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Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

460 points by billyvg 11y ago

lotsofmangos 11y ago
The fact this patent was granted in the first place seems completely absurd. But then again, we live in a world where Boeing has a patent on certain trajectories that use the moon's gravity (http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6116545 http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6116545), so it shouldn't really surprise me.
- iwwr 11y ago
  There's a whole batch of patents related to space trajectories. Edward Belbruno also holds a few patents on low-energy transfers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Belbruno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Belbruno Belbruno has been an innovative researcher otherwise, but it's hardly an excuse to monopolize math theorems or their computational applications.
  - AlexandrB 11y ago
    The patent system as it exists encourages this kind of behaviour. It's hardly surprising that people would take advantage of it. If he didn't do it, someone else would and a patent case to prove prior art gets expensive.
- jbuzbee 11y ago
  I recall a story a while back about a satellite that ended up in the wrong orbit after launch. The engineers knew how to correct it using various orbital maneuvers, but alas those maneuvers were patented and it was too expensive to license them. So the decision was made to splash the satellite and let the insurance companies pay out. At least that's my recollection... Edit : Here's a description of the issue, which is a bit different than my recollection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC-14#Launch_anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC-14#Launch_anomaly
  - savanaly 11y ago
    Surely this is a cases where the Coase theorem could have been of some use. But alas, transaction costs...
  - vacri 11y ago
    I thought that algorithms couldn't be patented?
    - spacemanmatt 11y ago
      Legally, they can't. But if you close your eyes, and pretend they are tangible, you could see it their way.
- dctoedt 11y ago
  > But then again, we live in a world where Boeing has a patent on certain trajectories that use the moon's gravity Interesting. That particular patent was owned by Hughes Electronics, though, not Boeing [1]. EDIT: Apparently in 2000 Boeing acquired that division of Hughes Electronics [2] but the transfer of ownership of the patent was never recorded in the USPTO. The patent expired in 2012 because the owner didn't pay the required "maintenance fee," which is a statutory fee that must be paid every few years to keep a patent alive [3]; see the end of the document to which you linked. [1] http://assignment.uspto.gov/#/search?adv=patNum%3A6116545&sort=patAssignorEarliestExDate%20desc%2C%20id%20desc&synonyms=false http://assignment.uspto.gov/#/search?adv=patNum%3A6116545&so... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Aircraft_Company#Hughes_Electronics_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Aircraft_Company#Hughes_... [3] http://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/maintain-your-patent http://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/maintain-you...
  - lotsofmangos 11y ago
    They maybe got embarrassed by it as it is the patent they used to screw with the AMC-14 satellite in 2008.
frandroid 11y ago
> EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer, who also holds the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents Best chair name ever.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  As I read the title of the chair, my reaction went from "I can't believe Mark Cuban as a Chair named after him" to "That's just about right". Good for him.
- andrewrice 11y ago
  Mark Cuban funded the title with a $250,000 donation in 2012. "The current state of patents and patent litigation in this country is shameful," said Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer. That's bad for consumers and bad for business. It's time to fix our broken system, and EFF can help. So that's why part of my donation funds a new title for EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels: 'The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents'." https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-patent-project-gets-half-million-dollar-boost-mark-cuban-and-notch https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-patent-project-gets-h...
  - klipt 11y ago
    So if you donate enough money you can name the chair anything you want? This raises so many opportunities!
    - cdcarter 11y ago
      Just wait until you discover endowed professorships.
xb 11y ago
This is really great news.
- iaw 11y ago
  I had a sigh of relief and my chest relaxed a little bit. We may be on the right track finally.
gesman 11y ago
...invalidated by USPTO though.
- leereeves 11y ago
  Invalidated by the USPTO thanks to the efforts of the EFF.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  That's like saying "a judge acquitted him" without considering the efforts of the defence.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Does it matter if you get the right legal result?
- rosser 11y ago
  Uh, who else is supposed to invalidate them? I mean, if I could, I can think of a few I'd go after before finishing this very sentence. Unfortunately, it turns out, I don't have that authority.
leereeves 11y ago
> Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting. It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system. I agree with you on one hand but on the other is it impossible for a person to reform and later want a patent to protect their new creation? I'd just like to see the whole system overhauled or maybe even removed in some ways.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    I would be ok with keeping the patent system only if it becomes far more difficult to gain a monopoly on an invention. The courts+USPTO allowed an era of serious abuse via patents on abstract inventions that we won't recover from quickly.
scott_s 11y ago
Planet Money did a great episode on this patent, using it to talk about the state of the patent system in general: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/31/187374157/episode-462-when-patents-hit-the-podcast http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/31/187374157/episode-... It has interviews with the patent holder, and it's amazing to hear his perspective. (Which I do not agree with.)
- jobu 11y ago
  They've also done two other great episodes on patents: 412 - http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-412-how-to-fix-the-patent-mess http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-... 551 - http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/09/329895088/episode-551-the-case-against-patents http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/09/329895088/episode-... Side topic, but I really wish Planet Money would look into medical re-patenting. Growing up I needed albuterol inhalers occasionally and I remember them costing less than $10, but recently my kid needed one and it was $60 with copay (over $100 without insurance). That's when I found this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131013&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-s... TL;DR - Inhalers use CFC's (ozone hole making), but scientists and environmentalists recommended an exception for them when banning CFC's because the amounts were so tiny and the medical benefits so huge. The pharmaceutical industry decided to lobby against the exception so they could reformulate the inhaler and introduce a new patent - and make billions on a 30+ year old drug.
  - click170 11y ago
    Frankly this leaves me wondering why we leave medicine to private companies when we have agreed as a society that public health is the governments concern. Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can.
    - alphapapa 11y ago
      Obviously "we" have not agreed that that is the case. > Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can. And that attitude is why we can't have nice things. That would be what's known as "enabling." How about, "It's unreasonable to expect a beer company to do anything other than sell as much alcohol as they can, however they can, to whomever they can." Or, "It's unreasonable to expect an oil company to do anything other than ship and sell as much oil as they can as cheaply as they can." No. Companies, publicly traded or not, are not mindless automatons, inhumanly calculating the optimal methods to extract as much profit as possible, even though they do seem that way. Companies are comprised of people, people who are a part of the society in which their company does business. Therefore they have--should have--the responsibility to behave ethically to society, not merely their shareholders. And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live. I don't know where this idea that "companies are required or expected to make as much profit as legally possible" came from, but it's 1) untrue, and 2) morally and ethically wrong, regardless of #1. Please stop enabling this behavior by spreading this incorrect and just plain wrong idea.
Chirael 11y ago
Nice work, EFF! Our membership dues at work :)
- jkestner 11y ago
  It is refreshing to get this direct of an effect for my money. This must be how lobbyists feel.
  - tytso 11y ago
    Or perhaps more accurately, this must be how 1 percenters who pay $$$ to lobbyists to influence/purchase politicians feel....
serve_yay 11y ago
Thank you for updating the title, it is much clearer now. The EFF does not invalidate patents on their own, much as we would like that to be the case.
sbov 11y ago
Any figures on how much this invalid patent costed people?
- billyvg 11y ago
  We'll probably never know, most people that settle with patent trolls have confidentiality agreements
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Surely that would be invalidated along with the claim? Can you sue to reclaim your money?
derekp7 11y ago
When a patent gets overturned, can those who already paid license royalties typically sue the patent holder to get their money back? (I know that the entity can file bankruptcy, so the chance of getting money is slim). Or do the license agreements typically include a clause that money is not refundable if the patent is invalidated? Or, even worse, do license agreements typically include language that says the licensee agrees to continue to pay royalties even if the patent is later found to be invalid? I can see someone being strong armed into signing an agreement like that.
- danray 11y ago
  A good license would probably say royalties are nonrefundable, and this makes sense -- if you threaten to sue me for $1 million and I settle for $25K, I've essentially paid to make the suit go away. So long as you don't sue me, I've got the benefit I bargained for. If it later turns out that the suit wouldn't have been valid, great, but it doesn't matter to me since I've already bought peace. To your other question, though, no, a license that tried to force continued payments despite invalidation would be very atypical. In fact, to do so is currently per se unenforceable. (Note, though, that the Supreme Court might allow for some gray area in this rule in the coming months).
  - CPLX 11y ago
    I am not sure if you're correct. In the This American Life episode on patents they interview someone discussing this precise issue, who is still on the hook for licensing fees despite someone else subsequently winning a patent action against the counterparty.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      But what are they going to sue based on? If you have a contract of fees for patent use, and it becomes fees for nothing, it's no longer a contract, by definition. If the only remaining thing is a fee to not sue for something they objectively have no rights to, that doesn't sounds like a proper exchange to me. But of course I'm not a lawyer. Did the other person win a case about their use, or did they actually get the patent thrown out? Could make a big difference when it comes to others.
jacquesm 11y ago
Excellent. Now we could use another one to get rid of all those stupid streaming patents that are abused time and again.
click170 11y ago
If you aren't yet an EFF member and you're happy about this ruling, please consider becoming a member. Membership dues help the EFF fight these battles. Help make a difference!
jheriko 11y ago
the USPTO is a laughing stock, they should consider some serious reform quickly or just being completely disbanded. they serve no valuable purpose other than to retard the whole of society for the future as far as i can tell...
- cguess 11y ago
  The main reason it exists is to provide incentive for people to actually create things and to spend the money on R&D with a hope there will be a return. If I spend three years and $500,000 developing a new building material, I should be able to be protected from an employee of mine quitting and starting a new company doing the same thing from techniques he learned using my invention (for a certain period of time). Software is a different beast, simply because the vagueness you can express in a software patent can be so general that it covers use cases almost retroactively. Software patents should be extremely specific, regular patents work for the most part.
  - nileshtrivedi 11y ago
    Patents are an incentive to disclose the techniques behind inventions. Plenty of incentives already exist to create things and invest in R&D.
  - tjl 11y ago
    My thought has been that they need to go back to requiring a physical implementation. So, if you devise a hardware product that includes software, the whole thing can be patented, but not the specific algorithms. This eliminates all the business process patents and basically software patents as well.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Software is abstract. Abstract subjects are strictly ineligible.
  - jheriko 11y ago
    I think a very large part of innovation comes from people who would do it anyway. Supporting them is great. The current system is in everyone's worst interest. Getting there first shouldn't be worth as much as being able to provide an excellent quality of product or service - software or otherwise. You certainly shouldn't be able to hold up all of humanity's progress for the entire future because you can claim priority.
tomjen3 11y ago
Headline is misleading, that is only the case for one patent, not an entire class of patents.
netcan 11y ago
Patent systems are definitely broken. I think that’s the conclusion of most neutral observers starting fresh and that digging past the purely abstract or ideological level. The reason it’s hard to do something about is that patents are property and the legal setup for property is foundational to an economy. Patents are absolutely fundamental to the way medical research works today, especially the search for new treatments and medicines. That’s a tricky thing to mess around with. There are obvious problems. There are speculations about what fixing them could yield on one hand. In the other hand is a massive industry producing a lot of technology, science and actual treatments for diseases. What seems (to me) to be missing in these debates is some humility about knowing the answers. While our culture is speeding through “movements” at a higher rate than ever before, we still tend to approach these big political/philosophical/economic issues with an early modern/modernist perspective. Our most popular philosophers for these matters are old dead guys who liked to think of big organic things like society and civilization in terms of how we should set things up if we had snapped into existence today, a clean slate. That’s a fairly pompous perspective. In any case, I think the patents and intellectual property problem is a very tricky one to solve. Experiment with possible solutions is almost impossible. IP legally mimics regular property in a metaphor-like way. That metaphor is proving increasingly inaccurate. At the same time, we have huge pieces of our economy and whatnot built on it. At the same time our legal systems are showing signs that they might need a reimagining. Many of our legal constructs such as ‘legal entity’ or ‘jurisdiction’ are being pushed to extremes, and metaphors eventually break. Does the concept of a company legally approximating a person hold up when we have impenetrable layers of ownership across jurisdictions? Does the metaphor fray?
- JackFr 11y ago
  I am not an expert on the economics of pharmaceuticals, however based on work of an expert I have come to believe that patents are not essential to the way medical research works today. Patents are essential to the current business model of pharmaceutical companies -- they are necessary to guarantee a return on investment, but the portion of the investment devoted to R&D and clinical trials is dwarfed by the marketing. If you look at the big companies you can divide their budget into 4 big categories. One is R&D, one is marketing and administration; the other is profits, and the other is just the cost of making the pills and putting them in the bottles and distributing them. The smallest of those is R&D. The smallest is Research and development. Profits usually are about the same. Marketing and Administration is more than twice as much. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.htm...

460 points by billyvg 11y ago

The fact this patent was granted in the first place seems completely absurd. But then again, we live in a world where Boeing has a patent on certain trajectories that use the moon's gravity (http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6116545 http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6116545), so it shouldn't really surprise me.

iwwr 11y ago
There's a whole batch of patents related to space trajectories. Edward Belbruno also holds a few patents on low-energy transfers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Belbruno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Belbruno Belbruno has been an innovative researcher otherwise, but it's hardly an excuse to monopolize math theorems or their computational applications.
- AlexandrB 11y ago
  The patent system as it exists encourages this kind of behaviour. It's hardly surprising that people would take advantage of it. If he didn't do it, someone else would and a patent case to prove prior art gets expensive.
jbuzbee 11y ago
I recall a story a while back about a satellite that ended up in the wrong orbit after launch. The engineers knew how to correct it using various orbital maneuvers, but alas those maneuvers were patented and it was too expensive to license them. So the decision was made to splash the satellite and let the insurance companies pay out. At least that's my recollection... Edit : Here's a description of the issue, which is a bit different than my recollection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC-14#Launch_anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC-14#Launch_anomaly
- savanaly 11y ago
  Surely this is a cases where the Coase theorem could have been of some use. But alas, transaction costs...
- vacri 11y ago
  I thought that algorithms couldn't be patented?
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Legally, they can't. But if you close your eyes, and pretend they are tangible, you could see it their way.
dctoedt 11y ago
> But then again, we live in a world where Boeing has a patent on certain trajectories that use the moon's gravity Interesting. That particular patent was owned by Hughes Electronics, though, not Boeing [1]. EDIT: Apparently in 2000 Boeing acquired that division of Hughes Electronics [2] but the transfer of ownership of the patent was never recorded in the USPTO. The patent expired in 2012 because the owner didn't pay the required "maintenance fee," which is a statutory fee that must be paid every few years to keep a patent alive [3]; see the end of the document to which you linked. [1] http://assignment.uspto.gov/#/search?adv=patNum%3A6116545&sort=patAssignorEarliestExDate%20desc%2C%20id%20desc&synonyms=false http://assignment.uspto.gov/#/search?adv=patNum%3A6116545&so... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Aircraft_Company#Hughes_Electronics_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Aircraft_Company#Hughes_... [3] http://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/maintain-your-patent http://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/maintain-you...
- lotsofmangos 11y ago
  They maybe got embarrassed by it as it is the patent they used to screw with the AMC-14 satellite in 2008.

frandroid 11y ago

> EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer, who also holds the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents Best chair name ever.

oh_sigh 11y ago
As I read the title of the chair, my reaction went from "I can't believe Mark Cuban as a Chair named after him" to "That's just about right". Good for him.
andrewrice 11y ago
Mark Cuban funded the title with a $250,000 donation in 2012. "The current state of patents and patent litigation in this country is shameful," said Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer. That's bad for consumers and bad for business. It's time to fix our broken system, and EFF can help. So that's why part of my donation funds a new title for EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels: 'The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents'." https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-patent-project-gets-half-million-dollar-boost-mark-cuban-and-notch https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-patent-project-gets-h...
- klipt 11y ago
  So if you donate enough money you can name the chair anything you want? This raises so many opportunities!
  - cdcarter 11y ago
    Just wait until you discover endowed professorships.

xb 11y ago

This is really great news.

iaw 11y ago
I had a sigh of relief and my chest relaxed a little bit. We may be on the right track finally.

gesman 11y ago

...invalidated by USPTO though.

leereeves 11y ago
Invalidated by the USPTO thanks to the efforts of the EFF.
raverbashing 11y ago
That's like saying "a judge acquitted him" without considering the efforts of the defence.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  Does it matter if you get the right legal result?
rosser 11y ago
Uh, who else is supposed to invalidate them? I mean, if I could, I can think of a few I'd go after before finishing this very sentence. Unfortunately, it turns out, I don't have that authority.

leereeves 11y ago

> Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting. It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system. I agree with you on one hand but on the other is it impossible for a person to reform and later want a patent to protect their new creation? I'd just like to see the whole system overhauled or maybe even removed in some ways.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  I would be ok with keeping the patent system only if it becomes far more difficult to gain a monopoly on an invention. The courts+USPTO allowed an era of serious abuse via patents on abstract inventions that we won't recover from quickly.

scott_s 11y ago

Planet Money did a great episode on this patent, using it to talk about the state of the patent system in general: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/31/187374157/episode-462-when-patents-hit-the-podcast http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/31/187374157/episode-... It has interviews with the patent holder, and it's amazing to hear his perspective. (Which I do not agree with.)

jobu 11y ago
They've also done two other great episodes on patents: 412 - http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-412-how-to-fix-the-patent-mess http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-... 551 - http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/09/329895088/episode-551-the-case-against-patents http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/09/329895088/episode-... Side topic, but I really wish Planet Money would look into medical re-patenting. Growing up I needed albuterol inhalers occasionally and I remember them costing less than $10, but recently my kid needed one and it was $60 with copay (over $100 without insurance). That's when I found this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131013&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-s... TL;DR - Inhalers use CFC's (ozone hole making), but scientists and environmentalists recommended an exception for them when banning CFC's because the amounts were so tiny and the medical benefits so huge. The pharmaceutical industry decided to lobby against the exception so they could reformulate the inhaler and introduce a new patent - and make billions on a 30+ year old drug.
- click170 11y ago
  Frankly this leaves me wondering why we leave medicine to private companies when we have agreed as a society that public health is the governments concern. Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can.
  - alphapapa 11y ago
    Obviously "we" have not agreed that that is the case. > Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can. And that attitude is why we can't have nice things. That would be what's known as "enabling." How about, "It's unreasonable to expect a beer company to do anything other than sell as much alcohol as they can, however they can, to whomever they can." Or, "It's unreasonable to expect an oil company to do anything other than ship and sell as much oil as they can as cheaply as they can." No. Companies, publicly traded or not, are not mindless automatons, inhumanly calculating the optimal methods to extract as much profit as possible, even though they do seem that way. Companies are comprised of people, people who are a part of the society in which their company does business. Therefore they have--should have--the responsibility to behave ethically to society, not merely their shareholders. And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live. I don't know where this idea that "companies are required or expected to make as much profit as legally possible" came from, but it's 1) untrue, and 2) morally and ethically wrong, regardless of #1. Please stop enabling this behavior by spreading this incorrect and just plain wrong idea.

Chirael 11y ago

Nice work, EFF! Our membership dues at work :)

jkestner 11y ago
It is refreshing to get this direct of an effect for my money. This must be how lobbyists feel.
- tytso 11y ago
  Or perhaps more accurately, this must be how 1 percenters who pay $$$ to lobbyists to influence/purchase politicians feel....

serve_yay 11y ago

Thank you for updating the title, it is much clearer now. The EFF does not invalidate patents on their own, much as we would like that to be the case.

sbov 11y ago

Any figures on how much this invalid patent costed people?

billyvg 11y ago
We'll probably never know, most people that settle with patent trolls have confidentiality agreements
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Surely that would be invalidated along with the claim? Can you sue to reclaim your money?

derekp7 11y ago

When a patent gets overturned, can those who already paid license royalties typically sue the patent holder to get their money back? (I know that the entity can file bankruptcy, so the chance of getting money is slim). Or do the license agreements typically include a clause that money is not refundable if the patent is invalidated? Or, even worse, do license agreements typically include language that says the licensee agrees to continue to pay royalties even if the patent is later found to be invalid? I can see someone being strong armed into signing an agreement like that.

danray 11y ago
A good license would probably say royalties are nonrefundable, and this makes sense -- if you threaten to sue me for $1 million and I settle for $25K, I've essentially paid to make the suit go away. So long as you don't sue me, I've got the benefit I bargained for. If it later turns out that the suit wouldn't have been valid, great, but it doesn't matter to me since I've already bought peace. To your other question, though, no, a license that tried to force continued payments despite invalidation would be very atypical. In fact, to do so is currently per se unenforceable. (Note, though, that the Supreme Court might allow for some gray area in this rule in the coming months).
- CPLX 11y ago
  I am not sure if you're correct. In the This American Life episode on patents they interview someone discussing this precise issue, who is still on the hook for licensing fees despite someone else subsequently winning a patent action against the counterparty.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    But what are they going to sue based on? If you have a contract of fees for patent use, and it becomes fees for nothing, it's no longer a contract, by definition. If the only remaining thing is a fee to not sue for something they objectively have no rights to, that doesn't sounds like a proper exchange to me. But of course I'm not a lawyer. Did the other person win a case about their use, or did they actually get the patent thrown out? Could make a big difference when it comes to others.

jacquesm 11y ago

Excellent. Now we could use another one to get rid of all those stupid streaming patents that are abused time and again.

click170 11y ago

If you aren't yet an EFF member and you're happy about this ruling, please consider becoming a member. Membership dues help the EFF fight these battles. Help make a difference!

jheriko 11y ago

the USPTO is a laughing stock, they should consider some serious reform quickly or just being completely disbanded. they serve no valuable purpose other than to retard the whole of society for the future as far as i can tell...

cguess 11y ago
The main reason it exists is to provide incentive for people to actually create things and to spend the money on R&D with a hope there will be a return. If I spend three years and $500,000 developing a new building material, I should be able to be protected from an employee of mine quitting and starting a new company doing the same thing from techniques he learned using my invention (for a certain period of time). Software is a different beast, simply because the vagueness you can express in a software patent can be so general that it covers use cases almost retroactively. Software patents should be extremely specific, regular patents work for the most part.
- nileshtrivedi 11y ago
  Patents are an incentive to disclose the techniques behind inventions. Plenty of incentives already exist to create things and invest in R&D.
- tjl 11y ago
  My thought has been that they need to go back to requiring a physical implementation. So, if you devise a hardware product that includes software, the whole thing can be patented, but not the specific algorithms. This eliminates all the business process patents and basically software patents as well.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  Software is abstract. Abstract subjects are strictly ineligible.
- jheriko 11y ago
  I think a very large part of innovation comes from people who would do it anyway. Supporting them is great. The current system is in everyone's worst interest. Getting there first shouldn't be worth as much as being able to provide an excellent quality of product or service - software or otherwise. You certainly shouldn't be able to hold up all of humanity's progress for the entire future because you can claim priority.

tomjen3 11y ago

Headline is misleading, that is only the case for one patent, not an entire class of patents.

netcan 11y ago

Patent systems are definitely broken. I think that’s the conclusion of most neutral observers starting fresh and that digging past the purely abstract or ideological level. The reason it’s hard to do something about is that patents are property and the legal setup for property is foundational to an economy. Patents are absolutely fundamental to the way medical research works today, especially the search for new treatments and medicines. That’s a tricky thing to mess around with. There are obvious problems. There are speculations about what fixing them could yield on one hand. In the other hand is a massive industry producing a lot of technology, science and actual treatments for diseases. What seems (to me) to be missing in these debates is some humility about knowing the answers. While our culture is speeding through “movements” at a higher rate than ever before, we still tend to approach these big political/philosophical/economic issues with an early modern/modernist perspective. Our most popular philosophers for these matters are old dead guys who liked to think of big organic things like society and civilization in terms of how we should set things up if we had snapped into existence today, a clean slate. That’s a fairly pompous perspective. In any case, I think the patents and intellectual property problem is a very tricky one to solve. Experiment with possible solutions is almost impossible. IP legally mimics regular property in a metaphor-like way. That metaphor is proving increasingly inaccurate. At the same time, we have huge pieces of our economy and whatnot built on it. At the same time our legal systems are showing signs that they might need a reimagining. Many of our legal constructs such as ‘legal entity’ or ‘jurisdiction’ are being pushed to extremes, and metaphors eventually break. Does the concept of a company legally approximating a person hold up when we have impenetrable layers of ownership across jurisdictions? Does the metaphor fray?

JackFr 11y ago
I am not an expert on the economics of pharmaceuticals, however based on work of an expert I have come to believe that patents are not essential to the way medical research works today. Patents are essential to the current business model of pharmaceutical companies -- they are necessary to guarantee a return on investment, but the portion of the investment devoted to R&D and clinical trials is dwarfed by the marketing. If you look at the big companies you can divide their budget into 4 big categories. One is R&D, one is marketing and administration; the other is profits, and the other is just the cost of making the pills and putting them in the bottles and distributing them. The smallest of those is R&D. The smallest is Research and development. Profits usually are about the same. Marketing and Administration is more than twice as much. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.htm...