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Most people (whose business isn't propped up by it) seem to agree patent law in the US is, to a greater or lesser extent, broken. How can we fix it? Short of de

Most people (whose business isn't propped up by it) seem to agree patent law in the US is, to a greater or lesser extent, broken. How can we fix it? Short of deep pockets to fund a lot of lobbying (maybe a big Indiegogo project...where's The Oatmeal? ;), I don't see how we overcome the lobbying of large IP producers who don't want things to change.

jseims 14y ago
I don't think you have to overcome the lobbying of IP holders, as they're also hurt by too many patents. The tech industry just needs to agree that we'd all be better off with a truce, and lobby to change the laws. Personally, I'd like to see no patents for software and business methods.
- beagle3 14y ago
  > they're also hurt by too many patents. But they also spent a lot of money to get (and maintain) these patents over the years, so while they might not try to fight a patent reform, there is no chance they will lobby for it: With all the pain they are enduring, the patent system STILL gives the big guys an edge on the small guys. > Personally, I'd like to see no patents for software and business methods. Me too. But patents (paid for already) have already been granted, so even if you stop granting them today you still have to wait 20 years for old ones to expire; and patent holders would (rightfully) demand their money back if you decide to expire them early. The only solution (which several people have apparently come up with independently) that I'm aware of that has a chance of working, is introducing a "cost-of-carry" for patents - if patents are property, tax them like property, at e.g. 1% of decalred value per year. Think your patent portfolio is worth $1B? That's nice. Pay $10M/year to maintain it. The value would come into play in estimation of damages (e.g., patent infringement limited to patent value per violator, or at most 3 times as much for willful infringement); and alternatively in an "eminent domain" style seizure - someone could take the patent away from you in return for 20 times declared value. The mechanics are non trivial, but can be solved in such a way that they create an incentive not to overstate the worth of a patent, yet still provide protection to inventors - and it would put old and new patents on equal footing.
  - jedbrown 14y ago
    Some big players including Google and Microsoft are in favor of fairly drastic patent reform. The fact that they have to play the game (because that's how the legal system is set up) does not imply that they think the system is good for their bottom line. I'm in favor of a "King James I moment", revoking all prior patents. The problem with pure maintenance fees is that it does nothing to prevent overlapping patents. Also, truly innovative patents may not prove their worth for several years (this is sort of the point), but the original company may not be able to afford the huge fee during the early years. If a big company could just buy it for 20x whatever the inventor is paying for maintenance, the inventor can easily be shut out of the market.
    - nirvana 14y ago
      Google is not "playing the game" they are abusing the system far more than Apple does. They sued Apple for FRAND patents that, not only did they make promises on to get in to the standard, but that the license for was already aquired by Apple via Qualcomm which made the chips that used the inventions and which had a license. So, they are abusing both the FRAND standards and trying to double dip on exhausted patents. You can't accuse Apple of doing anything that abusive. Apple has been defending patents for inventions copied by people without a license and which are not standard essential. Basically it seems that to a lot of people since Google needed to rip off the iPhone for android, in order to compete, therefore patents are suddenly bad.
      - jedbrown 14y ago
        I was referring to quotes like "We think that these patent wars are not helpful to consumers. They’re not helpful to the marketplace. They’re not helpful to innovation." (http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/21/google-exec-calls-patent-wars-not-helpful-to-consumers/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/21/google-exe...) All of the companies have hoards of overlapping patents on technology that was not innovative in the first place. They "defend" their patents in court because that's the game. All the major players do this, not just in technology. When do you think "Coal-fire steam locomotive" was patented? http://www.google.com/patents/US4425763 http://www.google.com/patents/US4425763 (1984) How about three patents for technology so similar the author couldn't be bothered to change even one word of the title or abstract? http://www.google.com/patents/US6470844 http://www.google.com/patents/US6470844 http://www.google.com/patents/US6945207 http://www.google.com/patents/US6945207 http://www.google.com/patents/USRE40286 http://www.google.com/patents/USRE40286 Do you really think that Apple, who has been a notoriously slow adopter of NFC (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577493261395358658.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230483070457749...) really created any new technology in this patent that they were just awarded? http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=29&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=(apple.ASNM.+AND+20120828.PD.)&OS=an/apple+and+isd/8/28/2012&RS=(AN/apple+AND+ISD/20120828) http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
stephengillie 14y ago
At a minimum, I'd like to see Non-Practicing Entities be unable to sue for infringement.
- buro9 14y ago
  Define that. Because surely all a patent troll would need to do is implement a product that demonstrates a single patent in their pool. Or are you suggesting that every patent must be implemented as a product for it to be enforced? And if so, as an example of similar things, the UCI (cycling body) state that all Olympic track bikes must be available to the public, and this is true of Team GB equipment that you can order, for a price in the region of GBP 100k per bike. So would it be enough for a patent troll to offer an implementation of a smart phone for USD 5m?
- ktizo 14y ago
  Just make patents non-transferable instead, so they always must be licensed from the originating named individual or individuals (no direct patents by corps). That at least restricts the ability to amass a sizable monopoly over a whole sector.
- stephen_g 14y ago
  I don't think that will help a whole lot... There are some uses for non-practicing entities (eg, groups of patent holders like the MPEG LA doesn't do anything but it'd be impossible for anyone to licence an H.264 decoder without them because you'd have to get licences for hundreds of individual patents from a whole lot of other companies instead). We need to get to the source of the problem, which is that most software patents are either too vague or are for obvious things, and the term of protection is far too long.
winter_blue 14y ago
It's rather disappointing that in a democracy you have to lobby, i.e. spend lots of money to get anything done. What would be really great though would be a direct democracy, perhaps one that is Internet-based, where voters can raise motions and with sufficient votes pass them. This is a castle in the air though...

jseims 14y ago

I don't think you have to overcome the lobbying of IP holders, as they're also hurt by too many patents. The tech industry just needs to agree that we'd all be better off with a truce, and lobby to change the laws. Personally, I'd like to see no patents for software and business methods.

beagle3 14y ago
> they're also hurt by too many patents. But they also spent a lot of money to get (and maintain) these patents over the years, so while they might not try to fight a patent reform, there is no chance they will lobby for it: With all the pain they are enduring, the patent system STILL gives the big guys an edge on the small guys. > Personally, I'd like to see no patents for software and business methods. Me too. But patents (paid for already) have already been granted, so even if you stop granting them today you still have to wait 20 years for old ones to expire; and patent holders would (rightfully) demand their money back if you decide to expire them early. The only solution (which several people have apparently come up with independently) that I'm aware of that has a chance of working, is introducing a "cost-of-carry" for patents - if patents are property, tax them like property, at e.g. 1% of decalred value per year. Think your patent portfolio is worth $1B? That's nice. Pay $10M/year to maintain it. The value would come into play in estimation of damages (e.g., patent infringement limited to patent value per violator, or at most 3 times as much for willful infringement); and alternatively in an "eminent domain" style seizure - someone could take the patent away from you in return for 20 times declared value. The mechanics are non trivial, but can be solved in such a way that they create an incentive not to overstate the worth of a patent, yet still provide protection to inventors - and it would put old and new patents on equal footing.
- jedbrown 14y ago
  Some big players including Google and Microsoft are in favor of fairly drastic patent reform. The fact that they have to play the game (because that's how the legal system is set up) does not imply that they think the system is good for their bottom line. I'm in favor of a "King James I moment", revoking all prior patents. The problem with pure maintenance fees is that it does nothing to prevent overlapping patents. Also, truly innovative patents may not prove their worth for several years (this is sort of the point), but the original company may not be able to afford the huge fee during the early years. If a big company could just buy it for 20x whatever the inventor is paying for maintenance, the inventor can easily be shut out of the market.
  - nirvana 14y ago
    Google is not "playing the game" they are abusing the system far more than Apple does. They sued Apple for FRAND patents that, not only did they make promises on to get in to the standard, but that the license for was already aquired by Apple via Qualcomm which made the chips that used the inventions and which had a license. So, they are abusing both the FRAND standards and trying to double dip on exhausted patents. You can't accuse Apple of doing anything that abusive. Apple has been defending patents for inventions copied by people without a license and which are not standard essential. Basically it seems that to a lot of people since Google needed to rip off the iPhone for android, in order to compete, therefore patents are suddenly bad.
    - jedbrown 14y ago
      I was referring to quotes like "We think that these patent wars are not helpful to consumers. They’re not helpful to the marketplace. They’re not helpful to innovation." (http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/21/google-exec-calls-patent-wars-not-helpful-to-consumers/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/21/google-exe...) All of the companies have hoards of overlapping patents on technology that was not innovative in the first place. They "defend" their patents in court because that's the game. All the major players do this, not just in technology. When do you think "Coal-fire steam locomotive" was patented? http://www.google.com/patents/US4425763 http://www.google.com/patents/US4425763 (1984) How about three patents for technology so similar the author couldn't be bothered to change even one word of the title or abstract? http://www.google.com/patents/US6470844 http://www.google.com/patents/US6470844 http://www.google.com/patents/US6945207 http://www.google.com/patents/US6945207 http://www.google.com/patents/USRE40286 http://www.google.com/patents/USRE40286 Do you really think that Apple, who has been a notoriously slow adopter of NFC (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577493261395358658.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230483070457749...) really created any new technology in this patent that they were just awarded? http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=29&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=(apple.ASNM.+AND+20120828.PD.)&OS=an/apple+and+isd/8/28/2012&RS=(AN/apple+AND+ISD/20120828) http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

stephengillie 14y ago

At a minimum, I'd like to see Non-Practicing Entities be unable to sue for infringement.

buro9 14y ago
Define that. Because surely all a patent troll would need to do is implement a product that demonstrates a single patent in their pool. Or are you suggesting that every patent must be implemented as a product for it to be enforced? And if so, as an example of similar things, the UCI (cycling body) state that all Olympic track bikes must be available to the public, and this is true of Team GB equipment that you can order, for a price in the region of GBP 100k per bike. So would it be enough for a patent troll to offer an implementation of a smart phone for USD 5m?
ktizo 14y ago
Just make patents non-transferable instead, so they always must be licensed from the originating named individual or individuals (no direct patents by corps). That at least restricts the ability to amass a sizable monopoly over a whole sector.
stephen_g 14y ago
I don't think that will help a whole lot... There are some uses for non-practicing entities (eg, groups of patent holders like the MPEG LA doesn't do anything but it'd be impossible for anyone to licence an H.264 decoder without them because you'd have to get licences for hundreds of individual patents from a whole lot of other companies instead). We need to get to the source of the problem, which is that most software patents are either too vague or are for obvious things, and the term of protection is far too long.

winter_blue 14y ago

It's rather disappointing that in a democracy you have to lobby, i.e. spend lots of money to get anything done. What would be really great though would be a direct democracy, perhaps one that is Internet-based, where voters can raise motions and with sufficient votes pass them. This is a castle in the air though...