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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?

#61

Post by alcari »

apapli wrote: post #60

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,…

We have a crowd-scale community checking patent applications now: http://patents.stackexchange.com/

The problem is the sheer number of bad patents that have been granted already, and the cost of successfully challenging them.

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

#62

Post by cryofan »

patents work great for the big corporations that control america, and that is what is important. That is what the USA was created to do: "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," to quote the father of the constitution. And patents do that just fine....

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

#64

Post by mindviews »

There is already some crowdsourcing of patent research being done like at http://www.articleonepartners.com/ which essentially offers monetary rewards for the top contributions of prior-art or whatever the particular study asks for. Granted, you don't get to pick which patents are listed to research, but I suspect this sort of bounty program greatly lowers the cost and increases the breadth of material available to patent researchers for any number of purposes. And if patents can be challenged for a reasonably small cost, that should mean more silly patents actually get challenged.

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

#68

Post by chasing »

burntsushi wrote: post #59
chasing wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're disagreeing with something I'm not saying.

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

#69

Post by burntsushi »

chasing wrote: post #68
burntsushi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're disagreeing with something I'm not saying.

I disagreed with your proposed solution. Which you said was to just tweak the laws.

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

#70

Post by srgseg »

Tim O'Reilly created a site called BountyQuest in 2000, where he posted a $10,000 bounty to invalidate Amazon's 1-click patent.

"The way the system works is that a company or individual, remaining anonymous to the public, must pay BountyQuest $2,500 to post a bounty on the site. BountyQuest, which is to receive a 40 percent commission on bounties paid, will monitor the process and will be liable to pay the bounty if the posting group cannot or will not pay it to a deserving party."

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/23/technology/23PATE.html

However Tim then shut the site down, saying "I had high hopes for BountyQuest, too; it seemed like a great idea. But while I still believe that the failure to search for prior art remains a major problem for the patent system, the company was not able to make a successful business bridging the gap. Of course, this could simply have been an execution issue, or market timing. But it could also have been the fact that the patent mess is a thorny thicket that doesn't lend itself well to penetration by amateurs."

http://oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2003/bountyquest_10...

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