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I get how we all intuitively want the PTO to not issue "stupid patents" but is there an objective, mechanical way to determine what is stupid? Do we care more a

I get how we all intuitively want the PTO to not issue "stupid patents" but is there an objective, mechanical way to determine what is stupid? Do we care more about false positives (as in this case) or false negatives (a hypothetical alternative universe where too few, rather than too many, patents are awarded). Now, before you start arguing against patents entirely, what I really want to know is: without patents, how are individual supposed to profit from their inventiveness when a larger entity could trivially copy the idea and profit based on their superior connections and capitalization? And yes, I'm talking about software. Are software inventors just supposed to give away their inventions as open source and feed themselves by working for someone else who a) got the ask, and b) defended their IP?

FredFredrickson 11y ago
As an artist, this is exactly the point that I make when I argue with people who say patents should be abolished. Without any kind of protection, anyone who has a greater means of production/marketing than you will always steal your ideas and profit more from them than you can. Obviously we need to fix the process so that as few bad patents are awarded as possible. Someone's just got to figure out how!
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > Without any kind of protection, anyone who has a greater means of production/marketing than you will always steal your ideas and profit more from them than you can. Since you're an artist shouldn't you only care about copyright and trademarks? What's a patent going to do for you? If someone steals your designs then you can sue them through means other than patents. If they copied your idea but executed differently then well I guess that sucks to a degree but if it's an obvious evolution then more than likely it happened independent of you anyway. I would imagine artists would have the least issue with just abolishing patents entirely so I'm curious why you do.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
    I know Harry Connick Jr. holds at least one patent to do with performing his music. Imogen Heap has also been working with some guys to develop their Mimu Gloves. Which probably have some proprietry software & engineering. So there are at least a couple of people wanting to protect ideas.
- wstrange 11y ago
  As an artist, you should be so lucky that people want to copy your art. It is the best way to ensure your relevance. Think of a band like U2 - probably the most copied "art" in the world. From memory, their last tour grossed over 1 Billion.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
> I get how we all intuitively want the PTO to not issue "stupid patents" but is there an objective, mechanical way to determine what is stupid? There's a very simple, constant-time, objective, mechanical algorithm to determine whether to grant a patent: "return false". That would work better than the current algorithm, which closely approximates "return true". At the very least, it should take no less effort or inventiveness to get a patent granted than to get an academic paper published in a reputable journal or conference. But it seems highly unlikely that respected academics will jump at the chance to work in patent examiner's offices the way they do to program committees. > Do we care more about false positives (as in this case) or false negatives (a hypothetical alternative universe where too few, rather than too many, patents are awarded). False positives. A denied patent is highly unlikely to suppress a good idea; good ideas (and a fair many bad ones with good execution) will succeed whether granted an artificial monopoly or not. But a granted patent can litigate good ideas to death. > how are individual supposed to profit from their inventiveness when a larger entity could trivially copy the idea Many wildly successful companies are built on technologies that could easily be copied, and yet aren't. The sole legitimate measure of the patent system is "how many useful inventions do we have that wouldn't have been invented without patents?". How many ideas (outside of the drug industry, which could potentially use some other solution) wouldn't have been created if not for patents? Apart from that, why do you believe an inventor should be able to invent once and profit for 20 years off the work of others, without continuing to invent and promote further good ideas? Keep inventing new ideas faster than they can be copied, so that the copy is always last year's technology. Make your customers so happy that they'd never want to consider a competitor. Do any number of things that add value to the world rather than subtracting it. > Are software inventors just supposed to give away their inventions as open source Preferably, but copyright still exists for those who want to release proprietary software. Copyright stops others from directly copying code. Patents stop others from creating new software, even if not copied from the patent holder. The former seems far more defensible than the latter.
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  >There's a very simple, constant-time, objective, mechanical algorithm to determine whether to grant a patent: "return false". There are several empirical studies that indicate this is wrong. Google and ye shall find. > That would work better than the current algorithm, which closely approximates "return true" This is objectively false if you look at publicly available data on rejection rates and understand how the process works. > good ideas (and a fair many bad ones with good execution) will succeed whether granted an artificial monopoly or not. Oh yes, they will succeed, but from past experience, not always will they reward the original inventors. > But a granted patent can litigate good ideas to death. How often has that happened? Note that if you want to mention examples like Watt or the Wright Brothers, those apocryphal accounts have been debunked. > Many wildly successful companies are built on technologies that could easily be copied, and yet aren't. And many dead companies were build on technologies that were too easily copied by bigger competitors. > Apart from that, why do you believe an inventor should be able to invent once and profit for 20 years off the work of others... Because a good idea is something that has value forever? Should an inventor not reap some rewards off that? >... without continuing to invent and promote further good ideas? Non-sequitur. What makes you think an inventor will not continue to invent? > Keep inventing new ideas faster than they can be copied, so that the copy is always last year's technology. This severely underestimates the speed at which technology can be reverse-engineered and duplicated. > Copyright stops others from directly copying code. Often the value is in the idea or the solution embodied in the code, not the code itself. Copyright does nothing to prevent that, even though it could be the idea which is hardest to create. > Patents stop others from creating new software, even if not copied from the patent holder. In practice, they don't. New software is being created at an unprecedented rate, even as software patents have been in effect for the past two decades. I'd agree we need a much higher bar for patents, but suggesting we do away with patents entirely is being dismissive of the unpleasant realities of the world.
tracker1 11y ago
Honestly, I'd just assume 90-95% of patents are outright rejected if they're too similar to existing concepts. Make the application fees cover real research, and leave it at that. Patents no longer protect the little guy, and they've actually been shown to be more harmful to the public lately (the opposite of the intended effect). Design and process patents are ridiculous... most software patents are absurd. I work in software, and tbh, there's almost nothing I've seen in the past 20 years that doesn't specifically tie to a physical device in software that is deserving of patent protection, and even then not for 20 years.
- javajosh 11y ago
  >I'd just assume 90-95% of patents are outright rejected if they're too similar to existing concepts I'm not sure how to look at this statistically, but isn't the OP a counter-example? >Make the application fees cover real research Not really sure what you mean here. How much is time worth? Okay, so I have an invention right now that I think is really novel, and I'd like to build a business around it. I may just want to patent and license though. Roughly speaking, it might fit roughly in the "Mathematica" space - note the example of an inventor (Wolfram) making good money on his (software) invention! Isn't that how the system is supposed to work? Here's another question: of all the innovation in the internet space, what, if anything, do you think is patentable? Is the Facebook feed novel? If nothing is, doesn't this leave the only businesses the ones that are social, the same ones that treat users as product not customers?
  - tracker1 11y ago
    How it's supposed to work is for knowledge to advance... "useful arts and sciences" as the case may be. The real question becomes, would you still have created your "invention" without the patent system? Would you have enough of a first mover advantage to recoup your investment into the invention without the patent system. The patent system is intended to allow for inventors to recoup investment and make money. It was started in a time where it would take literally years of R&D and a decade to even break even on hard, physical costs. Software and process ideas take minutes to come up with, and hours to develop... A single license/sale generally recovers any creative investment.
tensor 11y ago
Patents don't protect small companies anyways. If you are sued by a giant, the lawsuit will probably bankrupt you alone. Plus, that giant will come at you with multiple infringing patents, because chances are you are in fact infringing multiple patents. The only use of patents for a small company is to make the company more valuable in an acquisition, and also as a marketing tool. The way you profit from inventiveness is keeping trade secrets, and building things that are difficult for a competitor to easily copy.
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  > If you are sued by a giant, the lawsuit will probably bankrupt you alone. Plus, that giant will come at you with multiple infringing patents, because chances are you are in fact infringing multiple patents. Actually, in practice this "patent predation" is rare (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1396319 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1396319): > This Article also reports on the other major narratives of patent litigation. 4% of the suits were initiated by individual inventors (David v. Goliath), 18% of the suits were brought by small private companies against public or large private ones (small v. large), 16% pit one small-or medium-sized company against another (limited stakes), and in 8% of the suits, a large firm sued a small one (predation profile) This study also finds that patent trolls are behind a minority of patent lawsuits.

FredFredrickson 11y ago

As an artist, this is exactly the point that I make when I argue with people who say patents should be abolished. Without any kind of protection, anyone who has a greater means of production/marketing than you will always steal your ideas and profit more from them than you can. Obviously we need to fix the process so that as few bad patents are awarded as possible. Someone's just got to figure out how!

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> Without any kind of protection, anyone who has a greater means of production/marketing than you will always steal your ideas and profit more from them than you can. Since you're an artist shouldn't you only care about copyright and trademarks? What's a patent going to do for you? If someone steals your designs then you can sue them through means other than patents. If they copied your idea but executed differently then well I guess that sucks to a degree but if it's an obvious evolution then more than likely it happened independent of you anyway. I would imagine artists would have the least issue with just abolishing patents entirely so I'm curious why you do.
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
  I know Harry Connick Jr. holds at least one patent to do with performing his music. Imogen Heap has also been working with some guys to develop their Mimu Gloves. Which probably have some proprietry software & engineering. So there are at least a couple of people wanting to protect ideas.
wstrange 11y ago
As an artist, you should be so lucky that people want to copy your art. It is the best way to ensure your relevance. Think of a band like U2 - probably the most copied "art" in the world. From memory, their last tour grossed over 1 Billion.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

> I get how we all intuitively want the PTO to not issue "stupid patents" but is there an objective, mechanical way to determine what is stupid? There's a very simple, constant-time, objective, mechanical algorithm to determine whether to grant a patent: "return false". That would work better than the current algorithm, which closely approximates "return true". At the very least, it should take no less effort or inventiveness to get a patent granted than to get an academic paper published in a reputable journal or conference. But it seems highly unlikely that respected academics will jump at the chance to work in patent examiner's offices the way they do to program committees. > Do we care more about false positives (as in this case) or false negatives (a hypothetical alternative universe where too few, rather than too many, patents are awarded). False positives. A denied patent is highly unlikely to suppress a good idea; good ideas (and a fair many bad ones with good execution) will succeed whether granted an artificial monopoly or not. But a granted patent can litigate good ideas to death. > how are individual supposed to profit from their inventiveness when a larger entity could trivially copy the idea Many wildly successful companies are built on technologies that could easily be copied, and yet aren't. The sole legitimate measure of the patent system is "how many useful inventions do we have that wouldn't have been invented without patents?". How many ideas (outside of the drug industry, which could potentially use some other solution) wouldn't have been created if not for patents? Apart from that, why do you believe an inventor should be able to invent once and profit for 20 years off the work of others, without continuing to invent and promote further good ideas? Keep inventing new ideas faster than they can be copied, so that the copy is always last year's technology. Make your customers so happy that they'd never want to consider a competitor. Do any number of things that add value to the world rather than subtracting it. > Are software inventors just supposed to give away their inventions as open source Preferably, but copyright still exists for those who want to release proprietary software. Copyright stops others from directly copying code. Patents stop others from creating new software, even if not copied from the patent holder. The former seems far more defensible than the latter.

throwawaykf05 11y ago
>There's a very simple, constant-time, objective, mechanical algorithm to determine whether to grant a patent: "return false". There are several empirical studies that indicate this is wrong. Google and ye shall find. > That would work better than the current algorithm, which closely approximates "return true" This is objectively false if you look at publicly available data on rejection rates and understand how the process works. > good ideas (and a fair many bad ones with good execution) will succeed whether granted an artificial monopoly or not. Oh yes, they will succeed, but from past experience, not always will they reward the original inventors. > But a granted patent can litigate good ideas to death. How often has that happened? Note that if you want to mention examples like Watt or the Wright Brothers, those apocryphal accounts have been debunked. > Many wildly successful companies are built on technologies that could easily be copied, and yet aren't. And many dead companies were build on technologies that were too easily copied by bigger competitors. > Apart from that, why do you believe an inventor should be able to invent once and profit for 20 years off the work of others... Because a good idea is something that has value forever? Should an inventor not reap some rewards off that? >... without continuing to invent and promote further good ideas? Non-sequitur. What makes you think an inventor will not continue to invent? > Keep inventing new ideas faster than they can be copied, so that the copy is always last year's technology. This severely underestimates the speed at which technology can be reverse-engineered and duplicated. > Copyright stops others from directly copying code. Often the value is in the idea or the solution embodied in the code, not the code itself. Copyright does nothing to prevent that, even though it could be the idea which is hardest to create. > Patents stop others from creating new software, even if not copied from the patent holder. In practice, they don't. New software is being created at an unprecedented rate, even as software patents have been in effect for the past two decades. I'd agree we need a much higher bar for patents, but suggesting we do away with patents entirely is being dismissive of the unpleasant realities of the world.

tracker1 11y ago

Honestly, I'd just assume 90-95% of patents are outright rejected if they're too similar to existing concepts. Make the application fees cover real research, and leave it at that. Patents no longer protect the little guy, and they've actually been shown to be more harmful to the public lately (the opposite of the intended effect). Design and process patents are ridiculous... most software patents are absurd. I work in software, and tbh, there's almost nothing I've seen in the past 20 years that doesn't specifically tie to a physical device in software that is deserving of patent protection, and even then not for 20 years.

javajosh 11y ago
>I'd just assume 90-95% of patents are outright rejected if they're too similar to existing concepts I'm not sure how to look at this statistically, but isn't the OP a counter-example? >Make the application fees cover real research Not really sure what you mean here. How much is time worth? Okay, so I have an invention right now that I think is really novel, and I'd like to build a business around it. I may just want to patent and license though. Roughly speaking, it might fit roughly in the "Mathematica" space - note the example of an inventor (Wolfram) making good money on his (software) invention! Isn't that how the system is supposed to work? Here's another question: of all the innovation in the internet space, what, if anything, do you think is patentable? Is the Facebook feed novel? If nothing is, doesn't this leave the only businesses the ones that are social, the same ones that treat users as product not customers?
- tracker1 11y ago
  How it's supposed to work is for knowledge to advance... "useful arts and sciences" as the case may be. The real question becomes, would you still have created your "invention" without the patent system? Would you have enough of a first mover advantage to recoup your investment into the invention without the patent system. The patent system is intended to allow for inventors to recoup investment and make money. It was started in a time where it would take literally years of R&D and a decade to even break even on hard, physical costs. Software and process ideas take minutes to come up with, and hours to develop... A single license/sale generally recovers any creative investment.

tensor 11y ago

Patents don't protect small companies anyways. If you are sued by a giant, the lawsuit will probably bankrupt you alone. Plus, that giant will come at you with multiple infringing patents, because chances are you are in fact infringing multiple patents. The only use of patents for a small company is to make the company more valuable in an acquisition, and also as a marketing tool. The way you profit from inventiveness is keeping trade secrets, and building things that are difficult for a competitor to easily copy.

throwawaykf05 11y ago
> If you are sued by a giant, the lawsuit will probably bankrupt you alone. Plus, that giant will come at you with multiple infringing patents, because chances are you are in fact infringing multiple patents. Actually, in practice this "patent predation" is rare (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1396319 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1396319): > This Article also reports on the other major narratives of patent litigation. 4% of the suits were initiated by individual inventors (David v. Goliath), 18% of the suits were brought by small private companies against public or large private ones (small v. large), 16% pit one small-or medium-sized company against another (limited stakes), and in 8% of the suits, a large firm sued a small one (predation profile) This study also finds that patent trolls are behind a minority of patent lawsuits.