Patent US5443036 – Method of exercising a cat
google.com
google.com
Just search for cat vs laser pointer on Youtube. There's a ready made mint right there.
Maybe the patent office would do a better job if overturned patents gave ground for suing the government over granting the patent in the first place.
What?
What about environmental protection official who issues a faulty decision and cause a ecosystem to take significant damage? People do not need to die before we want there to be some responsibility in governmental decisions.
Also, does the patent on all prior art cover itself?
Sounds like it could fly with USPTO.
(And if it doesn't, you can try and confuse people by patenting Y combinator.)
This is a common misconception. First-to-file does not mean that prior art doesn't matter. First-to-file means that, if I invent something today, you invent it tomorrow, you try to patent it the next day, and I try to patent it three days from now, nobody gets the patent. In first-to-invent, I would get the patent.
The 2013 law explicitly still gives weight to prior art.
You can invent something without it being prior art if you don't publish how to do it, file a patent, or use/sell it in commerce.
So if you are testing a new invention in secret and then the University of Wisconsin files a patent on the same thing, they get the patent. If someone else had already sold the products or described it publicly, nobody could get a patent on it (except for the person who sold it and then only for a year after they sold it).
describing a computerized system for managing IP; its descriptive matter includes sentences like this: "The patent creation component 430 defines the process for enabling the client organization to develop and protect inventions that are new, useful, and non-obvious." and one of the elements in its claim 5 is "a fourth electronic IP creation component for filing and prosecuting patent applications, trademark applications, and copyright applications".
Judges are more familiar with law than they are with other fields. Making software look like statutory material by careful drafting of a patent application may be possible, but I imagine making a legal maneuver look like statutory material for a patent is much harder.
If I recall correctly, the patent applicant patented this to demonstrate the perceived silliness of the US patent system.
No wonder they grant applications for obvious programming techniques, like oh ... the use of XOR to draw a sprite on a black-and-white pixel display, such that if it is drawn again at the same location, it is erased, restoring the original background.
No beam of any type of light is visible in vacuum; it is superfluous to call it invisible in that sense because there is no contrasting opposite.
Patent office staff should have a decent background in science.
- Patent US3480010 - an anti-snore device that consisted of a "neckband [that] contains a microphone, a transistor amplifier, a high voltage-producing transformer, a supply battery, a relay and a pair of spaced electrodes [which] are in contact with the sleepers skin" [1]
- Patent US20130239604 - Promotion of peace, love and understanding through the global proliferation of snowpeople system method and apparatus [2]
- UK patent GB1047735 - "Arrangements for the transfer of fresh water from one location on the earth's surface to another at a different latitude, for the purpose of irrigation, with pumping energy derived from the effect of the earth's rotation about the polar axis" [3], or in layman's terms it was basically a plan to position giantpeashooters in the Antarctic pointed at Australia's deserts which would fire snowballs to irrigate them
- Patent US6368227 - Method of swinging on a swing. Can't add anything to this really, that's precisely the patent that was granted. [4]
- Patent US6025810 - Hyper-light-speed antenna (probably THE most novel of all the patents granted by the U.S. Patent Office, because it specified a transmission method capable of "sending the signal at a speed faster than light.") [5]
- Patent US6612440 - from the abstract: "A banana protective device for storing and transporting a banana carefully." [6]
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References:
1. http://www.google.com/patents/US3480010
2. http://www.google.com/patents/US20130239604
3. http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=...
4. http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227
It's worth noting that having a patent doesn't mean it's enforceable, or even valid.
"A method to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves which comprises generating opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an input and output port; and generating a communications signal into the input and output port, thereby sending the signal at a speed faster than light."
(emphasis mine)
Could you slip one through the patent office? Probably not anymore.
But a big weakness in the patent examination process is that the USPTO mostly relies on other patents and academic articles. So sometimes you can get some commonly known and well understood products and processes patented because the USPTO doesn't find any written evidence of prior art.
They also had a couple podcast episodes on the product: http://www.relay.fm/tc
Patents have now ended up enforcing exactly that which they were supposed to oppose - corporate monopolies on thought.
Just to name a few examples... The often quoted example of steam engines and the patents of James Watt: the power output of steam engines (an objective, quantitative measurement) stagnated during the period Watt's patents were valid. Only after they expired, steam engines started improving.
Another example: the contributions of the Wright brothers to modern aviation. The Wrights filed for a lot of patents but most of their inventions fell into obscurity as aircraft manufacturers opted to use patent-free inventions from the Wrights' competitors, such as De Havilland's rear stabilizer design which is still common in modern aircraft.
I'm not convinced that the patent system has ever worked to genuinely promote innovation and invention. There are numerous examples of how it has done the exact opposite by stagnating a field of science and technology (e.g. video codecs today).
Several high profile inventors such as Thomas Edison have spent the latter days of their lives as businessmen and lawyers protecting their patents and financial interests, not inventing and innovating.
The Wright brothers tried to hinder development of airplanes, but De Havilland managed to circumvent their patent. Creating entirely new technology in the process.
Watt on the other hand managed to protect his steam engine patent and went on to invent a copying machine with the money.
And Edison, mediocre inventor who luckily made some patent money early with the quadruplex telegraph. Then he could concentrate to his true calling of enslaving scientists.
I'm half joking here. But we really can't know how history would have turned out if patents would not exist. So far I'm not convinced with any of the alternatives. Even with the glaring flaws of the current patent system.
Furthermore, a lot of the accusations levied against him are just outright false. For instance, the "electrocution of an elephant":
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_%28elephant%29
Edit - more about Edison: http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2013/02/oatmeal_comic_...
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1589712
The Wright patent certainly was influential and used all over the place. Their litigation did force the invention of alternatives. Innovation through forced workarounds had long been one of the rationalizations of patent systems. However, very few of them were non-infringing. Indeed a criticism of their patents was that they were way too broad and covered everything, but courts time and again gave them broad scope because they were deemed that inventive.
As an aside, before anyone brings it up, the related story that the Wright patent held back the US airplane industry has also been shown to be a myth, as demonstrated by industrial data fun the period:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673
If you think work is stagnating in video codecs, it's mostly because the low hanging fruit had been picked.
Examples of the patent system creating benefits (as well as costs) can be readily found by searching ssrn for keywords around patents. Focus on studies that use empirical data. Also if one study looks too convincing, look for others that cite it, there may be one that busts it :-)
A lot of the conceptions people have about patents are based on falsehoods and uncritical acceptance of what somebody on the internet said. This need not be the case when we have a number of relevant studies to look at.
Video codecs certainly have had the low hanging fruit picked, but if you look at the situation with video on the web today (ie. consumer level tech, not state of the art), the situation is not much better than in 1998 (to exaggerate a little): we're still using badly implemented browser plugins. We use Flash video because Adobe et al have the patent issue covered. Yes, HTML5 video exists but the actual codecs are such an IP and patent minefield that out-of-the-box support for video (esp. in open source browsers) isn't really ready for prime time.
Only certain ideas (production methods implemented in shops or factories, for example) could be hoarded. Other ideas had to be disseminated in order to create economic value from them, like the classic example of a "better mousetrap." There's no way to sell a better mousetrap without revealing how it traps mice. Anyone who buys one can disassemble it and then build their own.
Without patents, small inventors are defenseless against bigger organizations, which can replicate the invention, manufacture it faster, and put more marketing dollars behind it.
Patent protection, like many federal laws, is a balance. On one side, it does not allow the replication of inventions without permission of the inventor, to protect small inventors. On the other side, as you mention, it requires public disclosure of the invention, so that method inventions that would normally be secret forever can eventually be used by the public.
The reverse is also true.
With patents, small inventors are defenseless against aggressive litigation from deep-pocketed bigger organizations. If an inventor is small in a strict sense, he certainly doesn't have a few million dollars to spare to defend himself in court.
It's not about patents, it's about the terminally broken system.
We have little guys (patent trolls) suing the largest most profitable companies on earth.
Google has tons of patents but their secret sauce is private. Intel has patents on their devices, but their semiconductor processes are closely held secrets.
Companies have their cake and eat it too.
The more persuasive argument is that patents encourage invention by rewarding it. If it costs 1 billion to develop a product that create 10 billion worth of value but the inventor won't be able to capture more than 500 million of the value, the inventor won't spend the money.
The other good argument that nobody seems to make is just a fundamental property right. You create the invention, you own it. Real estate property was first doled out like that. First to claim it, keeps it.