Amazon Asks Congress to Curb Patent Abusers

theodp writes "As Amazon urged Congress to change the law to protect the e-tailler from patent abusers, Rep. Lamar Smith had a question: 'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?' Smith asked, a wry smile on his face." While it's nice to see to see tech companies behind such legislation, it would seem there's some pots calling the kettle black, so to speak.

Wavelets, anyone?

[Poromenos1]

One field where I think patents REALLY hinder innovation is wavelet compression. Have you seen the difference in size/quality between JPEG and JPEG2000? It's amazing. Last I heard, Xiph was going to make an audio format using wavelets as well, and nobody is willing to touch the damn thing because of all the patents on it. :(

Re:who cares

[Opportunist]

Then we're back to the days when people hide their research to protect it, and development progress grinds to a halt again where every company reinvents the wheel. Lots of unnecessarily wasted resources.

Patents as they are now are broken. But not by design, they're broken by implementation.

Re:who cares

[Lonewolf666]

Secondly, ideologically, "loser pays" assumes that the person suing has done something wrong.
Not necessarily. It also means "winner can collect lawyers fees" which is important if you are the "small inventor" and have just spent a lot of money convincing the court that you were, indeed, ripped off by $MEGACORP.
Personally, I like the concept of "loser pays" even if it has its own potential for abuse (think suits about excessive sums to drive up the lawyers fees).

Re:A simple fix for patents

[Anonymous Coward]

3.) Require a WORKING prototype before issuance.

say, I have a patentable idea on a small part of a nuclear reactor. Do you have $ to help me develop a prototype?
or, I have a patentable idea on the Warp drive, but I need a small country's GDP for a prototype, care to cough up the dough?
I hope you see that your solution #3 does not help small inventors.

Submarine-patents

[Steeltoe]

Also, if you don't enforce a violation of that patent as soon as you learn about it then you stand to lose any case you bring later. The idea that patents can be used defensively is only valid if you are also willing to use them offensively.

+4 Insightful? You are confusing trademark and patents. Trademarks you have to defend and show a product for, patents have no such requirments.

Delaying patent-claims is what is called submarine patents, just lying there waiting for a certain practice to be adopted by the industry, then BAM! 5-10 years into the fray, you claim your royalties or first-born. Remember "Burn all GIF-day", yeah, that was a submarine patent.

Submarine patents are much worse and damaging to the economy and IT-industry than patent trolls, since it will hit like lightning, stifling current practice and standards. Forcing people to reinvent the wheel..

Re:Amazon a troll ?

[SillyNickName4me]

This logic is twisted to me. If a patent is so bad that you can't use it to "stop someone from doing something" then it is worthless. That is the whole point of a patent.

Correct. If you can't use your patent to stop someone from doing what you patented, then you have no argument for trying to negotiate any deal with them based on that patent.

Also, if you don't enforce a violation of that patent as soon as you learn about it then you stand to lose any case you bring later.

You must be thinking of trademarks here. Those you have to defend vigorously when you become aware of infringement, but this is not true for patents at all.

The idea that patents can be used defensively is only valid if you are also willing to use them offensively.

'Willing' as in, use them to threaten and get others to comply? sure.

As anyone can tell who ever thought about this, this is called 'artificial barrier to entry' and is a really stupid idea if you also are striving for a 'free market' (that is, a market free of anti-competative influences, which is not at all the same as being able to do whatever the fuck you want)

At any rate, no you don't have to defend your patent from eery infringement, and no, not defending it in specific cases does not make you lose standing or such in cases where you do defend them.

Re:Wavelets, anyone?

[mikeboone]

The JPEG2000 patent litigation appears to be near dead [ermapper.com], with LizardTech asking for a rehearing of their failed appeal. Whether this frees up wavelets, JPEG2000, or just ER Mapper's specific JPEG2000, I'm not sure.

Re:Submarine-patents

[Throtex]

+5 Informative? Have you ever heard of laches? I'm talking about equitable estoppel, as applied to litigation, not prosecution laches. Submarine patents as such no longer really exist in the United States since the TRIPs agreement. Submarine patents fall under the scope of prosecution laches, a delay in securing your rights to a patent. Failure to enforce a patent, however, can also have consequences if not done in a timely manner. You cannot sit back and watch someone build an empire from your patent without doing anything, bringing it to their attention, etc. and expect to cash in six or seven years down the road.

I swear, Slashdot should stick to technology and leave the legal commentary to people who know better.

Re:Submarine-patents

[dgatwood]

The problem is that the doctrine of laches only applies to damages occurring prior to the initiation of legal action. Once a technology is suitably ingrained into... say a web browser... it is extremely difficult and costly to pull it out. Thus the patent troll still has the power to extort large sums of money from the company.

What the patent law needs is not the doctrine of laches. It needs an invalidation clause. If the company is aware of an infringing use of their patented technology for a certain period of time but chooses to not prosecute it, they should be permanently barred from ever doing so against any company for similar uses of their patented technology.

Peer to Patent Process

[brave1]

The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) is considering a pilot program that would review patents using a Peer-to-Peer process.

Slashdot article: USPTO to Use Peer to Patent Program [slashdot.org]
Web site: The Peer to Patent Project: Community Review [nyls.edu]
Audio: Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence for our Intellectual Property System [itconversations.com]