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Once again the Supreme Court has stepped in to curb the Federal Circuit Court and bring a level-headed interpretation to the relevant statute defining how damag

by grellas 10y ago

Once again the Supreme Court has stepped in to curb the Federal Circuit Court and bring a level-headed interpretation to the relevant statute defining how damages are computed for infringing patent rights to a component that is part of a larger article of sale. The precise legal issue involved here is primarily of interest to the immediate parties to the dispute (and, of course, similarly situated parties dealing with like claims). It is not a legal issue that stirs much public debate. Yet the reining in of the Federal Circuit has major public consequences. The Federal Circuit basically has been on on a bender for the past 20+ years in interpreting the patent laws such that basically everything under the sun became patentable with the enforcement rights of patent holders utterly maximized. This led to the plethora of software and other process patents that has caused so many to throw up their hands in despair and to conclude that all patents are evil and should be abolished. Whether they should or not is a policy question for which there are decent arguments on both sides, in my view. But, assuming one agrees that patent protection can be useful for the right cases, the law is now coming around much more to the point where far more defensible patents are being granted, upheld and enforced and where such enforcement is more reasonably tailored to the purposes of patent law as envisioned in the U.S. Constitution. And that is a very good thing. Apple is and has for years been very aggressive in attacking competitors with patent claims. In this case, their patent was upheld and the question remained as to how much they had been injured. With this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court helps ensure that Apple will get compensation but not a windfall for the wrong done to it. Patent law may be right or it may be wrong in a social-justice sense but, as far as the U.S. law is concerned, if it is to be upheld and enforced at all, it should be done in a way that actually furthers its proper purposes and not in a way that promotes shakedown suits and opportunistic legal claims. So kudos to the Supreme Court for getting it right and for putting proper bounds on patent laws in general in a way that helps bring sanity to the field.

Animats 10y ago
Oh, come on. It's been a decade since the patent holder was in a strong position. We effectively don't have injunctions or punitive damages any more, and infringement claims get tied up in all those new post-grant review procedures.
- gr3yh47 10y ago
  > Oh, come on. It's been a decade since the patent holder was in a strong position. the sharp rise of patent trolls in the last decade would like a word with you
  - wahern 10y ago
    If you believe patents make any economic sense, then the term patent troll is basically just an epithet meant for rhetorical effect. If the function of patents is to incentive capital markets to invest in products and processes that otherwise wouldn't see any investment because of the lack of a profit motive, then patent trolls are a good thing. The whole point of a patent is to grant a monopoly. Whether a patent holder enforcing the monopoly is a non-practicing entity (NPE) is immaterial. Indeed, by the logic of the patent system so-called trolls are an unmitigated positive. They add liquidity to the patent system. Liquidity means the patent system, theoretically, is more efficient at incentivizing research and design. If you have a problem with patent trolls, then it means you have a problem with something _else_ fundamental to the patent system. Maybe if you followed your beliefs to their logical end, you would question the validity of the necessity of patents. Alternatively, maybe what so-called patent trolls are exposing is the fact that patents are too freely granted, or granted for too long. Or that being able to sell patents at all, whether to NPEs or other companies, is just an end-run around anti-trust laws, which would otherwise blunt how rigidly a company could leverage patent rights in a market. In any event, there's nothing negative about patent trolls, per se. They're simply exposing fundamental flaws in the patent system. I fear that focusing on so-called patent trolls will simply result in superficial legislative and judicial solutions.
    - kbutler 10y ago
      You're confused thinking that a patent troll is just a non-practicing entity. A patent troll is not just a "non-practicing entity" - it's an organization that attempts to use a granted patent to charge tolls on a range of later invention which was neither enabled by nor anticipated by the patent. There should be absolutely no incentive nor mechanism for patent holders to block and extract tolls from inventions they did not enable. It's perfectly fine for a bridge builder to authorize someone else to charge tolls (a non-practicing entity), but it is unacceptable for an unrelated party (troll) to set up camp charging tolls on a bridge, just because they had an idea for a similar bridge somewhere else.
monochromatic 10y ago
> Once again the Supreme Court has stepped in to curb the Federal Circuit Court and bring a level-headed interpretation Surely you don't count Alice among the "level-headed" opinions? Supreme Court opinions relating to patent law almost invariably feel (to me) like they're written by a bunch of people who don't know much about patents and don't care to learn.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Alice is surprisingly workable. It's not an academically satisfying case, but having applied it in several cases now I think it is a useful analytical framework (which is miles ahead of what we had before it).
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    The idea of a case being an analytical framework is intriguing. Care to elaborate? (Should I just go read it? Does it propose some kind of multi-pronged test?)
    - rayiner 10y ago
      It's not a multi-factor test in the sense of "weigh these four factors and then do what you were going to do anyway." It gives you a process for thinking about whether a patent covers ineligible subject matter. First, you ask: "is the patent directed to some abstract matter?" If it is, then you ask: "when the claims are considered as an ordered combination, do they add something more to the abstract idea so the patent isn't just a patent on the idea itself?" It does a pretty good job of capturing the idea that, e.g., you can't patent "packet filtering" but you may[1] be able to patent a specific process for packet filtering that, say, minimizes how many bytes of each packet you have to process. [1] Whether you should be able to patent a specific process for packet filtering is a different question. I'm not saying Alice is a good articulation of what the law should be. But I think it's a decent way of thinking about patents and coming up with the "right answer" as section 101 intends to define what the right answer is.
      - 10y ago
tajen 10y ago
Beyond ethics, there's also geopolitics involved. Weaker patent guidelines in USA gives a competitive advantage to the USA over the rest of the world. Of course any country is free to submit patents as they please (in accordance with the WTO), but USA companies de facto submit more patents, the same way as a USA citizen has more indemnities in case of plane crash, which ensures an ongoing dominance for the rolling 20 years. See it this way: As a French person I'd love that your guidelines become more strict, because it would give more opportunity for the smaller French startups to grow; If I were American, I would love if patents were used to bring money back from the French companies to USA. The irony is, patent trolls attack other Americans more often than foreign countries, which hasted the debate about patent trolls. Hence, Kudos to the Supreme Court for putting better bounds on patent laws, especially since that means losing a little leverage for American companies.

by grellas 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

Oh, come on. It's been a decade since the patent holder was in a strong position. We effectively don't have injunctions or punitive damages any more, and infringement claims get tied up in all those new post-grant review procedures.

gr3yh47 10y ago
> Oh, come on. It's been a decade since the patent holder was in a strong position. the sharp rise of patent trolls in the last decade would like a word with you
- wahern 10y ago
  If you believe patents make any economic sense, then the term patent troll is basically just an epithet meant for rhetorical effect. If the function of patents is to incentive capital markets to invest in products and processes that otherwise wouldn't see any investment because of the lack of a profit motive, then patent trolls are a good thing. The whole point of a patent is to grant a monopoly. Whether a patent holder enforcing the monopoly is a non-practicing entity (NPE) is immaterial. Indeed, by the logic of the patent system so-called trolls are an unmitigated positive. They add liquidity to the patent system. Liquidity means the patent system, theoretically, is more efficient at incentivizing research and design. If you have a problem with patent trolls, then it means you have a problem with something _else_ fundamental to the patent system. Maybe if you followed your beliefs to their logical end, you would question the validity of the necessity of patents. Alternatively, maybe what so-called patent trolls are exposing is the fact that patents are too freely granted, or granted for too long. Or that being able to sell patents at all, whether to NPEs or other companies, is just an end-run around anti-trust laws, which would otherwise blunt how rigidly a company could leverage patent rights in a market. In any event, there's nothing negative about patent trolls, per se. They're simply exposing fundamental flaws in the patent system. I fear that focusing on so-called patent trolls will simply result in superficial legislative and judicial solutions.
  - kbutler 10y ago
    You're confused thinking that a patent troll is just a non-practicing entity. A patent troll is not just a "non-practicing entity" - it's an organization that attempts to use a granted patent to charge tolls on a range of later invention which was neither enabled by nor anticipated by the patent. There should be absolutely no incentive nor mechanism for patent holders to block and extract tolls from inventions they did not enable. It's perfectly fine for a bridge builder to authorize someone else to charge tolls (a non-practicing entity), but it is unacceptable for an unrelated party (troll) to set up camp charging tolls on a bridge, just because they had an idea for a similar bridge somewhere else.

monochromatic 10y ago

> Once again the Supreme Court has stepped in to curb the Federal Circuit Court and bring a level-headed interpretation Surely you don't count Alice among the "level-headed" opinions? Supreme Court opinions relating to patent law almost invariably feel (to me) like they're written by a bunch of people who don't know much about patents and don't care to learn.

rayiner 10y ago
Alice is surprisingly workable. It's not an academically satisfying case, but having applied it in several cases now I think it is a useful analytical framework (which is miles ahead of what we had before it).
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  The idea of a case being an analytical framework is intriguing. Care to elaborate? (Should I just go read it? Does it propose some kind of multi-pronged test?)
  - rayiner 10y ago
    It's not a multi-factor test in the sense of "weigh these four factors and then do what you were going to do anyway." It gives you a process for thinking about whether a patent covers ineligible subject matter. First, you ask: "is the patent directed to some abstract matter?" If it is, then you ask: "when the claims are considered as an ordered combination, do they add something more to the abstract idea so the patent isn't just a patent on the idea itself?" It does a pretty good job of capturing the idea that, e.g., you can't patent "packet filtering" but you may[1] be able to patent a specific process for packet filtering that, say, minimizes how many bytes of each packet you have to process. [1] Whether you should be able to patent a specific process for packet filtering is a different question. I'm not saying Alice is a good articulation of what the law should be. But I think it's a decent way of thinking about patents and coming up with the "right answer" as section 101 intends to define what the right answer is.
    - 10y ago

tajen 10y ago

Beyond ethics, there's also geopolitics involved. Weaker patent guidelines in USA gives a competitive advantage to the USA over the rest of the world. Of course any country is free to submit patents as they please (in accordance with the WTO), but USA companies de facto submit more patents, the same way as a USA citizen has more indemnities in case of plane crash, which ensures an ongoing dominance for the rolling 20 years. See it this way: As a French person I'd love that your guidelines become more strict, because it would give more opportunity for the smaller French startups to grow; If I were American, I would love if patents were used to bring money back from the French companies to USA. The irony is, patent trolls attack other Americans more often than foreign countries, which hasted the debate about patent trolls. Hence, Kudos to the Supreme Court for putting better bounds on patent laws, especially since that means losing a little leverage for American companies.