A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end
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FTC recommends patent reform
THE US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) might shake up the patent arena with a report that makes several recommendations for improvements to patent policies.
The FTC suggestions include requiring clearer language in patents to make claims more definite, while also helping others understand the boundaries relating to those patents so that infringement can be avoided.
It is recommending that patent examinations be enhanced so that the scope of a patent claim can be fully understood. It also wants more consideration of third parties' ability to foresee how a patent might evolve.
A number of other recommendations are likely to have a larger effect on industry, because they will affect how patent infringement cases should be resolved.
The FTC wants royalty damages to be capped to a reasonable amount to allow them to be paid. It's also looking for the exclusion of unreliable expert testimony in setting damage estimates, which could lower costs considerably for alleged infringers.
Patent reform is a big concern for many technology companies, because current laws often lead to long legal battles as well as patent trolls and hoarders, whose sole aims are to collect licensing fees. This can hold back the development of new technology, which stifles innovation and ultimately costs the consumer and the society as a whole. µ
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Here's what really needs to be done:
1. Eliminate software patents, and invalidate all existing software patents. Software is *already* covered by copyright (for even longer than patents), and that applies to "firmware, too (which is just software enwrapped in hardware).
2. Require a working model of the proposed patented device to be submitted with the patent application, or if that is impractical, provide a location where a working model can be demonstrated (it might be impractical to send a working model of, say, a nuclear reactor to Washington, DC).
3. Require a rigorous validity investigation, including an "open comment" period, prior to granting a patent, and automatically invalidate any patent (no matter when it was granted) if prior art can be reasonably demonstrated.
4. In the event any patent is invalidated upon examination after being granted, such as in a case where the patent-holder has sued for royalties, require the patent-holder of the invalidated patent to pay all costs of the court and of the defendant associated with any such court case, *and* triple the claimed amount of royalties to the successful defendant, over an above the legal fees of the defending attorneys.
Stand back and watch patent litigation come to a screeching halt.
Just because they call it “reform” doesn’t mean it is. Patent reform is a fraud on America. This bill will not do what they claim it will. What it will do is help large corporations maintain their monopolies and kill their small entity and startup competitors (which is exactly what they intended it to do) and with them the jobs they would have created. According to recent studies by the Kauffman Foundation and economists at the U.S. Census Bureau, “startups aren’t everything when it comes to job growth. They’re the only thing.” This bill is a wholesale slaughter of US jobs.
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/ for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
http://docs.piausa.org/2011PatentReform/
... the only winning move is not to play.
Notwithstanding loopholes (now mostly closed) that allowed unscrupulous players effectively to extend them indefinitely, patents were supposedly set at 17 years at a time when that was a reasonable amount of time to develop your product, bring it to market and (hopefully) recoup your costs.
Nowadays, times to market are an order of magnitude shorter. Therefore, it would be entirely in keeping with the spirit of the patents system *as it was originally intended* to shorten patents to, say, at most 3 years.
If that were done, then Im fairly sure that most objections - even objections to software patents - would vanish.
Though simply abolishing the whole stupid scam would make more sense.
In the current situation, patents are more costly to companies and the whole society compared with their full abolition. Since the inventor is the first one reaching the market, it is already granted a initial advantage, in many cases enough to recover the investment in innovation.
We definitely need a much better patent system, or otherwise simply eliminate it. In some fields, like software, patents in fact have no sense at all.