," are incredibly naive. They've been repeated over and over as government has grown in size. It ignores the fundamental problem: at the end of the day, it's just humans making and enforcing the laws, and they are under extreme pressure by the system to become corrupt and bend the laws in their favor.

If you want a system of IP run by elected representatives, then you've got to accept the corruption that comes with it.

Re: Why isn't there a Kickstarter for killing patents?

#60

Post by apapli »

What I know of patents is that they need to be sufficiently novel in order to be valid.

The challenge the patent office has is being able to effectively ensure that a patent is novel - it is simply not possible for them to determine if an innovation is truly unique and sufficiently novel, so they grant patents on the basis that they can be disputed if the idea is proven to be not sufficiently original in the future, after doing as many checks as reasonably possible internally via their examination staff.

We need a crowd-scale community who can tap into its broader knowledge to prove these patents are invalid before they are granted, ie at the patent pending stage. This isn't an easy task, but I would imagine that once it is working effectively it would be sufficient dis-incentive for trolls to bother lodging dubious applications in the future.

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