Patent reform: Who's on first?

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Re: Sophistry

"A licensor doesn't have to require a substantial outlay of cash from the licensee.. The payment could be based on a per user fee, for instance. "

1 million users at $0 is $0, so there's no point in going after Open source if you want money because they give away the source for free. So you must have some other purpose than money, e.g. protecting your market control -> Microsoft intention regarding Linux.

"There's a difference between finding prior art and confirming assertions about past events from a participant in a court case. "
Or before a court case, prior art is necessarily a past event, if the PTO can't determine the past event independantly how can they verify your assertion about a past event.
The PTO has to be able to develop an independant way to reliably determine prior art.

Me: " Patents are for real inventions, so the onus should be on the inventor to prove its new and novel, something the US PTO isn't doing."
You: "When has the applicant for a patent made a sufficient good faith effort to find prior art?"

Because the PTO's purpose is to determing f(x) not f'(x), not inventors opinion of f(x), not any other variation. The laws worded to award patents in inventors for inventions, not 'mistaken' inventors, even if its an honest mistake.

"Gee, if something is secret and might be relevant to a patent application, then the patent application must be denied."
Patents require the determination of prior art and non obviousness, both of which require the PTO to have access to the information in that field -> inability to award patents for fields where prior art can't be determined. If the field is capable of trade secret protection then that is better, simpler and cheaper than patents so true inventors have a way to protect their inventions -> easy solution via trade secrets.
Patents are a means to an end, if there is a better means to that end then why have patents?

"If someone can obtain a valid patent on the foobar then he is the inventor of the foobar. Even if the development of the idea did not cost him $500 million."

The point being its unwise to think that an easy patent system that hands out patents willy-nilly for vague claims is better for the USA because it isn't. It simply undermines the real companies doing the real work and spending the real money on development.

Posted by: Nigel Johnstone   Posted on: 09/13/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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