Community Patent Review Project Announced 62
PatPending writes "American companies General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have joined with the New York Law School and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to inaugarate a new system of peer review for software patents.
The four companies, plus Red Hat, the world's biggest listed open source software business, are the lead sponsors behind the Community Patent Review project.
The one-year pilot program will begin in early 2007 and focus on published but not-yet-granted patent applications relating to computer software. Scientists and engineers will be able to submit prior art to patent examiners at the USPTO using an online system. All Community Patent review project documents will be available on the internet for public comment.
'High-quality patents increase certainty around intellectual property rights, reducing contention and freeing resources to focus on innovation,' said David Kappos, vice president of IP law at IBM."
It won't work (Score:2)
I hold the patent for online peer-review of patents. I beat Jeff Bezos to it by maybe a day or two.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Funny)
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More along the lines of:
In Soviet Russia, patents review the community.
Or something similar in format.
That's the problem with your post...format- it's important- it's the whole point of the *joke*.
Now practice: "In Soviet Russia, (subject/noun) verbs you/convenient scapegoat!"
*cue to obligitory Simpson's scene: Bart writing "In Soviet Russia....." on chalkboard at program intro*
If this is not rectified within the next three (3) business days, your
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True. But if we had a decent system, peer-review would have a role to play in it. The way I see a good patent, system :
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It's the government, do you really think they are going have a problem with spending extra cash?
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A sensible patent system would not cover software. (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of this is because software is one of the few products that can be effectively produced with reasonably low capital input and
Re:A sensible patent system would not cover softwa (Score:2)
1. Big Patent Holder Patents X in USA
2. European Company uses X in its software
3. Profit!
Europe is looking like a good place to be making software...
Re:A sensible patent system would not cover softwa (Score:2)
Now the market forces are different for software. But just because the cost to replicate a copy is $0.00 does not mean that you aren't due protection. Software's "manufactur
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The major expenditures for software, both up front and ongoing is not R&D, but marketing and support. A company with such a non-trivial peoce of software is much better off to keep its development under wraps and trade secret. The advantage lies in being first to market, capturing and keeping mindshare and not an artific
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You can only patent an algorithm or a process.
In general, these translate to small parts of an overall body of software. So what protection is there for large works? Copyright. If you put in a lot of time to write something, other folks aren't allowed to copy your work without permission. They have to put in time just like you did.
Bruce
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There are already enough laws to protect large software companies. The first is copyright. I could not take the source code of Oracle or MS and sell it. If I did, I would owe all my profits to Oracle, MS or whatever company I took the copyrighted code from. As for your other suggestion of just *one* guy recreating the code in
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Funny I thought this was about combatting bad patents, not stopping resources from being wasted.
Bad patents (Score:2)
All software patents are bad patents. Full fucking stop.
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The idea of this peer-reviewed format is great. However, for it to work, no big patent holding companies can be a part of it. Otherwise we get all the bogus patents denied for all companies except MS, IBM, etc. MS, IBM and other big patent holders have tons of bogus patents. Is MS going to give up their current bogus patents? Or do they get to keep those?
Prior art question. (Score:1)
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It's worth noting that the patent application may also may disclose something more precise than the prior art---an improvement perhaps. In that case,
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Patent Law
Statutory Bars [yale.edu] The law requires you to exercise your rights or loose them. The textbook case is Egbert v. Lippmann [wikipedia.org]
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Sounds a lot like the human body.
Sound great, but... (Score:2)
Total conflict of interest (Score:2)
Take Microsoft. They've spend a ton of money this year alone settling patent infringement claims against small people/organizations. Now they no longer have to. And Microsoft isn't the only on
Not so great at all (Score:2)
...sarcasm off. Of course you're right.
Bruce
What did I miss? (Score:2)
Did I miss something or could this have been written as:
American companies General Electric, IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Red Hat have joined with the New York Law School and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to inaugarate a new system of peer review for software patents.
As for f
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http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource [ibm.com]
KFG
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wiki time! (Score:2)
I've got a great new piece of software... (Score:1)
Summary: (Score:2)
How nice.
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Well if "they" did invent it first, why should somebody else get a patent on it?
Peer review is a good thing in principle because it will filter claims before litigation occurs. The average patent suit costs around $2 million to litigate, not to mention time it takes if the case gets appealed. If you can come up with a cost-effective system of peer review that would reduce the amount of litigation, you would actually be making they system more favorabl
Real Soon Now (Score:1)
Potential Problem (Score:2)
Great . . . (Score:2)
Now Microsoft can use its software and EULAs to control what patents are issued.
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Once the FFII has finally won and Europe is rid of software patents the phrase "bork bork patents bork" will be struck from the legal understanding of the EULA.
this sounds like (Score:2)
This Makes Sense to Me (Score:3, Interesting)
To achieve either you have to be skilled in the art of the subject at hand and that is just not something one could reasonably expect of a patent examiner who must be a generalist. A community skilled in the art must get involved and I really think this a good thing and could turn the patent system around. No matter how evil you think patents are, they are not going away anytime soon. The best we can do is to better the current situation by supporting efforts such as this.
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To fairly grant a patent, the patent office must be able to understand a) what has already been done b) what is just plain obvious.
True. The legal fiction that a minor government bureacrat would be able to assess all of human knowledge and arbitrarily decide whether something is original is just mind blowing. Scientists spend their entire working lives in very narrow fields and even they sometimes make mistakes. Not to mention the idiocy of allowing a minor, empire building government department to act
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Bribed examiners?
Give me a break
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Bribed examiners?
Give me a break.
Don't be so sure. [com.com]. This is anonymous so it's only indicative but it does show how corruption could happen. And for one of the most important patents ever:
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Thanks for citing the examples and references. There may well be corruption but I just hate to make the assumption that because there is so much money and anonymity/ambiguity that corruption automatically exists. I guess you can call me naive.
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Yes, we really should all start working for free for the big companies helping them vet their patent applications. Come on, if a bureaucratic government run monopoly-granting system is broken you do not solve that by making the people work for you for free (in particular because they could be doing productive work instead, like writing or fixing software). Instead, you should fix the system.
not a generalist (Score:2)
I had a chance a few weeks ago to sit in on a meeting of the IPLA on this exact subject.
The peer review project will be of use to examiner's for prior art, but as I undestand from the implementation, the comments may or may not be visible to the Examiners on the IDS they recieve. Further, how will the legal education of the participants be ensured? For example, who will educate them on the differences between comprising/con
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The definition of non-obvious is supposed be "non-obvious to those skilled in the art". While a patent examiner may specialize in a specific area (e.g. software, medicine), they still are not likely to be "skilled in the art" enough to make a reasonable judgment on obviousness. I have heard it suggested that a better way to use outside experts is to explain to them what needs to be solved and see if they come up w
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The penalties are higher when an infringement is found and the code writer/owner did know about the patent. It seems to be safer to carefully avoid it.
and the crowd goes wild (Score:1)
So? (Score:1)
Just the big boys trying to stop the trolls. (Score:2)
When the judiciary started allowing patents on software (along with business processes and who knows what else) it was a sweet deal for the big players. They apply for a ton of expensive patents that the little players can't afford. If they need to use a patent they don't have, they
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