New Patent Reform Proposal Focuses on Education 66
CNet is reporting that a new proposal before Congress is attempting to increase the number of federal judges who specialize in patent litigation. From the article: "The proposal prescribes $5 million each year in federal funding over the next decade for "educational and professional development" programs for designated judges and to pay the salaries of new, specially appointed clerks with patent expertise. Under the bill, patent cases would continue to be randomly assigned to judges, but with a notable exception. Any judge who practices within a court district offering the pilot program but who chooses not to sign up for the extra training would have the option of transferring patent cases to a program participant." Techdirt also has a short writeup on why this specialization might not necessarily be a good thing.
Worrisome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worrisome (Score:1, Insightful)
The implementing agency for the patent system (PTO plus courts) should get a limit; patents are only allowed to exact a tax of 5% of the economy as a whole. Once it surpasses that they either have to stop granting patents at all, or each patent holder would get lower royalties.
With the current situation, none of the involved parties have an interest in keeping any form of limit
Re:Worrisome (Score:1)
Use some kind of "competition" process (auction?) so that patentable ideas "compete" with each other to be awarded patent "slots" (which become open due to expiration, or because patent is thrown out due to prior art or obviousness).
This kind of process would encourage due diligence by the people bidding for patents (since they wouldn't want to pay a whole lot of money just to see their pa
Re:Worrisome (Score:1)
Re:Worrisome (Score:1)
I'd have to personally know an "influential politician" before I would feel like I could trust them to actually care about whether the patent system is working or not.
Even if there WERE such a politico who was excited about reforming the patent system, the system itself (as is t
Re:Worrisome (Score:2)
I recall reading some time that, I think it was Jefferson, envisioned having maybe a dozen patents active at any one time.
But, yes, a fixed number would work too, altho that wouldnt specifically control the economic consequences and constraints of the system, just build in a self-regulation, which is the most important thing.
Re:Worrisome (Score:1)
"Sorry Doc, I'm afraid I can't grant you a patent for your cancer cure cookies. The guy before you tipped us over quota with his automatic WiFi buttwiper."
Re:Worrisome (Score:1)
No? Oh I forgot, this isn't about innovation or helping inventor, or preventing information getting locked up in trade secrets. It's about pr
Nice... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead train more judges to handle all the cases, you may even throw in an education program to turn honest inventors and workers into patent trolls, libel case extortionists and DMCA abusers.
It'll make a for a whole lot better world!
PS: Why the hell are we training patent judges who can't tell a "cold fusion reactor with a working model" patent from a "1 click buy button" patent, and not train judges who have a clue of computer technology (the place where most of the patent trolls grow)?
Re:Nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nice... (Score:1)
Re:Nice... (Score:2)
Re:Nice... (Score:2)
A shorter time limit on patents or a requirement to produce the patented item or some other simple clear way to disrupt patent trolls and encourage innovation would be good for our patent system. The would be less litigation and therefore less government involvement and a heathly environment for new and progressive products and ideas. Specialized judges will result in more patent litigation, because that's what judges do, they preside over
Re:Nice... (Score:1)
IM SURE THEY NEVER THOUGHT IT OF Mr guy who drives a 4x4 SUV...
No obviously they never thought about these things becuase you said so!
Your light hearted attempts at sarcastic elitist humor are what is wrong with the world... God damn post modernists...
Re:Nice... (Score:2)
I'll enlighten you here: having a nick called suv4x4 doesn't mean I actually drive a 4x4 SUV. How about you, are you the kid who... uhmmm.. ? Should I fill it in myself? The kid who peed his pants or something?
Re:Nice... (Score:1)
O RLY?
CAFC (Score:5, Interesting)
While CAFC has resulted in some quite bad decisions, it has at least brought some consistency. Now that there is this consitency it is up to Congress to correct the patent law to exclude or refine the scope of patent law.
CAFC an improvement? (Score:3, Informative)
Patent litigation has grown from a specialist niche, a side job of patent prosecution boutiques, into one of the very few areas of law where billing is practically unlimited. Good, cheap firms like Finnegan bill $4m for a case, good, expensive firms like Weil bill four t
Re:Congress!?! I'd like to see that . . . (Score:1)
Between the establishment of the CAFC and Lehman's revamping of the USPTO as a PBO (yes, I know it didn't become a PBO until after Lehman, but he got the ball rolling as it were) I think the patent system might interestingly be considered captured by a burgeoning patent industry (as in, regulatory capture); i.e. is the USPTO fast becoming the 21st century's
Re:CAFC (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but I'll take a court that returns a wrong/Bad decision 50% of the time, instead of a court that returns a Bad decision 90% of the time, even if the latter is more "consistent."
Consistency isn't necessarily a good thing, if it's in the wrong direction.
Inconsistently good is better than consistently bad any day.
Re:CAFC (Score:2)
The negative was that it expanded the amount of material considered patentable, especially business processes.
the government strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
2- Introduce a solution that is worse than the problem, and only helps gov & friends.
3- when people complain, say "Hey, didn't you ask for it?"
That happened with CAN-SPAM, and now apparently will happen to patents.
I wonder how the government proposed "Copyright reform" would look like.
Re:the government strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonder no longer, it was the DMCA.
Re:the government strategy (Score:1)
Great plan! (Score:4, Funny)
it's that you can fix a bureaucracy by throwing more bureaucracy at it...
even greater (Score:2)
Who is paying for all this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't just mean the $5 million a year (a drop of piss in the bucket of American government spending), but the entire patent issue at large.
For 'targeted' products, like the iPod, eBay, or Amazon, you're paying some money up front that the producer is setting aside to pay for lawsuits. After a ruling, the cost of that payout is being passed on to the consumer.
I'm not speaking against it, thats how capitalism works and I love it. It just seems that so often people cheer on a lawsuit without realizing what it does to all of us. There is a time and a place for severe financial punishment, but it is abused and I'm certain it affects all of us.
Re:Who is paying for all this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Who is paying for all this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some things are complicated. A legal system doesn't have to be, but if you want it to be just, then you're stuck with it, just as an OS that does anything useful is going to be complex as well.
It's not deliberate.
Re:Who is paying for all this? (Score:1)
Re:Who is paying for all this? (Score:2)
An invalid comparison, working on many unwarranted assumptions.
It assumes that USING an operating system is as complicated as writing one. On the contrary, ease of use is a high priority for commercial-grade operating systems. It also assumes that using an operating system is a requirement as following the law is.
Finally, the assump
Re:Who is paying for all this? (Score:1)
It just seems that so often people cheer on a lawsuit without realizing what it does to all of us.
It's very seldom I've seen anyone in this crowd cheering on any kind of patent litigation, at least not in the last year or two.
Unintended Consequences II (Score:5, Interesting)
Any judge who practices within a court district ... but who chooses not to sign up for the extra training would have the option of transferring patent cases to a program participant.
It isn't clear that this has been thought out very well. Suppose an "untrained" judge does not opt to transfer the case to a "trained" one. Will that be grounds for appeal? Can a litigant request a "trained" judge? I think one can safely assume that the parties with deep pockets will game the system if it's possible.
Re:Unintended Consequences II (Score:2)
I think one can safely assume that the parties participating will game the system if it's possible.
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
UK Judges (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:UK Judges (Score:1, Informative)
Transparency (Score:2, Interesting)
$5M Global Tuition (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the patent system protects $TRILLIONS in annual income for American (and global) corporations. They've got less than half a percent of the take to fix it?
Sounds like they're spending $5M on "educating" the public with propaganda that they're fixing the debased system, rather than actually making it reflect how intellectual property works in the modern world.
Re:$5M Global Tuition (Score:2)
Now I'm saying that your attempt to argue that the converse of my argument is false, therefore my argument is invalid, reveals one good reason that I'd bet you're not worth $100K:year. Anonymous dime a dozen Coward.
Re:$5M Global Tuition (Score:2)
Oh, really?
I make $11/hour (CDN) and I am a technology person (tech support), and the people that I help I think would certainly say that the service I provide for them is "useful".
Every person that contributes to society is useful to society, weather your the guy in a wearhouse sending stationary to high powered exectuives to sign important business deals (or draw doodles) or exectutives of multinational companies that employ thousands.
Re:$5M Global Tuition (Score:1)
The really useful guys are hard to replace.
Re:$5M Global Tuition (Score:2)
Re:$5M Global Tuition (Score:2)
BTW, that's "warehouse", "stationery", "executives".
Sounds like you've already exhausted yo
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
So... let me get this straight. (Score:1)
Wallpaper, meet wall (Score:2)
Half of it (Score:1)
But I'm preaching to the choir here, I guess.
How About Spending Less Money (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Business Prcoess Patents
If experienced Federal Judges weren't wasting their time looking at this abomination of the meaning of patent they would have plenty of time to research and rule on real patents like "The Cotton Gin".
2. "Self-Funding Process" whereby the Federal patent system rewards itself for making bad patent law. Is it more important for the Patent Office to do good patent analysis on truly novel inventions or to declare as many "ideas" novel as possible and thus garner more funding for itself.
3. Patent "portfolios" are used as sticks to beat down and stifle innovation by large corps against small innovative businesses (and against other large corps) rather than the original purpose which was to grant, for a limited time, exclusive royalties to those who put forth the effort to develop unique ideas and market them.
Of course, pointing out flaws in the US government these days is like shooting ducks in a barrel. Think Rome, circa 410 AD.
The simplest reforms are best (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The simplest reforms are best (Score:2)
http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/archives/2006/01/b
Uneducated patent judges are not the problem (Score:2)
Here's what I don't get about this deal: as far as I can tell, judges who don't understand the technology are not the problem. If a judge doesn't know an inline for-loop from an EJB, does that really mean that he/she can't tell whether someone is infringing on the one-click patent? Furthermore, assuming that they are technically sav
Re:Uneducated patent judges are not the problem (Score:2)
Well if they produced real solutions, they'd never get enough votes from one side or another to pass the idea.
Educate The PTO (Score:2, Insightful)
What education is needed? (Score:2)
With this in mind, what needs to be taught so that this skill will exposed and seen through when it is being unfairly biased?
There is this issue of "state of the art" of what is supposedly "computer science" but then there is "Abstraction Physics" which applies to not only software but to anything we do with