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The American patent office assumes that if there is no prior patent then the new patent describes something new and novel. It's designed this way to encourage

The American patent office assumes that if there is no prior patent then the new patent describes something new and novel. It's designed this way to encourage Americans to patent everything and anything, in order to dominate the intellectual property market.

brobdingnagians 6y ago
It's also done by political policy to make it look like America is still "very innovative". It would make politicians (and other people) look bad if the number of patents started falling precipitously. I believe America is still innovative, but not as much as the number of patents might suggest.
kindall 6y ago
The purpose of the patent system is to incentivize people to publish the details of their inventions instead of keeping them secret, thereby advancing the state of the art. The limited-time monopoly is the incentive.
- yossarian1408 6y ago
  Except the limited-time monopoly becomes an until-the-end-of-time monopoly, and has a more toxic effect on innovation and creativity than what would exist in its absence.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    Patents expire all the time...
  - midasuni 6y ago
    You’re thinking of copyright which seems infinite. Patents aren’t
    - yossarian1408 6y ago
      you're right, my bad
unityByFreedom 6y ago
Woah, back up. The patent system is messed up for software but that wasn't the intent. You weren't supposed to be able to defend algorithm-based patents in court. Software is protected by copyright. The patent office doesn't do much background checking. Enforcement happens in the court system. And, some courts such as those in Texas have handed cases to patent trolls. Patents, by design, reward innovators and contribute to the public good by exchanging information for protection. When you see a big company owning a lot of patents, that's the system at work. IP rights allow the company to defend their interests and pay larger salaries. Without IP rights, individual creators really have little chance to move up because wealthy individuals or businesses will just copy and mass-produce the concept. In order to remain involved you would have to play by their rules, like what happened to Jack Ma. Everyone answers to the government there because there's no delegation of power to courts to sort out IP rights.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  > Patents, by design, reward innovators and contribute to the public good by exchanging information for protection. Design and practice are two different things. Patents, in practice, are hopelessly broken when you can buy a fairly general patent from someone else, sit on it without ever actually using it, and then sue someone else who had no way of knowing the patent even existed. And that's not just in software.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    AFAIK it's primarily abused in software because software is so easy to "create". Again that's why algorithmic patents weren't supposed to be defendable in court. Outside of software patents which I don't think should exist, I don't see a problem with buying and sitting on a patent for something truly innovative. The original creator was rewarded, the knowledge becomes public, and the buyer can sit on it as they like for ~15 years. If it's a profitable concept they are wasting money by not developing it. The problem comes when courts uphold illegitimate patents. Fortunately there are companies who will stand up to this, such as Newegg and Cloudflare.
    - 6y ago
gnicholas 6y ago
> The American patent office assumes that if there is no prior patent then the new patent describes something new and novel. They don't just look for prior patents, they look for prior art (which includes any public research papers, presentations, products, etc.) as well. So if someone else did the thing you claim to have invented (even if they didn't patent it), you can't get a patent. And even if someone didn't do the thing you're claiming, but they did something that makes your claimed invention an obvious thing to do, you also can't get a patent. The obviousness standard is generally harder to overcome than the novelty standard.
- Tor3 6y ago
  That's the theory. In practice it works as was described above - they look for existing patents. Looking for prior work to any degree would presumably make the cost (and time) astronomical (or at least not covering what they're paid), as a general rule. The world is very different from when the patent system was established.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    It's possible that in some fields, the PTO focuses on patents because so many of the innovations are patented. But this doesn't fit my experience, having worked for well over a decade in Silicon Valley (first as a lawyer, and then as a founder). I could be wrong — this is just the sense I've gotten from talking with patent prosecutors at my old firm, and from talking with my outside counsel about our prosecution strategy.

brobdingnagians 6y ago

It's also done by political policy to make it look like America is still "very innovative". It would make politicians (and other people) look bad if the number of patents started falling precipitously. I believe America is still innovative, but not as much as the number of patents might suggest.

kindall 6y ago

The purpose of the patent system is to incentivize people to publish the details of their inventions instead of keeping them secret, thereby advancing the state of the art. The limited-time monopoly is the incentive.

yossarian1408 6y ago
Except the limited-time monopoly becomes an until-the-end-of-time monopoly, and has a more toxic effect on innovation and creativity than what would exist in its absence.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  Patents expire all the time...
- midasuni 6y ago
  You’re thinking of copyright which seems infinite. Patents aren’t
  - yossarian1408 6y ago
    you're right, my bad

unityByFreedom 6y ago

Woah, back up. The patent system is messed up for software but that wasn't the intent. You weren't supposed to be able to defend algorithm-based patents in court. Software is protected by copyright. The patent office doesn't do much background checking. Enforcement happens in the court system. And, some courts such as those in Texas have handed cases to patent trolls. Patents, by design, reward innovators and contribute to the public good by exchanging information for protection. When you see a big company owning a lot of patents, that's the system at work. IP rights allow the company to defend their interests and pay larger salaries. Without IP rights, individual creators really have little chance to move up because wealthy individuals or businesses will just copy and mass-produce the concept. In order to remain involved you would have to play by their rules, like what happened to Jack Ma. Everyone answers to the government there because there's no delegation of power to courts to sort out IP rights.

jfrunyon 6y ago
> Patents, by design, reward innovators and contribute to the public good by exchanging information for protection. Design and practice are two different things. Patents, in practice, are hopelessly broken when you can buy a fairly general patent from someone else, sit on it without ever actually using it, and then sue someone else who had no way of knowing the patent even existed. And that's not just in software.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  AFAIK it's primarily abused in software because software is so easy to "create". Again that's why algorithmic patents weren't supposed to be defendable in court. Outside of software patents which I don't think should exist, I don't see a problem with buying and sitting on a patent for something truly innovative. The original creator was rewarded, the knowledge becomes public, and the buyer can sit on it as they like for ~15 years. If it's a profitable concept they are wasting money by not developing it. The problem comes when courts uphold illegitimate patents. Fortunately there are companies who will stand up to this, such as Newegg and Cloudflare.
  - 6y ago

gnicholas 6y ago

> The American patent office assumes that if there is no prior patent then the new patent describes something new and novel. They don't just look for prior patents, they look for prior art (which includes any public research papers, presentations, products, etc.) as well. So if someone else did the thing you claim to have invented (even if they didn't patent it), you can't get a patent. And even if someone didn't do the thing you're claiming, but they did something that makes your claimed invention an obvious thing to do, you also can't get a patent. The obviousness standard is generally harder to overcome than the novelty standard.

Tor3 6y ago
That's the theory. In practice it works as was described above - they look for existing patents. Looking for prior work to any degree would presumably make the cost (and time) astronomical (or at least not covering what they're paid), as a general rule. The world is very different from when the patent system was established.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  It's possible that in some fields, the PTO focuses on patents because so many of the innovations are patented. But this doesn't fit my experience, having worked for well over a decade in Silicon Valley (first as a lawyer, and then as a founder). I could be wrong — this is just the sense I've gotten from talking with patent prosecutors at my old firm, and from talking with my outside counsel about our prosecution strategy.