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Bill to End Patent Office Validity Challenges Introduced in House
- DiabloD3 8y agotl;dr Congress is apparently trying to pass a law that makes it impossible to challenge patents, and opens the door for an ever escalating abuse of invalid patents sneaking into the system.
- spamizbad 8y agoThis sounds like a huge boon to patent trolls, undoing the modest reforms passed earlier. Is this correct?
- chris_wot 8y agoWow, could they get any more stupid if they tried?
- nickserv 8y agoThis isn't stupidity, this is malice.
- oneplane 8y agoIt's an example where Hanlon's Razor doesn't apply. So if you ever need one to point out the rare cases where this is so, this case would be a really good one to use.
- jessaustin 8y agoThere's nothing "rare" about it. Hanlon's Razor is a motto for credulous children.
- protomyth 8y agoSadly, the primaries are over, but you can make your displeasure known to: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).
- jostmey 8y agoInnovation will rush to china if bills like this become law
- dwheeler 8y agoThis is a bad bill. The PTO is notorious for issuing bad patents; examiners don't have the time or the information necessary to do a good job. Giving the PTO a chance to re-evaluate bad patents saves literally billions of dollars; the courts are far more expensive.
- Alex3917 8y agoThey also get paid more for approving patents than rejecting them.
- Pulcinella 8y agoIt’s not like the workers get a cut of that. Also, Congress loves to divert the fees the patent office collects for its own use.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoYou will toe the line if you want a good performance review.
- pjdemers 8y agoThe examiners don't get bonused on allowing patents. But if too many of their decisions are challenged, their career prospects dim. At least that's the way it was in the 70's when my dad was a patent examiner. The way the game worked then was for the examiner to negotiate with the filer to reduce the number and size of the patent's claims until the patent could be allowed, but was so weak as to not be worth challenging by the filer's competitors.
- Alex3917 8y ago> The examiners don't get bonused on allowing patents. Yes, they do. They are paid based on how many patents they process, and it takes less hours to approve a patent than to reject one.
- fhrow4484 8y agoMost comments discuss the usefulness of the PTO but it seems like a major section of it is that one: >> PATENTABILITY OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES AND SOFTWARE INVENTIONS. >> ... >> this amendment effectively abrogates Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014) and its predecessors to ensure that life sciences discoveries, computer software, and similar inventions and discoveries are patentable, and that those patents are enforceable. See the bill text linked: http://src.bna.com/z0P http://src.bna.com/z0P
- KirinDave 8y agoCalling this "bipartisan" because they got Kaptur on board is in that "extreme technicality makes this correct" correct category. Kaptur is perhaps one of the most pro-intellectual-property-is-the-province-of-corporations folks in the House and in general is tightly aligned with Republican fiscal policy. The linked article links to a draft: http://src.bna.com/z0P http://src.bna.com/z0P It's H.R. 6264: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6264 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6264 I'm not a patent lawyer but it looks like a bad idea to me. I'm especially nervous given how excited certain orgs who I usually DIS-agree with are hyping it as a solution: https://cpip.gmu.edu/2018/06/29/rep-massie-introduces-new-legislation-to-restore-americas-patent-system/ https://cpip.gmu.edu/2018/06/29/rep-massie-introduces-new-le...
- jmull 8y agoThis would be a disaster that would fundamentally unbalance the patent system -- in favor of trolls -- which would be a disaster for innovation in the US. The problem is, large numbers of patent applications come in and the patent office can't possibly review all of them upfront in extreme detail. Of course the great majority of them are not especially high-stakes so don't warrant extremely detailed, considered review. The administrative review process lets them focus their limited resources on high-stakes, contested patents. Anyway, it would be bizarre to give the patent office the responsibility to grant patents but not give them the ability to fix mistakes in this extremely complex domain. Bringing a judge into it makes matters worse since courts are more expensive and much less able to evaluate the validity of patents than the patent office itself. An obvious land-grab by patent trolls that would strangle tech .
- oneplane 8y agoAll this does is screw the USA even more than it already is. The rest of the world just laughs.
- spruciefic399 8y agoUnfortunately, I think you're right. From my perspective, this is exactly the sort of government-sanctioned monopoly / rent-seeking that's causing so much income inequality and economic pathology. The government should be encouraging competition, not destroying it. I think the idea of intellectual property per se is fundamentally flawed, but I can see patents as incentives. This just shifts too much power to trolls and undeserving patents.
- oneplane 8y agoI think the government should be there to provide a general interface to general policy, perhaps create, check, enforce it, and ensure some sort of level playing field so people that miss the genetic lottery aren't screwed by default. (basically, just making sure people can work together if they want to, but without having the will of the strongest/most powerful be the law) If you undermine any of that by making bad rules or doing bad governance, you are screwing the whole country and all the people in it.
- justinclift 8y ago> The rest of the world just laughs. Unfortunately, the US keeps attempting to include adoption of it's IP policies in the various free trade style agreements proposed with other countries. Not a good way to generate goodwill from the IT industry in the rest of the world. ;)
- shmerl 8y agoReally evil move no doubt driven by patent trolls and patent racketeers.
- notlob 8y agoOne biotech person's perspective is that these are changes in the right direction. Things were certainly not perfect in the pre-AIA era, but post-AIA and recent court decisions have had many negative impacts on our industry, particularly diagnostics and particularly new ventures. The uncertainty associated with an “issued” patent has decimated their value, to the loss of innovation in our industry.
- lixtra 8y agoI hope you get down voted not for taking a contrarian position but just because your comment does barely support the argument. Maybe anecdotes would help to illustrate your point?
- notlob 8y agoI wasn’t intending to advance an argument, merely present that as a biotech entrepreneur in the process of forming a new company I for one like many of the changes in this proposal. I completely get why software people take umbrage with patents, but wanted to politely put forward that it isn’t a universal feeling.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago> I completely get why software people take umbrage with patents, but wanted to politely put forward that it isn’t a universal feeling. The obvious solution would be to not have software patents, but this bill seems to be proposing the exact opposite of that.
- jcranmer 8y agoOkay, what does the bill actually do? 1. Switches the US back from first-to-file (which is the norm in literally the entire rest of the world) to first-to-invent. This is something that sounds like a good idea, but in practice ends up being more bureaucratic hassle than any sort of actual improvement. 2. Repeals inter-partes review, i.e., a means to assert "this is a bad patent." Note that SCOTUS decided in April that inter partes review is in fact constitutional, so I assume this is basically a change of tactics of litigators from "try to get SCOTUS to rule it unconstitutional" to "try to repeal the law." 3. Eliminates fee diversion. I don't know the law well enough to understand what exactly it's trying to do here. 4. Overturn most of the recent SCOTUS §101 decisions of the past decade (e.g., Bilski, Alice). It's debatable if this is actually possible, though--these decisions didn't rest on "well, they're not actually authorized by law" as much as "it's been well-agreed by common sense that these things can't be patented." 5. Explicitly declares patents as "private property rights." This calls into mind the argument in Oil States, that the government can't revoke these kinds of rights without means of a court (which, if they had been private rights, would have made inter partes review unconstitutional). But I again wonder if it's actually within Congressional power to make this kind of declaration. 6. Stops patent applications from being published automatically. Because publishing patent applications creates prior art, and that would retard innovation. No, seriously, that's the literal argument in the text of the bill itself. 7. In legal cases, the defendant would now have to argue that the patent is invalid, that each individual claim is invalid (even if the claim depends on an invalid claim), and that a permanent injunction is not appropriate, even if the patent owner doesn't make its own patent. In other words, this bill attempts to undo every aspect of patent reform in the past decade, both from SCOTUS and from Congress. I can't think of anyone who'd be happy about any of this, save for patent trolls.
- monochromatic 8y ago> these decisions didn't rest on "well, they're not actually authorized by law" as much as "it's been well-agreed by common sense that these things can't be patented." By their own terms, these decisions purport to be based on the statute section 101. The Supreme Court rarely if ever bases a decision only on what it considers common sense. If the text of 101 changes, there’s no reason to think the caselaw that’s grown up around it would stay valid.