USPTO Plans Could Kill Small Business Innovation 175
bizwriter writes "If protecting inventions is at the heart of high tech competitiveness, plans afoot at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will critically wound small companies. The agency's notorious 750,000 patent application backlog has long been the subject of heavy criticism. One of the key tools the USPTO wants to use is to raise fees so high as to directly reduce 40 percent of the backlog. That would mean setting filing and maintenance rates so high as to make it economically difficult, if not impossible, for many small companies to adequately protect their innovations, leaving large corporations even more in control of technology than they are now."
Stupid system (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not keep the basic cost the same but increase it by 20% for every additional patent filed in a year?
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The system ain't stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
... as it is designed so that the not-so-wealthy don't get to patent anything.
That poor guy may end up having to sell his invention to the wealthy elites, and the elites can then patent the thing and rake in much much much more $$$ with it.
And btw, it is happening.
Re:Stupid system (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it dangerous to collect bad patents, and you'll see a big drop-off in patent applications.
[1] Assuming, of course, that you think patents are a good way of encouraging innovation. If you don't, then use abolish the patent office and be done with it.
Re:Stupid system (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is you're relying on the courts, which take YEARS to properly rule (and get through appeals) on a patent claim.
The secondary problem is that the BIG companies have found a way around the system with what they term "patent slamming"; they file everything they can send, no matter how stupid, 4-5 times apiece, knowing that the overwhelmed USPTO examiners are more likely to mistakenly approve the patents if they don't have the time to properly analyze them for non-obviousness and prior art.
For example, take Wizards of the Coast's patents concerning "trading card games." Nothing in their patent was non-obvious, and every game mechanic they pointed to is predated by a number of prior arts, up to and including the quintessential Hoyle's Rules of Games, first edition published in goddamn 1742. In a reasonable and non-overwhelmed USPTO, there's no way that patent could ever have passed, but not only did it pass, it gave WOTC a virtual monopoly in an area they had no business gaining one.
And getting back to the courts - remember, in order to sue, even if "loser pays", you have to have the money to front to your lawyers to see the lawsuit prevail. Which means you've got to have fucking deep pockets, to pay a lawyer for 4-5 years or more and process all the paperwork slamming and other shyster tactics that the big guys are going to throw at you.
I'd rather see companies completely blocked from patent slamming. Require the companies to be allowed only so many patents per year, make them pick the ones they REALLY want to protect, and that's that.
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> If a patent is overturned in court, you pay a statutory $10,000 fine, plus the
> legal fees of the person who sues you.
I'd adjust that to reduce litigation. If the patent is overturned in court, I'd add an additional penalty for the time between the initial suit and the time it's resolved. The additional penalties can be waived if the patent is retracted unconditionally, and the matter is settled out of court. No out of court settlement would allow waiver of the burden of legal fees, no out of court
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Your plan might sound solid to the naive public. But I can come up counter-plan in less than a minute:
If I were a large and rich patent troll or if I want to take away the "innovative" patents held by you the real poor business / individual, I can do (a) hire better lawyers than yours -- chance are mine is already among the best and you can barely afford any lawyer -- good or bad; (b) create numerous shelf companies -- in Nevada or any low fee state, just to save a few dollar for my luxurious trip to Baham
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If you are found to have filed the patent in bad faith (i.e. knowing that there was prior art) then this becomes wilful abuse of the patent system and the fine goes up to $100,000.
The problem with this one is that it discourages looking for prior art: People will notice that if you look for it, and find it, then you can't file, but if you don't look for it, then you can file and put the onus (except for the $10k in your previous point) on the PTO to find the prior art.
I'm not sure what a good solution would be. The goal is good: self-select inventions that aren't patentable so that the PTO can concentrate only on the ones that have merit, or seem like they have merit.
Additional rule (Score:2)
Once the system gets rolling and gets a lot of partici
huge fines is not the solution (Score:2)
A potential $100,000 fine just for filing a bad patent would stop most small businesses or independent inventors from filing at all, even if the patent was valid -- it's way too much risk. I certainly don't have $100,000 lying around.
Ultimately, it's the patent offices' job to determine if patents are valid or not. The applicant ought to do due diligence to check if their idea is original, but realistically it's not possible to know every invention that has ever been thought of in the whole history of t
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Where did you get your definition of prior art? Just like you don't have to know about a patent to be in violation of it, you don't have to know about prior art for it to be prior art. Prior art just has to be proven to exist during a lawsuit, not known to exist when filing the patent.
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Sorry for being ambiguous. I didn't mean "known to the applicant", but "publicly known".
Bert
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Thanks, you probably just invalidated tons of patents. ;)
Seriously though. There are probably more examples of publicly known prior art that has made it through the application process than anyone would care to admit (especially patent holders) just because the system is overwhelmed (and has been for sometime).
I agree there needs to be a stop-gap for patent trolls, but what is it? Most of the patent trolls are huge mega-corps with pockets deeper than the universe is wide (yes, hyperbole, but essentially tru
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Limit the USPTO to issuing 365 patents a year. It has to choose the best patent each day from the pile of applications.
That would make the patents truly valuable and stop the rest of this nonsense.
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Only if the words "inequitable conduct" mean nothing to you. I don't doubt there are companies that do this and claim small entity status, but it's not legitimate (meaning it's not the government's fault).
Raising Fees is NOT the answer (Score:2)
Using modern technology to search for prior art quickly and having a $100 penalty for submitting prior art probably would do more to fix the system than any amount of raising the fees.
Re:Raising Fees is NOT the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
New technology costs $$$, which the USPTO does not have. The Patent Office's budget is pretty much 1:1 based on the fees it collects, except when congress wants to siphon off some cash to spend on something else. Hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned off in the 90's, leaving the Patent office with a massive backlog at least in part because it couldn't keep enough people or the correct equipment to keep up with the applications.
What would be nice is a tiered system, instead of the current Big/Small entity fee system now in place (small entity fees are 1/2 those of the large companies). Tie fees to the number of applications or patents you have. That way those responsible for the backlog pay more, while the small company with 2 patents doesn't get priced out.
Re:Raising Fees is NOT the answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the # of patents idea wouldn;t necessarily work. Big companies have lots of accountants who would just start up a subsidiary company and let them file their first patent. So Microsoft would still have millions of patents, but they'd be held by a thousand sub companies. They'd probably end up paying less than mom n pop innovators inc.
Still, charging for crap patent applications is a good idea - that'd shift the cost burden to 3rd party lawyers who'd charge you to ensure your application wasn't crappy. The patent office could then start to give such pre-verified applications a less rigourous overview (like they do currently with all patents :)
Yes, that's dangerous... Microsoft lawyers inc would pre-verify a patent on glass panes used to provide visibility of operating system function for human interaction.
The only way to proplerly solve the issue is to better define what a patent is. Say "software or software algorithms of any kind are not patentable items" would rip that backlog to shreds. And save business innovation as well, which would be nice.
More than $100 (Score:2)
The fine should be the greater of $10,000 or *two* times whatever profits are incurred by the patent. Having a $100 fine for crappy patents is not enough to encourage *anyone* to not file them.
-1 Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Small entity inventors already get 50% off most USPTO fees, and USPTO Director Kappos has suggested creating a "micro-entity" inventor class for whom the fees would have an even smaller impact relative to that for large entities.
What's more, the backlog hurts small entity inventors much more than it does large entities. Small entity inventors are much more likely to rely on venture capital funding, and many VC outfits are unwilling to put money down without some patent protection on the table. If a small entity inventor has to wait for 3+ years to get that protection, they may end up folding before the patent issues. On the other hand, a large entity inventor has lots of stuff going on, and relies on its other business to keep things moving while they wait for their patents to issue, so the backlog has a much smaller impact on them.
Solving the backlog problem is ultimately going to require hiring more examiners, and that costs money. For an agency that is entirely fee-funded, being able to set those fees at appropriate levels is necessary to ensure that patents are issued in a timely fashion.
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Great, even worse news for the poor little guy. You think it is bad for small businesses, it is terrible for an independent inventor. Patents are becoming more expensive and harder to get every day, better for big companies that apply for ten thousand-a hundred thousand patents a year, meanwhile I have to construct elaborate contracts with a company before I can even show them what I have, at fear of losing everything. One hell of a messed up system.
Re: -1 Troll (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, more patent examiners helps considerably, but so does fewer patentable domains, i.e. eliminate patents on business methods, software, look-and-feel, life forms, etc.
Patent lawyers already cost way more than patent fees. If large entities pay more for their lawyers, why not declare that patent fees should match the cost of the patent lawyers, but leave the minimum fee alone.
Or you might simply make the patent fees progressive in the examiner's time. In particular, if many people contested your patent, the fees will sky rocket.
There should also be an upkeep or property tax on owning all intellectual property with rates that were progressive based upon the number of patents the entity holds.
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ABSOLUTELY.
Read through the comments to make sure I wouldn't repost this.
Don't increase the barrier to entry, lower the demand for patenting.
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>>Small entity inventors already get 50% off most USPTO fees, and USPTO Director Kappos has suggested creating a "micro-entity" inventor class for whom the fees would have an even smaller impact relative to that for large entities.
Indeed.
Also, I have nothing against raising fees to whatever it actually costs the USPTO to process an application.
In general, I think gov't fees should be set this way. If they charge less, then it encourages overfiling. If they charge more (i.e. outrageous corporate fees i
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Part of the reason why patents have the requirements that they do is to inform the public as to what subject matter is covered by the patent. Examination serves to ensure that the public is informed accurately (or, at least, far more accurately than a registration-based system would allow) as to what they can and can't do without licensing the patented subject matter from the patentee.
In other words, if people were allowed to claim whatever the hell they wanted, and it only got sorted out when they started
Give the companies a choice (Score:2)
Why not let people choose whether to be protected *with* patents, or to be protected *from* patents.
So big companies can file patents and sue each other; small companies who choose not to file can neither sue, nor be sued.
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In other words, you're suggesting the complete elimination of patents. If companies can simply opt out of being sued for patent infringement, then a patent has no value.
Re:Give the companies a choice (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, you're suggesting the complete elimination of patents.
Which would not be a bad idea at all, mind you...
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This is a common misperception. There's plenty of incentive for innovation, regardless of whether patent protection is available. Patents are supposed to provide incentive to make the innovations public knowledge. It's a bargain in which the public gains the knowledge in exchange for granting the sort of monopoly the inventors would supposedly have if they'd kept their invention secret AND no one else could figure out how to duplicate their work within the next 17 years. Somehow, the interpretation has
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Given the way patents are currently abused to protect from competition instead of protection of innovation, I doubt the damage would be severe. At the very least in the area of software and software procedures, abandoning patents would certainly spur innovation rather than stiffle it.
Don't Panic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Interesting post. Excuse my ignorance; can you expand on what "wait and see litigation" means?
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The thing is, the fee structure would have to change significantly to influence large business tactics. Whether you're small or large, the attorney fees you pay are way bigger than the filing fees. I just don't see this making that big a difference for the huge guys like Microsoft and IBM. But it will hurt universities, where a lot of legitimate innovation takes place, because they tend to be more fee sensitive.
I think the better way to deal with the pendency is to just dispose of applications earlier.
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- Keep the small entity fees as-is; they are not onerous. But make them applicable to an individual only without any assignee. The small entity fee only applies to the inventor.
- All other patent filings are considered large entity. If you have an assignee at application time then you pay higher fees. How high? Twenty times the price. In other words, if the company owns it from the start, they are g
skeptical this is genuine concern (Score:2)
The vast majority of patents, and therefore the vast majority of patent fees, are paid by large entities. I suspect they're the ones most opposed to any increase, because it will hit companies that file 10,000 patents much harder than companies that file 1 patent. But nice job hiding behind concern for small business.
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And the vast majority of cost in filing a patent is not in the filing fee. You are naive.
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Indeed, but that points even strongly towards my conclusion, because for a small business, the filing fee is small compared to the lawyer fees, so they won't much care about an increase in filing fees. But for a large company that already has a lawyer on retainer anyway, an increase filing fees times 10,000 might matter, so I could see why they would want to drum up opposition.
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Because making filing a patent cost as much as as house is really going help the independent inventor.
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But it will be after this change. Who knows how much patent fees need to increase to stifle patent application by 40%? Increase by 100%? 200%?
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It would take more than that to make a huge multinational blink, but I'm sure they'd love a reduction in the patent arms race. Patent attorneys are expensive, most patents don't generate any licensing revenue. Do you think they're going to cry when filing becomes cost prohibitive for their smaller competitors?
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Most large entities are filing enough applications that an increase in filing fees (if it really makes a dent in their IP expenses compared to attorney-related expenses) will simply result in filing fewer "crapplications". Large entities that manage large IP portfolios tend to file patent applications on every little thing they do, and lots of those things are pretty much worthless as patents.
Proportional Fees (Score:2)
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Can you say "wholly owned subsidiary"?
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Nothing. It does however give the smaller guys a bargaining chip and spread the money around. When it comes time to renew the patent if the company is 'acquired' by a larger player then they have to pay the proportionally larger patent fee.
This will have a big impact (Score:2)
I have several patents in my name, filed by my employer. With the business climate the way it is (which is to say, globally flat to slightly rising revenue, improving profits and a rise in stock price because of a constant decline in costs), we're being scrutinized on the patents we do file. If the costs go up even more, we'll file for fewer of them. There's already mounting pressure to keep ideas as "trade secrets".
Why not charge per year (Score:5, Interesting)
2 year protection = normal price
5 year protection = three times normal price
10 year protection = ten times normal price
20 year protection = fifty times normal price
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Love it. I would tend toward allowing optional renewal on an exponential scale.
First two years: $1000 (prototyping)
Next three years: $10,000 (initial market exploration)
Next five years: $100,000 (expansion to adjacent markets)
Next five years: $1,000,000 (you should be making real money by now if it is worthy of patent)
Then an additional x10 for each additional five years up to whatever limit we find reasonable.
That way the indie doesn't have to sell his soul to the vulture capitalists to get the front cash;
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You should really look at what the current maintenance fees are before making stupid statements as there appears to be prior art on a sliding scale that increases as time progresses.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september15.htm#maintain [uspto.gov]
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Protecting for 20 years would be prohibitively expensive, $104,857,600. No sane company would pay that much.
Actually, for many pharmaceutical companies it would be entirely rational to pay that much for their so-called blockbuster drugs.
Wouldn't Change That Much (Score:2)
Companies can still protect themselves to a degree via documenting even if they don't file. If it ever goes to court a small company is at such a disadvantage anyway because of the cost that I think this isn't really that big a deal.
One thing it would change is that small companies with cool IP but no sales look less interesting as acquisition targets.
Terrible Approach! (Score:2)
This actually will hurt the little guys and make sure that only mega corps can own the world.
I think a better way would be to assign the fee AFTER the patten goes through. Basically, if a patent is found to erroneous or false in some way, the fee would be EXTREMELY high. This would be encourage less crap patents and make sure people do a patent search before trying to patent their crap.
Finally, the fees for the approved patents can be based on the company's yearly revenue weighted against the market value o
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There's a problem with the after fees, but in the other way. If the PTO makes money off of calling something bad, why would they ever call something good?
raise the bar instead (Score:2)
Instead of raising fees to lower the application rate, how about raising the bar for patents to be genuinely useful, innovative and non-obvious.
So there are fewer of these:
http://listverse.com/2009/05/07/10-more-extremely-bizarre-and-pointless-patents/ [listverse.com]
Lengthen 3rd party prior art submission duration (Score:2)
Currently, the patent office is required to review prior art submissions from outside parties for 60 days. The
patent is visible in the system for 60 days, and then they can throw your notice of prior art in the garbage.
2 months is not a lot of time. If they want to reduce the backlog, then crowdsource the problem. Open that
duration up. Even create some incentives to get people to read the patent applications. A little education
on what constitues prior art. Maybe even a hall of fame which says, "
Systems that oppose their own function... (Score:2)
I'd say that about covers it.
A system designed to protect the small inventor puts itself out of reach of the pocket book of the small inventor.
Being small is being, uh, dis-incentivized.
The positive feedback loop will take care of crushing the small inventor into a thin red paste under the soles of gummint and big corporations.
change who can own a Patent (Score:2)
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I like this idea. Ideally we'd also have it be noninheritable, last 20 years, revert to public domain 5 years after death, and have royalties paid to the patent office (or general us government) during those 5 years.
I dislike that patents exist at all, but this might be a reasonable comprimise.
Change to two types of patents. (Score:2)
1. regular patents. put the fees up all you want. make them harder to get.
2. defensive only patents. can only be brought out when you (or a "partner" are being sued for some reason.) low to no fees, fast tracked ahead of regular patents in the grant process, easier to get.
thoughts?
Entirely wrong approach (Score:2)
The USPTO has (decades ago) lost all sense of what patents are even for. They are NOT for recognizing who invented something (first). Instead, they are for granting exclusive rights to an invention, for a period of time, in exchange for having the invention made available in the first place. Patents actually take away the rights of inventors who happen to not be first. This is considered an acceptable tradeoff when the public gets to have (most) inventions that would otherwise have not been available.
Th
I think we're okay then (Score:2)
Luckily, protecting inventions is not at the heart of competitiveness. Patents are, by nature, a short-term monopoly on a technology. They are anti-competitive. Their intent was to spur risky innovation, and we can argue about whether or not that works in a low-barrier-to-entry market like software, but reducing patents can only increase
Vote for me (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's what we do:
1. Create a new class of patent examiners who work from home. Vet and enlist a huge number of available experts to examine patents and be paid per examination. The USPTO could send an application right out to ten people conversant with any exotic field and get quick decisions.
2. Make patent applications free. Make renewal of granted patents increasingly more expensive with each passing year, so profitable patents are maintained and unprofitable ones are abandoned.
Alarmist much? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article: "Put bluntly, the USPTO would raise patent application and maintenance fees to such a level that massive numbers of applications will never be filed in the first place."
There is *nothing* to support this. The USPTO has already implemented a number of measures to shorten the patent approval process. I know of at least two specific programs that are in a variety of beta / roll-out modes. One is a fast track program for patents previously approved in foreign countries and the other is the Accelerated Examination (AE) program for those that are willing to do additional work up front and willing to limit the number of claims. The AE program has had approval rates as high as 80% and require a final disposition within 12 months!
I'm not a lawyer but am considering becoming a patent attorney and am currently finishing my second year of law school. There may be many points of contention with USPTO actions but I don't believe that they will be raising fees to the extent imagined by the doom-n-gloom author of the linked article. Frankly, if that somehow *did* occur it would likely be held to be invalid as a due process issue under the Constitution.
For those who may not be aware: the USPTO is largely self-funding and is one of the few (the only?) government bodies that has historically been able to run without additional funding. In fact since 1991 they have had $700 million diverted from their coffers. This is likely the reason behind their request to have greater control over the fees that they receive; by being able to retain surplus funds it gives them the flexibility to do things like increase hiring when the rest of the government is in a hiring freeze.
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underfoot? (Score:2)
plans are afoot, plans are under way, plans are not underfoot.
Why do we even have a patent office? (Score:2)
Why not just have a system where publishing the description of an invention automatically patents it? If there's any dispute, let the civil courts handle it.
This way, we don't need a massive and slow bureaucracy -- the government only gets involved when there is a claim of infringement. It seems to work OK for copyright (and by OK, I mean it's a total clusterfuck, but at least you don't need to convince some "copyright clerk" at the copyright office that your work is original before you publish it). Of c
almost a good idea (Score:2)
To complete they should add subscription fees and a facility whereby inventors who do not wish to patent their inventions can for a very cheap fee file their "prior art" (without any kind of inspection).
Very quickly you only have patents being filed that people genuinely and seriously plan to exploit and require protection. Nobody would file any old crap because it might just enable them to sue a competitor for unwittingly copying their "invention" by basically having implemented the natural solution to a
Just disallow all software and b. m. patents. (Score:2)
I bet disallowing all software and business method “patents” kills off 90% of the patents in the blink of an eye.
I’d also retroactively void all such “patents” that already “exist”.
There. Done.
"Could" is too soft a word (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't "could kill small business", rather, the whole thing has turned into "Designed to kill all innovators that don't have big backers".
It's the system, man.
The elites want total control. The patent system is but a small part of their game plan.
Or fix it-get rid of software and business patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Easier fix - get rid of software and business method patents. "Oh, but we can't do that - we'd have so little work to do that we'd have to lay off people!"
Re:Or fix it-get rid of software and business pate (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that small business is the engine of job growth and innovation, this is the dumbest idea to come out of USPTO ever. Imagine the world today if Apple, HP, and Microsoft were all prevented from flourishing. The internet would not exist, mainframes would still be king, silicon valley would not exist. Real innovation almost never comes from existing large companies.
Re:Or fix it-get rid of software and business pate (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, high enough fees will have an impact on large businesses, but only if they are truly high enough to make it impossible for small businesses. Fortunately, there is a third choice.
A much better pricing scheme would be one that forces companies of all sizes to prioritize their patent filings and only file the ones that matter. I propose that the base filing fee be tiered based on the number of non-expired patents the company holds or has pending:
This would significantly reduce the number of crap patents. Right now, small entities get a lower filing fee, but that doesn't completely solve the problem, either. It just encourages small businesses to file too many patents. What matters is not how big the business is, but rather how many patents the business files.
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Actually, that's very easily worked around. All it takes is a subsidiary, or literally anyone within the company to apply for a patent under the lesser price, and then sell the patent to the holding corporation.
Not that I disagree with the idea. The more you contribute to the queue with fluff, especially if you're planning on leveraging that to harm others [bnet.com] instead of benefiting industry. There would need to be some sort of auditing of who holds the patents after after they're granted to properly apply th
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The sale hole is very easily plugged: require all patent transfers to be registered, and another tiered fee paid by the buyer. No refunds on the original fee. In other words, the fee is charged every time a patent changes ownership, including the first time when it previously had no owner.
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And further, a corporation can't apply for a patent, period. The sale hole is already plugged by current patent law; the fees charged to anyone who has an obligation to assign the patent to a corporation pays fees based on that corporation. That's already how it works for the small business fee. It would take a catastrophically inept wording by the patent office for that not to be the case for a tiered scheme as I suggested. :-)
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If your going down that line your might as well go with the whole user pays principle. A tax on all patent licence fees, say 5 percent or more of all patent revenues goes back to the patent office. The patent office provides validation and protection for those patents, so those patents can generate an income, so patent holders should pay the full cost of protecting those patents.
This would really be fair, especially for those people who want to protect ideas for 'free' use and distribution, they are maki
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Actually, current patent law would forbid that. A shell company that is required to assign patents to the parent company would be charged fees like the parent company. A shell company that is not required to assign patents would mean the parent company cannot usefully use those patents offensively or defensively.
Also, I rather like the idea suggested by TimboJones in which every patent assignment is charged as though it were a new patent.
Re:Or fix it-get rid of software and business pate (Score:2)
Exactly - !!! 10x or 100x or 1000x or .... doesn't mean anything for big companies, they can afford anything (really, but that's another story!) - the question is about control. It's more and more like bullies in kindergarten or school or work or whatever - they really don't care because even the caretakers, teachers, managers, etc are afraid of them. The patent system works a lot the same way - politicians are "supposed" to make it good (for everyone?), not a private moneymaking machine - are they afarid a
Re:"Could" is too soft a word (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa there, podna,
The current patent fees top out at about $800 with the basic filing fee for small entities being $82 (if you file electronically, which I assume an "innovator" will be able to figure out).
So you're telling me that even if they triple this amount to $246 that it's going to "kill all innovators that don't have big backers"? You're telling me that some "innovator" out there can invent something that's worth protecting but can't scrape together two hundred and fifty bucks? (assuming they triple the fees)
Shit, if all it takes to "kill innovation" or "kill small business" is to set the bar at a couple of hundred dollars, then our system is in bigger trouble than I thought.
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If the purpose of the fee hike is to reduce filings, then it stands to reason that they will be too high for someone,
True. But does that mean it will be small business owners? Or, small business owners who are patent trolls? If I am filing 100 different applications for crap patents, then doubling or tripling the fee will make a big difference. But, if I have two or three good ideas on which I am basing my business, then a few hundred more dollars per is not going to make a very big difference.
And clearly, those affected will be the inventors at the lower end of the economic scale.
If it is a good idea that you can make money off of, then you should be able to get the money to patent it. Even $1000 should
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If the purpose of the fee hike is to reduce filings, then it stands to reason that they will be too high for someone, otherwise the hikes won't have any effect. And clearly, those affected will be the inventors at the lower end of the economic scale.
The purpose of the free hike is not to reduce filings. It's to increase the number of staff. That is how they will manage the backlog.
The submission is an op-ed piece that completely misunderstands why the fee increase is needed and what it is intended to do.
Re:"Could" is too soft a word (Score:4, Informative)
The submission clearly states that it wants to raise fees so high as to actually discourage patent applications.
So we're not talking just triple, or quadruple. It could be 10x or even higher.
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The submission clearly states that it wants to raise fees so high as to actually discourage patent applications.
So we're not talking just triple, or quadruple. It could be 10x or even higher.
The submission is not information from the patent office, but someone's interpretation of it. And a rather skewed one at that. It doesn't even source where the information about the rate hikes come from. The view is from a Chicken Little reporter that doesn't seem to understand the patent process.
Assuming the information about the rate hike is accurate, it doesn't even discuss which rate. There are more than one. Starting around 80 bucks, if I remember correctly. 80 bucks to file a patent. That covers, what
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Quit putting words in my mouth. I didn't offer any commentary of the sort you're implying. I only restated, as clearly as possible, what the submission said as there seemed to be some confusion.
I actually agree with posts made in other threads suggesting we make it harder to patent (better definition of prior art, no software, software algorithm, or business method patents) or toss the patent system completely. I don't necessarily agree that just raising fees is the answer (or raising fees at all for that m
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Uhhh.. you are drastically under estimating the patenting cost in USA. $82 is for the initial online filing fee yes, but they are also increasing the other fees. The article specifically mentions the increases impact maintenance fees which are the biggest portion of the overall cost.
Online filing (small entity): $82
Provisional application fee (small entity): $110
Search fee (small entity): $270
Examinati
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You don't need all those fees just to file a patent. Many of them don't kick in until well into the life of the "innovation", by which time I assume it would be clear if it's useful.
Tell you what, if you've got an invention that you think is really terrific but lack the funds to patent it, give me a call and if it's a decent idea I'll float you a few hundred bucks as long as you give me ten percent of any profits the patent generates.
The point is, nobody is going to choose not to "innovate" because the pat
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""Designed to kill all innovators that don't have big backers"."
Linus Torvalds isn't dead, nor is his work.
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There is no plan, just infinite ignorance.
How do you know there is no plan?
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There's no evidence of it. Which not only proves that there is a plan, but that they are so good at covering it up.
Where they = any or all of: Jews, freemasons, Anglo-Saxon speculators, the Bavarian illuminati, space aliens, Opus dei, shapeshifting lizards ...
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Esperanto: Latin with all the grammar tooked out.
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The new fee system is designed to reduce backlog not by reducing the number of applicants, but by reducing the time frame in which they're examined. I believe the initial filing fee either will not be raised, or will be raised very little. The fees for RCE (Requests for Continued Examinat
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Being in software is irrelevant. They are granting patents for junk inventions of all kinds, which just encourages more applications to pile up. Of course, software does cloud the issue and makes it harder to determine if something be applied for is truly innovative. Statistically, it's likely not innovative (since most patents aren't). While software will have an even higher probability of being not innovative, that does not rule out true innovation that can be, or should be, implemented in software.
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The level that fees would need to be to stop the large corporation patent application mills from churning out junk would be so drastically high that they would completely lock out the small inventor entirely.
OTOH, raise them to the point where the excess taken in from patent applications could entirely and continuously fund free universal health care for everyone in the country, and I could be encouraged to look away.