Senators to Debate Patent Bill | Hacker News Reader

Senators to Debate Patent Bill

nytimes.com

54 pointsmarcusbooster21 comments

I'm not generally a negative person but given recent circumstances, I've got to ask "Is this how it goes now?! Does every meaningful reform get hijacked by special interests so that instead of fixing the suck, we get more of what made us need reform in the first place? Seriously?!"

Sorry for that rant, it just seems so damn frustrating what with the health-care debacle and now this.

"Is this how it goes now?! Does every meaningful reform get hijacked by special interests so that instead of fixing the suck, we get more of what made us need reform in the first place? Seriously?!"

Yes, thanks to basic economic incentives. You'd think we would start to figure this pattern out eventually, but nope, we just keep asking for new programs and committees and regulations and laws and create juicy target after juicy target and then we're shocked when corporations and politicians join forces to pick them off one by one.

Even if we go for something like national healthcare due to pragmatism and expediency, we should do so with the full knowledge that the best we can get out of it is a corporate crony controlled nation healthcare system--it may be significantly better than what we have, but it will still be sucky and corrupt because we aren't going to make structural progress until we face the structural flaws, both in our particular model of government and in government as an institution.

"“The current system is just bizarre,” he said of the first-to-invent rule. “Imagine parking your car in a metered space, then someone else comes up and says they had priority for that space and they have your car towed. Under the new system, if you are the first to pull in and pay your fee, you can park there and no one else can claim it’s their space.” "

Wow. What a horrible analogy. Completely off base.

This bill is very radical, but there has been a call for reform for some time. I think this is the wrong way to go. The first person to reduce an idea to practice should still be the first person to get a patent. Making a mad dash to file @ the USPTO shouldn't be the way you decide who gets the rights to an idea. The decision should turn on who came up with that idea first.

My 2 cents.

But if multiple people (or groups) actually come up with it around the same time, shouldn't that demonstrate rather clearly that it's too obvious to go handing out a monopoly on?

I wish more people would remember that a patent is supposed to be compensation for publishing, because that's supposed to be a win for society over having an invention live and die as a trade secret. But there is no market force ensuring the price of licensing a patent is less than the cost of having each competitor in the industry independently re-create the invention. Too often it's just rent-seeking on the straightforward solution any skilled practitioner would have reached, once they got around to considering the problem.

How is it compensation for publishing? Publishing what? you mean the actual patent?

Yeah, the patent itself is quid pro quo, not just a windfall for the patentee. That's why it (theoretically) has to describe the best mode for practicing the invention, in enough detail that anyone skilled in the art can understand and use it. It's also why prior art only counts if it was published somewhere.

Not really, if 2 people or groups out of the millions of people who live in this country (or are on visas to work in this country) is that really an obvious invention? Or to make it more realistic say three or five out of an entire industry like bio-tech or web 2.0, is that obvious? Nope. It's obvious only to the few inventors.

So the question becomes how do we deal with who should get the patent. Instead of relying on the different time-lines of the actual development of the idea and reducing it to practice (actually making it work or having a proof that it will work) the new law will switch us over to a "who got in line first" system. To me that's a loss for inventors and for innovation. I do think we need a major cleaning up of the patent system, but this isn't the direction we should be going...

If you thought our patent system couldn't get any worse especially when it comes to software patents, we get this...

The wrong kind of reform. As the article indicates, it's clear that it makes a deeply flawed system in favor of large companies and patent trolls even more so.

I am concerned that this will give large companies with experience filing patents a big advantage over small businesses and independent inventors, but naively this seems like it suppresses patent trolling. Right now, if A invents an idea before B, A can wait until B files the patent, develops a product, and then A can file. Since A invented before, he trumps B's patent, and now can extort money from B (since B has invested in product development which is dependent on the patent). In a first-to-file scheme, patent-holders can be confident that their intellectual property won't be taken.

The real question is this in "first to file": How does this affect so called intellectual "property" entering the public domain by choice of the inventor?

If inventor A invents something useful and foundational and open-sources it because he feels it benefits all mankind, can some greedy turd patent it later and yank it back out of the public domain because he was "first to file"?

Currently all I have to do is invent the thing and publish it and it becomes prior art, no need to file anything because I'm first to invent and I proved it by publishing. Under this new system do I have to file first and pay for it before I can declare it public domain?

I doubt the prior art requirements would change. Today, you can't (in theory) get a patent if prior art exists. If Inventor A open sources the invention, prior art is pretty easy to prove.

The bigger issue is that, unless the patent office happens to notice Inventor A's work while process the patent, which, of course, is no different than it is today.

That's not the way patent trolling works. Normally the troll buys a portfolio of existing patents, then waits for someone with deep pockets to infringe. It's usually the victim who tries to argue that the invention predates the patent.

I can't see it helping the little guy, because if one party has infinitely deep pockets and the other can't afford to fight anything in court, then the larger party can lawyer up and beat the little guy into submission regardless of what the law says.

> The wrong kind of reform.

I am curious why, in light of software and gene patents becoming increasingly more relevant and flawed, the order in which patents are filed becomes "the first overhaul of patent laws in six decades".

There's actually a whole lot more to this patent reform bill than the article lets on. Here is an article listing the proposals:

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/02/patent-reform-act-of...

I'm particularly interested in the new third-party challenge procedures, which would let people submit arguments during patent examination and then oppose patents on any grounds after they issue (for example, you could contest the patent at the Patent Office for being vague; right now you can only do that in court).

Yes, that is also huge. Overall I am so disappointed with this attempt that will likely become law.

If the bill was just what the Times is portraying it to be, it does sound terrible. However, the poorly-written article seems to grossly misrepresent the bill in favor of a scare story. Reading the bill summary and Patently-O's run-down, there are some points of concern, but in general it looks like a net positive. Simplified and enhanced third-party prior art and review procedures sound like a huge win.

Bill summary here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-23

vote up if you want to live in a world with no patents whatsoever.

I do, but 'vote up' comments don't add anything to a discussion.

Oh, is that how we're setting policy now?

You mean, by voting and manifesting support or opposition to bill proposals?

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