2 ms·

We're not going to shut them down by invalidating them one at a time. You're not plugging a few leaks in a dike; you're trying to splash the ocean back with tea

by njl 14y ago

We're not going to shut them down by invalidating them one at a time. You're not plugging a few leaks in a dike; you're trying to splash the ocean back with teacups.

d2vid 14y ago
How many teacups we talkin here? In 2011 there were about 500K utility patent applications: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm Many of those are not software related. There are about 1.3M programmers in the US alone: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19720/where-can-i-find-statistics-on-worldwide-developers-and-software-companies/20300#20300 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19720/where-c... So 20 teacups each to have each patent looked over 10 times? Sounds doable to me.
- fpp 14y ago
  some patents take days to review - some have to be reviewed in context with other patents etc. So maybe 200 teacups each but the direction is definitely right.
  - d2vid 14y ago
    I just went on to AskPatents and tried my hand at it: http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/197/prior-art-for-style-and-layout-caching-of-web-content/239#239 http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/197/prior-art-for... I'm not doing anything close to as good a job as a patent examiner would do, but with about an hour of work I (hopefully) was able to start pointing to some prior art that could get an examiner quickly up to speed on what the state of the art is. I agree the amount of work involved to comprehensively invalidate a patent would be days - hopefully a group can do the same with shorter time contributions.
    - fpgeek 14y ago
      Unless the rules are different for this process, every piece of prior art that you point to now that an examiner doesn't agree with / understand is a piece of prior art that can't be reused further down the line (e.g. in a trial).

by njl 14y ago

We're not going to shut them down by invalidating them one at a time. You're not plugging a few leaks in a dike; you're trying to splash the ocean back with teacups.

d2vid 14y ago

How many teacups we talkin here? In 2011 there were about 500K utility patent applications: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm Many of those are not software related. There are about 1.3M programmers in the US alone: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19720/where-can-i-find-statistics-on-worldwide-developers-and-software-companies/20300#20300 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19720/where-c... So 20 teacups each to have each patent looked over 10 times? Sounds doable to me.

fpp 14y ago
some patents take days to review - some have to be reviewed in context with other patents etc. So maybe 200 teacups each but the direction is definitely right.
- d2vid 14y ago
  I just went on to AskPatents and tried my hand at it: http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/197/prior-art-for-style-and-layout-caching-of-web-content/239#239 http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/197/prior-art-for... I'm not doing anything close to as good a job as a patent examiner would do, but with about an hour of work I (hopefully) was able to start pointing to some prior art that could get an examiner quickly up to speed on what the state of the art is. I agree the amount of work involved to comprehensively invalidate a patent would be days - hopefully a group can do the same with shorter time contributions.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    Unless the rules are different for this process, every piece of prior art that you point to now that an examiner doesn't agree with / understand is a piece of prior art that can't be reused further down the line (e.g. in a trial).