4 ms·

It would be interesting to see some of the cases where the plaintiffs have not won in Marshall. As this place in Texas has over the last 10 years built an indu

by fpp 13y ago

It would be interesting to see some of the cases where the plaintiffs have not won in Marshall. As this place in Texas has over the last 10 years built an industry around the IP cases going to trial there (with e.g. short-term office rental rates as high as in NYC) - maybe those are cases that are not "supporting" their continuing gold rush. None of that of course touches on the fundamental flaw in the system that IP cases are so exorbitantly expensive that most have to pay those modern "highwaymen" even when knowing that their demands are most of the time completely without base and are solely a legalized form of extortion. Just consider how you feel, when you worked for years and developed / invented a large scale real-world solution and those crooks with IP / patents originally being provided to protect their work on bicycles and abacuses are lining up outside your office all claiming that they would have done all the work. So the first step to cure this must be a protection of business that have invested substantial time and money into their products, are bona fide and actually running a business based on their work, to be able to defend themselves against such frivolous law abuses.

peroo 13y ago
Planet Money has a story on one such case: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/07/188370495/when-patents-attack-part-two http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/07/188370495/when-pat... In that particular case, which was regarding a ridiculously broad patent for offsite network-backups, the plaintiff lost on a technicality; there was proof of a co-inventor who hadn't been included in the patent-filing. If it wasn't for that oversight they would almost certainly have won the case.
noonespecial 13y ago
...all claiming that they would have done all the work. Its worse than that. They claim that the speculative idea was all of the work, and you're nothing but a thief who stole it and did the easy part of, you know, actually doing stuff.
- fpp 13y ago
  Those are my favorite too - I normally call them Jules Verne patents - dreamt up something, written a fictional essay aka patent on it, then claiming money from the first one who actually built it and actually invented it. If this continues, soon someone might claim that Gerdt von Bassewitz invented space travel (Peter and Anneli's Journey to the Moon - the German title is actually nicer - translated: Little Peter's travel to the Moon -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Anneli%27s_Journey_to_the_Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Anneli%27s_Journey_to... ) Ideas come in thousands and if not executed are not worth a dime. Doing it is the hard part and that's why companies building things generally get paid / make more money than science fiction book writers.
  - noonespecial 13y ago
    Look on the bright side. Soon sci-fi will be considered prior art! If I'm not mistaken, this has already happened with regards to "design" patents.
    - erbo 13y ago
      It has indeed. See the case of Charles Hall, who invented the modern waterbed in the 1970's, and was denied a patent on his invention because Robert Heinlein had already described the waterbed in novels as early as 1942: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-waterbedfellows/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-wate...
- brownbat 13y ago
  Ideas _are_ the patentable work though. The system is designed to get people to share their ideas. The problem is that most patents should never have been granted in the first place, because they are obvious or non-novel. If you had to manufacture something before you could patent it, then your idea could be stolen by any potential investor. And some solutions you can't manufacture without help from entrenched businesses. Robert Kearns shopped around an idea to GM and Ford for a new wiper system. They stole it without paying him. If patents couldn't be held by NPEs, then the law would always be on GM and Ford's side, because Kearns didn't happen to own a massive automobile production line. Why should owning a massive car factory be the only thing that qualifies you as an inventor? Also, anyone who can beat you to market has a defense against your patent claim. The biggest, richest, fastest manufacturers win the right to produce everything they never invented. Don't get me wrong, the patent system is definitely broken. The way it's broken happens to get exploited by certain non-practicing entities. But the problem isn't NPEs, it's _some_ NPEs, and really, it's just the features of the system those NPEs are exploiting. The problem with our patent system is that no one actually seems to care about novelty or obviousness, even though they are supposed to. Consider "a method for thermal refreshment of bread" (patent number 6080436). It's a toaster patented in the year 2000. David Martin, a patent quality assessor, claims that about 30% of the patents his firm reviews are for things that have already been invented.[1] Software has it's own special version of this problem. Juries can't code, so they don't have any clue what's obvious, what's just an incremental improvement that anyone could produce if they knew the language. Juries can't tell the difference between design tweaks and brand new methods. The problem is not that the system rewards intellectual effort, the problem is that the system rewards things that are effortless. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/t...
  - chii 13y ago
    What about an evaluation mechanism that doesn't depend on patent clerks, but more like peer reviewed science papers in academia? E.g., a test for novelty and obviousness is that a skilled practitioner of the arts is shown the "result" of the patent (or a description of the result), but not the actual patent (which details how to achieve said result). If the practitioner can infer how the result is achieved, then the patent is not novel enough.

by fpp 13y ago

peroo 13y ago

Planet Money has a story on one such case: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/07/188370495/when-patents-attack-part-two http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/07/188370495/when-pat... In that particular case, which was regarding a ridiculously broad patent for offsite network-backups, the plaintiff lost on a technicality; there was proof of a co-inventor who hadn't been included in the patent-filing. If it wasn't for that oversight they would almost certainly have won the case.

noonespecial 13y ago

...all claiming that they would have done all the work. Its worse than that. They claim that the speculative idea was all of the work, and you're nothing but a thief who stole it and did the easy part of, you know, actually doing stuff.

fpp 13y ago
Those are my favorite too - I normally call them Jules Verne patents - dreamt up something, written a fictional essay aka patent on it, then claiming money from the first one who actually built it and actually invented it. If this continues, soon someone might claim that Gerdt von Bassewitz invented space travel (Peter and Anneli's Journey to the Moon - the German title is actually nicer - translated: Little Peter's travel to the Moon -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Anneli%27s_Journey_to_the_Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Anneli%27s_Journey_to... ) Ideas come in thousands and if not executed are not worth a dime. Doing it is the hard part and that's why companies building things generally get paid / make more money than science fiction book writers.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  Look on the bright side. Soon sci-fi will be considered prior art! If I'm not mistaken, this has already happened with regards to "design" patents.
  - erbo 13y ago
    It has indeed. See the case of Charles Hall, who invented the modern waterbed in the 1970's, and was denied a patent on his invention because Robert Heinlein had already described the waterbed in novels as early as 1942: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-waterbedfellows/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-wate...
brownbat 13y ago
Ideas _are_ the patentable work though. The system is designed to get people to share their ideas. The problem is that most patents should never have been granted in the first place, because they are obvious or non-novel. If you had to manufacture something before you could patent it, then your idea could be stolen by any potential investor. And some solutions you can't manufacture without help from entrenched businesses. Robert Kearns shopped around an idea to GM and Ford for a new wiper system. They stole it without paying him. If patents couldn't be held by NPEs, then the law would always be on GM and Ford's side, because Kearns didn't happen to own a massive automobile production line. Why should owning a massive car factory be the only thing that qualifies you as an inventor? Also, anyone who can beat you to market has a defense against your patent claim. The biggest, richest, fastest manufacturers win the right to produce everything they never invented. Don't get me wrong, the patent system is definitely broken. The way it's broken happens to get exploited by certain non-practicing entities. But the problem isn't NPEs, it's _some_ NPEs, and really, it's just the features of the system those NPEs are exploiting. The problem with our patent system is that no one actually seems to care about novelty or obviousness, even though they are supposed to. Consider "a method for thermal refreshment of bread" (patent number 6080436). It's a toaster patented in the year 2000. David Martin, a patent quality assessor, claims that about 30% of the patents his firm reviews are for things that have already been invented.[1] Software has it's own special version of this problem. Juries can't code, so they don't have any clue what's obvious, what's just an incremental improvement that anyone could produce if they knew the language. Juries can't tell the difference between design tweaks and brand new methods. The problem is not that the system rewards intellectual effort, the problem is that the system rewards things that are effortless. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/t...
- chii 13y ago
  What about an evaluation mechanism that doesn't depend on patent clerks, but more like peer reviewed science papers in academia? E.g., a test for novelty and obviousness is that a skilled practitioner of the arts is shown the "result" of the patent (or a description of the result), but not the actual patent (which details how to achieve said result). If the practitioner can infer how the result is achieved, then the patent is not novel enough.