Relative to what?
All legal systems are flawed and less than perfect. There is no doubt that the unscrupulous take advantage of weaknessses in the system. In isolation, a legal syatem may seem very weak and flawed, but in perspective and with reference to other systems, it may not appear to be so bad. Try living and running a business in a Communist country!
The US patent system is a good example. Other smaller countries, such as Israel, with a prolific number of patents relative to its size, does have a patent syatem but it and the country are too small to provide adequate protection to intellectual property rights. Most all significant patents there are registered in the United States, as it affords the best protection. Without the US system, with its shortcomings and the perceived abuse of lawyers, there would be little to no practical protection for Israeli intellectual property rights.
So, with reference to alternatives, the US patent system is and remains both important and reasonably effective.
All legal systems are flawed and less than perfect. There is no doubt that the unscrupulous take advantage of weaknessses in the system. In isolation, a legal syatem may seem very weak and flawed, but in perspective and with reference to other systems, it may not appear to be so bad. Try living and running a business in a Communist country!
The US patent system is a good example. Other smaller countries, such as Israel, with a prolific number of patents relative to its size, does have a patent syatem but it and the country are too small to provide adequate protection to intellectual property rights. Most all significant patents there are registered in the United States, as it affords the best protection. Without the US system, with its shortcomings and the perceived abuse of lawyers, there would be little to no practical protection for Israeli intellectual property rights.
So, with reference to alternatives, the US patent system is and remains both important and reasonably effective.
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google jumps on the "bandwagon"
Saw this: Google Ups Ante with 1000 Patents from IBM | PCWorld ,
...and thought of this thread
So , now ... there can be innovation if you have corporate backing. A corporation with a "fat" enough portfolio of vague patents and a large enough army of lawyers.
"patentgeddon" ,here we come.
Scenerio , small or mid -sized (individual/company) truly innovates , larger company says the said innovation infringes on parts of it's vague collection ... has more $$ and legal muscle . The "innovator" either has to sell out or not make use of the innovation for fear of litigation.
OS
Saw this: Google Ups Ante with 1000 Patents from IBM | PCWorld ,
...and thought of this thread
So , now ... there can be innovation if you have corporate backing. A corporation with a "fat" enough portfolio of vague patents and a large enough army of lawyers.
"patentgeddon"
,here we come.Scenerio , small or mid -sized (individual/company) truly innovates , larger company says the said innovation infringes on parts of it's vague collection ... has more $$ and legal muscle . The "innovator" either has to sell out or not make use of the innovation for fear of litigation.
OS
It seems to me that a rethink of a lot of these once useful functional elements of business is needed - the stock exchange, banks, patents office, even the idea of corporations - do they now perform the functions that was established for them when they were first established.
Bring back a modern version of chartering "In the United States, government chartering began to fall out of vogue in the mid-19th century. Corporate law at the time was focused on protection of the public interest, and not on the interests of corporate shareholders. Corporate charters were closely regulated by the states. Forming a corporation usually required an act of legislature. Investors generally had to be given an equal say in corporate governance, and corporations were required to comply with the purposes expressed in their charters." Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bring back a modern version of chartering "In the United States, government chartering began to fall out of vogue in the mid-19th century. Corporate law at the time was focused on protection of the public interest, and not on the interests of corporate shareholders. Corporate charters were closely regulated by the states. Forming a corporation usually required an act of legislature. Investors generally had to be given an equal say in corporate governance, and corporations were required to comply with the purposes expressed in their charters." Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In every system there are laws and there are manipulators of the laws. It seems like trend that ethics and morals are on decline. When it comes to patents, the tactics now days is that if inventor has invention, big corporation could sue him even if they have nothing with that invention. They just can and in majority of cases a small guy will ether settle or spend his life in litigations, or most likely settle giving it up for some sum much smaller than what he would make in a market. One way to fight big Corporations is to use firm specializing in patent protection. How it works is to give up your patent to the firm, who than pulls appropriate amount of lawyers and experts and is capable of standing up against the Corporations. You end up with certain percentage and with bigger chances of winning.
A friend of mine did exactly that and after ten years of litigations won all cases. Corporations involved - all mobile phone providers. Talking about big ones... The firm provided a team of 30 lawyers for these cases. All in all, your best bet is not to get sued because on your own you have no chances of wining. Watch movie about guy who invented intermittent control of windshield wipers. After he lost his family, life... If memory serves me well Jan Diden did the interview and article about the guy who invented MC head for record playing and spend the rest of his life after some company ( I believe Shure, but I am really not sure, hope they do not sue me now) stole his patent. If Jan is reading he might point us out to a link.
A friend of mine did exactly that and after ten years of litigations won all cases. Corporations involved - all mobile phone providers. Talking about big ones... The firm provided a team of 30 lawyers for these cases. All in all, your best bet is not to get sued because on your own you have no chances of wining. Watch movie about guy who invented intermittent control of windshield wipers. After he lost his family, life... If memory serves me well Jan Diden did the interview and article about the guy who invented MC head for record playing and spend the rest of his life after some company ( I believe Shure, but I am really not sure, hope they do not sue me now
) stole his patent. If Jan is reading he might point us out to a link.
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IMO, any real patent today, one that meets the actual legal standards, will be complex and unintelligible to anyone but an expert in the field. The low fruit was picked long ago. That, combined with the fact that the PTO is judged by the number of patents it grants, means that they will patent almost anything after a few tries. That means defending a patent is risky, as the outcome can't be predicted. Many are just junk because nobody really researched the prior art. IMO again, patents today are mostly used as bargaining chips by large companies when they buy and sell one another. Yes, there are a few small players that have obtained patents and actually benefited from them, but it's not common. The average person's idea of the value of a patent is far from the truth.
From the NPR story:
It may come to some kind of restraint of trade suit and a courtroom of level-heads to sort this out. The first seems possible but the latter seems doubtful.
Therein lies the root of the present software problem, and my astonishment towards "a patent on buying things via smartphone app," which otherwise would appear to be an obvious use. Too bad NPR didn't cite the cases. It might be interesting to learn just what and who pushed the snowball downhill. I just vaguely remember the brouhaha back then.
It may come to some kind of restraint of trade suit and a courtroom of level-heads to sort this out. The first seems possible but the latter seems doubtful.
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[snip]If memory serves me well Jan Diden did the interview and article about the guy who invented MC head for record playing and spend the rest of his life after some company ( I believe Shure, but I am really not sure, hope they do not sue me now
Hi AR2,
Yes I remember we discussed this when I visited you last year. I indeed did the interview, but never publlished it. So far. This was the story about a small but bright guy at Philips who invented the moving magnet cartridge. Philips did patent it, but would not commercialise it as at the time their money was on piezo cartridges. The guy, Johan van Leer, emigrated to the US and got a job at Shure. Long story, but from the documentation I have it appears that his patent was circumvented by a loophole in the description: the patent talked about a square magnet and Shure used a round magnet, although technically it was an inferior solution. So van Leer was at a loss why they insisted on a round magnet until some time later he realised it was to circumvent the patent. Shure got a lot out of it, and van Leer ended up living in a low-rent one-room apartment in Santa Monica, where I visited him.
So was this legal? I guess so. Was it moral? Don't know, but if a bear eats a fox, is that 'moral'?
BTW, This is the version from van Leer, supported by lots of letters and documents, but I never verified it with Shure and the guy who was involved at that side, Benjamin Bauer, is now deceased. So I make no claim to the exactitude of this story; if anything, it shows how difficult it is to nail down your invention.
jan didden
What do people think of this patent?
espacenet - Bibliographic data
The company Microchip seem to have obtained the exclusive right to manufacture microcontrollers with fewer physical pins than the width of the data bus. Like having the exclusive right to build cars with fewer wheels than the number of engine cylinders - two numbers that are not related to each other.
The thing that interests me is how the patent came to be applied for in the first place. I'm sure that a microprocessor with multiplexed address and data bus pins existed long before this patent, but that there might just have been some novelty in multiplexing the data bus onto fewer pins than the width of the data bus - many LCD controllers accept 8 bit data over a 4 bit data bus, for example. But a microcontroller doesn't expose its data bus to the outside world, and microcontroller pins with multiple I/O functions have existed for aeons. By putting the two things together in one patent, Microchip seem to have scored a massive coup, and I can only think that it got through because the patents people simply didn't understand any of it.
espacenet - Bibliographic data
The company Microchip seem to have obtained the exclusive right to manufacture microcontrollers with fewer physical pins than the width of the data bus. Like having the exclusive right to build cars with fewer wheels than the number of engine cylinders - two numbers that are not related to each other.
The thing that interests me is how the patent came to be applied for in the first place. I'm sure that a microprocessor with multiplexed address and data bus pins existed long before this patent, but that there might just have been some novelty in multiplexing the data bus onto fewer pins than the width of the data bus - many LCD controllers accept 8 bit data over a 4 bit data bus, for example. But a microcontroller doesn't expose its data bus to the outside world, and microcontroller pins with multiple I/O functions have existed for aeons. By putting the two things together in one patent, Microchip seem to have scored a massive coup, and I can only think that it got through because the patents people simply didn't understand any of it.
Has anyone here ever tried to do their own patent search to see if they may be infringing an existing patent with some new method/product/idea they've thought of? Personally, when attempting this, I have always stumbled across many, many patents that appear to cover my idea with broad non-specific claims.
As a hypothetical example, if you had found a new way to linearise a speaker using a particular arrangement of microphones and a laser, you might come across a 1990s patent that claims "The measurement and correction of acoustic loudspeakers using a single, or multiple, acoustic or other transducers, an electronic digital processing unit, and digital software algorithms which may use digital filtering techniques." It doesn't attempt to describe the transducers or the algorithms, or if it does, it is a trivial 'placeholder' example that would be of no use in the real world. Maybe it's just an application or maybe it was never granted, or maybe it isn't relevant, but without paying through the nose for an expert, an ordinary engineer cannot make that judgement. And the engineer knows that if he picks up the Yellow Pages and hires a patents expert, this person will simply not understand the point or method of the invention and will go on to ignore relevant patents and get in a sweat about irrelevant ones - while charging £500 a day. That's my experience anyway.
Even with the luxury of spending an employer's money on this process, I find it so dispiriting that I have given up on the idea of ever trying to invent something commercial for myself. With a little imagination it's easy to see that it could take over your life, and potentially ruin you.
As a hypothetical example, if you had found a new way to linearise a speaker using a particular arrangement of microphones and a laser, you might come across a 1990s patent that claims "The measurement and correction of acoustic loudspeakers using a single, or multiple, acoustic or other transducers, an electronic digital processing unit, and digital software algorithms which may use digital filtering techniques." It doesn't attempt to describe the transducers or the algorithms, or if it does, it is a trivial 'placeholder' example that would be of no use in the real world. Maybe it's just an application or maybe it was never granted, or maybe it isn't relevant, but without paying through the nose for an expert, an ordinary engineer cannot make that judgement. And the engineer knows that if he picks up the Yellow Pages and hires a patents expert, this person will simply not understand the point or method of the invention and will go on to ignore relevant patents and get in a sweat about irrelevant ones - while charging £500 a day. That's my experience anyway.
Even with the luxury of spending an employer's money on this process, I find it so dispiriting that I have given up on the idea of ever trying to invent something commercial for myself. With a little imagination it's easy to see that it could take over your life, and potentially ruin you.
It's important, when evaluating claims, to look at the whole file wrapper. That way, you can see what is meant by some of the vague language- and more importantly, it allows a hypothetical judge in hypothetical future litigation to see what was meant.
You can also see what DIDN'T get by the examiner.
You can also see what DIDN'T get by the examiner.
Hi Coppertop,
Have done quite a number of patent searches for my own inventions, and there is a general problem that claims are expanded into vague directions. At the same time, a patent is on a specific thing, so a vage claim in one patent will not automatically deny you all possibilities.
Another problem you rightly mention is that of lawyers charging ridiculous amounts. In the Netherlands, you can easily be billed 250 Euro's or more per hour. 500 Pounds a day is a bargain. Therefore, there is only one solution: you have to do all the real work yourself. Which means, doing a patent search, writing the patent, making the drawings, and most importantly, drafting the claims. Lawyers only have broad band knowledge, whereas a good patent is highly specific. Therefore, the legal profession is best used for dealing with formalities.
But even then, it may be too expensive to get a patent. I personally know the Brittish inventor of the heading lock gyro. He knew he could not afford obtaining a world wide patent, in the meanwhile being affraid that another party might file a patent on his invention. This could have led to a situation where he could no longer sell his own products. In the end, he therefore decided to publish his invention. This effectively killed the possibility to file patents on his heading lock gyro for everybody including himself, at the same time denying the Brittish economy, as well as himself, possible gains.
So, yes, the system is flawed and favours those with deep pockets. Not unlike most things on this planet. But hard work can overcome some of this.
Have done quite a number of patent searches for my own inventions, and there is a general problem that claims are expanded into vague directions. At the same time, a patent is on a specific thing, so a vage claim in one patent will not automatically deny you all possibilities.
Another problem you rightly mention is that of lawyers charging ridiculous amounts. In the Netherlands, you can easily be billed 250 Euro's or more per hour. 500 Pounds a day is a bargain. Therefore, there is only one solution: you have to do all the real work yourself. Which means, doing a patent search, writing the patent, making the drawings, and most importantly, drafting the claims. Lawyers only have broad band knowledge, whereas a good patent is highly specific. Therefore, the legal profession is best used for dealing with formalities.
But even then, it may be too expensive to get a patent. I personally know the Brittish inventor of the heading lock gyro. He knew he could not afford obtaining a world wide patent, in the meanwhile being affraid that another party might file a patent on his invention. This could have led to a situation where he could no longer sell his own products. In the end, he therefore decided to publish his invention. This effectively killed the possibility to file patents on his heading lock gyro for everybody including himself, at the same time denying the Brittish economy, as well as himself, possible gains.
So, yes, the system is flawed and favours those with deep pockets. Not unlike most things on this planet. But hard work can overcome some of this.
When I interviewed Siegfried Linkwitz (see the July audioXpress issue for the full interview) he told me that, after he and Russ Riley developed the Linkwitz-Riley crossover filter, they decided to write it up for the AES. They did so with the express purpose to publish it and so prevent anyone to lock it up in a patent.
jan didden
jan didden
Won't get much better with the patent system if the following is correct:
The Spoilsmen: How Congress Corrupted Patent Reform
vac
The Spoilsmen: How Congress Corrupted Patent Reform
vac
Here is a nice example of Patent trolling:
Apple sued over speedy Mac OS X startup | The Digital Home - CNET News
Apple sued over speedy Mac OS X startup | The Digital Home - CNET News
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