Patent Reform Pending

Thanks for flagging this, David... you must have some suspicions about either companies, processes, or technologies that may find their claims or patents made invalid by this development. 

Any in particular you want to name? Or shall we await a future blog from you on this?

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ruled today that business methods are not patentable unless they meet fairly narrow rules. What this means for Internet companies and is that many of their existing patents may be invalid—at least until the case is heard by the Supreme Court where it will almost certainly be appealed.

The case is only hours old and lawyers will be reading and re-reading it - but it certainly seems to be a step towards limiting the issuance of business process patents.

Some key wording in the decision appears to be "We hold that the applicants' process as claimed does not transform any article to a different state or thing," and "Purported transformations or manipulations simply of public or private legal obligations or relationships, business risks, or other such abstractions cannot meet the test because they are not physical objects or substances." 

 

Two major issues I have with the current US patent process.

 

1) It only protects the rich, i.e. those with horrific lawyer armys. E.G. Microsoft loses and then they APPEAL. The cases are not settled administratively but by High Priced Lawyers and their legions of staff. It takes having another country (the EU) in your pocket to win a case against them.

 

2) It is currently being used to protect all the bad guys and very few of the good guys. E.G. Monsanto, the corporate chemical monster that intends to own God's work, i.e. the DNA of species. (Wouldn't it be fun to watch God overturn their patent?)

 

The arrogance of the US in these matters is similar to those absurdities that they call WORLD TITLE's.  Miss World!  Mr. Universe, carumba.  We are actually stupider than the ants.  At least they do their jobs, try hard EVERY DAY and as far as we can tell, have no egos and don't think voting will RESCUE the economy.

 

More later...

I am a actually a business process patent holder - United States Patent 7421322 which is a "system and method for automatic identification of vehicle identification number."  While the patent is issued in my name, I obviously signed rights over to my employer.

Even as a business process patent bolder and applicant for several others, I would whole-heartedly agree that the process needs to be overhauled. However, a business has limited options right now:

• Particpate in requesting business process patents 
• Don't particpate in requesting business process patents - hope your competitors don't request patents that could hurt your business.

So while I don't love the process, I think my employer made the right call to invest in this area. 

I hope reform moves ahead because the definition of "obvious" in a business process world is a strange perspective.

The patent office probably never dreamed of th day that where we put so much time, effort, work and money into electronic bits that we want to put a patent on, but once you unplug it, it is as if it never existed!  An e-book patent journal on a shut off computer is it there...or not?  When you watch computer graphics like Shrek, what it boils down, is that you have watched an environment that doesn't exist, with characters that never existed and you paid $10 to watch nothing at the movie theater. To further the idea of nothing, when you watch a movie, it is projected on the screen 24 frames per second, which means for every frame that popped into place projected on the screen, an equally blank frame was not projected on the screen 24 frames per second.  So a 2 hour movie that you "watched" actually is only seen for 1 hour and the other hour was a blank dark screen.  I'd patent that thought, but this post won't exist when you shut off your computer.

What a difficult job to interpet a 225 year old document and apply it to the complex world we now inhabit.  Its not just patent infrigment or copy right infringment but intellectual property infringment. The volume and diversity is staggering. An example: Patent 6,004,596, " sealed crustless sandwich" issued 1999.  Gimme a break.

The original intent of the Constitution was to set up a Patent Office to engender and foster invention by protecting new ideas and the small inventor of those ideas...by giving them time to grow and become profitable and establishing ownership.

It was not the intent to allow the ownership of established ideas, and especially not the ownership of ideas in common practice for years and it was definitely not the intent that the Patent Office should be used to squelch competition by use of lawsuit!!!

For all this talk about "Strict Constructivists" in the Supreme Court, I have seen little or no argumentation about this egregious and topsy-turvy interpretation of the Constitution!!!

 

 

 

 

 Bipartisan politicians and ambulance chasers. Wow! Talk about raising Cain.  Thanks for a very well thoughtout article that needs immediate attention.

From my understanding, recently, the Supreme Court in a number of cases has made some sweeping changes regarding the patent doctrine.

Among these changes, the interpitation of the fundemental test of "patentability"; no obviousness from the prior art. 

If the effects of the recent Supreme Court rulings can take hold, this would be a monumental step to unclogging bipartisanship and ultimately lead to legislative change. 

Don't let the really boring headline of the article push you away -- this is actually a pretty interesting examination of the legal problems around patenting, especially where technology and the Web are concerned, and the attempts of Yahoo and others to reform/reshape patenting.

We've been talking open source on these boards all week, both as a technology and a philosophy. The U.S. Patent Office could benefit greatly from healthy doses of both.