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TR: Can you give an example of how that has affected software development?
DR: Some of the initial patent trolls in the late 1990s and early 2000s were personally going around and asserting their patents against small companies. When they got letters, many of the startups just decided to pack up business instead of continue with it, so that stopped their development. If you go to the opposite extreme, you can see the cases that have been brought against Microsoft by patent trolls. Resources at Microsoft that should have gone to advancing technology to make functionality go quicker, better, cheaper actually had to be wasted on reinventing the wheel to get around this patent that was being asserted against them, by someone not doing software development.
TR: So sometimes you are actually sympathetic to Microsoft?
DR: They recognize that software patents are posing a threat and are causing harm to all software. Some people think it's just open-source software that's being prejudiced by software patents. It's not.
TR: In other cases, though, you view Microsoft as an aggressor. In January the PTO rejected a request of yours that would have stripped Microsoft of its patents for its FAT file-tracking software. What does this say about how effective the reëxamination weapon can be, and will any good come of this case despite the rejection?
DR: What Microsoft did, in responding to the patent office's [initial] rejection of its claims, was to take some positions regarding the scope of its patent that made the patent narrower than when it was originally issued. Now there will be room for people to implement a FAT system without infringing the new claims even though it may have infringed the old claims. So although Microsoft will still have a patent, it will be a much weaker patent.
TR: You've had tentative success fighting Forgent's patent on the JPEG standard, the subject of litigation targeting dozens of users ranging from Apple to Xerox. Has that led to any positive repercussions?
DR: The judge in the litigation construed the claims of the patent very, very narrowly. So it's pretty much a slam-dunk that Forgent will lose as long as that claims construction gets upheld. I think I remember the judge noting that this reëxamination was going on and that there were still questions about the validity of the patent.
TR: You say the system gives an intrinsic advantage to big developers over small developers. So why have many small, open-source efforts like OpenOffice and Firefox succeeded?
DR: There are many reasons. One could be that they don't yet pose the commercial competitiveness necessary to justify a major patentee challenging them. The developers themselves may not be suitable defendants. The patent system hasn't yet gotten as bad as it could be for them -- though it does pose a threat.
TR: How would you describe that threat?
DR: The software ecosystem actually prefers free software, open software, sharing and learning what others have done and advancing that. The patent system, this form of government regulation, gets in the middle of the software ecosystem and mucks it up. The winners in the software marketplace should be determined by consumer choice -- whichever products are cheaper and faster -- not by some regulatory scheme.
The Supreme Court sent a message to "patent trolls": your paydays are numbered.
Why the eBay Supreme Court case matters so much.
What exactly is a patent troll?
If it costs 30-50K to file and proescute a patent (up from 8K, 10 years ago) and it ends up that the patent is worth more, for whom does the troll troll? Does anyone seriousluy think that folks like Lemelson did NOT contribute to society? Certainly do not begrudge copyright protections that extend out 70-100 years? have any of these academics actually tried to prosecute a patent?
What is the name of the most egregious troll? Is he a rock star? A dot-com dude? Or a mortgage broker? No, maybe, if there were a PHD attached to the name of the person, then that, would make it okay! Who is being harmed?
If there are trolls why is it that IBM, Microsoft, Intel and all other huge US and international company, file for patents? Are they sapping innovation? Do you think these people can fight the troll?
This is nonsense. No one takes issue with the 99.9% of patents that have no economic worth, nor the fact that as a government institution they provide much clearer title to all other "innovators" and the simple fact that unlike any other government sanctioned monopoly, at least there is a system by which the claims can be challenged.
Plus, the patent office is probably the only entity of the US government that actually makes MONEY! Even the treasury loses money on pennies and dollar bills!
I would like an interviewer or the interviewee to point out just what patent that has sapped innovation in the economy. Just the patent number, please!
Re: An obvious troll on trolls
Is it possible that innovators had so such plans when they applied for patent but assignees had different plans- not so noble,I say.
I've heard of a few dirty patent practices, and I'll share them. If you know other such things, please share them as well. 'Dirty practice' is a subjective concept, so you just have to decide for yourself.
There are investment people who trade in patents. They are actually not trying to do any product development, but simply milk the system. A golden goal is to acquire a comprehensive patent portfolio, which then would be like a fortress for a given technology area. Such a portfolio gives the owners almost a monopoly like dominance. It is easy to see how such practices actually hinder innovation.
Another variation on the theme is when law firms acquire patents based on their 'litigability' value. Again, these people don't look forward to building any new products. They are just looking for an opening to attack some company and extract some cash.
Another trick is when a company gets wind that a competitor is filing a patent, and they quickly file a similar patent, even though they have no such product. The USPTO has to automatically go into complicated and time consuming procedures to decide who gets the patent. The result is that the challenger manages to drag out the patent issuing time by an extra 1-2 years, therefore hurting the competitor.
Then the infamous Lemelson trick...one could file a temporary patent application, claiming that the product was still in development. The loophole was that you could refile the same application 'n' times. This is how Lemelson maintained his machine vision patent application for decades, even though he never built anything. Lemelson was a fraud, not a real inventor. Thank god this loophole is now closed.
If you know other dirty patent practices, let's expose them.
These are some examples of antipersonal-mine patents:
1. Microsoft has been granted a patent for the conversion of objects into XML files.
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39130795,00.htm
2. Patent on Method and Apparatus for Spherical Panning. "A graphics display terminal performs a pan operation with respect to a view motion center to effectuate spherical panning, thereby providing perspective and non-perspective views..."
http://www.igda.org/columns/lastwords/lastwords_Mar05.php
3. Sony's Brain Stimulation Patent. "Even if the Sony technology was actually working (which it is not, by the way -- it is just an idea, no working prototype was built or tested), it would be a long time before we would know where to aim it."
http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2005/04/about_sonys_bra.html
On the last one, what if a real inventor finds a way to make this device that Sony is just dreaming about... simple, the inventor would have to pay for making the machine.
Patents are an obsolete system that comes from the old monarchies in Europe. Didn't we declared independence of them and their methods?
When Software patents did not exist
Before 1990, Microsoft and Oracle had filed very few patents. The competition was tough. IBM had been accused to over dominate the market. The fact that no software patent existed did not prevent Microsoft and Oracle to become big companies. How can you explain then that without patents they were not killed by IBM or others?
In a more general view, I remember reading an article saying that most patents do not value the paper on which they are printed.
What do you think of the many big players filing hundreds of patents every year and abandoning them after one year, for the only reason that this is good for their communication to the stock markets?
One may consider that the “gold rush” of patents is a good thing. But then, the obvious consequence is that, one day, the average value of patents becomes uncertain. This is not the reason why patent laws were invented.
What if every time you went to use math in any field, say apply math to figuring out the reminder of a chemical in a test tube, you had to first pay a licensing fee? There are literally millions of such processes and each one, by today's whorish standards, are patentable.
What this is about is a certain kind of market "fundamentalism" that believes if a little IP is good, then more must be better. This kind of thinking is just stupid. Software is incremental in it's very nature; you change things a little bit, you do things a little differently. This is the same with science. Every now and then, science undergoes a paradigm shift, but 99% of people's careers, efforts and progress are made by fleshing out "obvious" implications of a preestablished theory, and so it is with software. No one is going to sit downa dn hurridly write down every implication and possible user interface variation upon the advent of the GUI because that would be a stupid waste of time that contributes nothing to scoiety- UNLESS the US government decides that writing everything down as fast as possible bestowes an unnatural monopoly on the person who does it.
How does it get lost to some fanatics that patents were designed as a way to coax inventors to share their know-how with society for society's good? This is not a natural right we're talking about, like life and liberty.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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cventers
1 Comment
"Obviousness" a sham complaint
Mr. Ravicher and others who criticize many software patents of being overly broad and "obvious" are misleading the public and perhaps themselves.
If so many of these patents are "obvious", why don't they and their associates who see the future of software and the internet as "obvious" map out all the applications and processes we are all "obviously" going to see in the future and publish a white paper. In that way, all future software patent applications will be made moot and invalid by all the prior art that the white paper would cover. Mr. Ravicher would solve the problem once and for all with his prognostications within the current rules and avoid all that messy rewriting of patent law.
He could also keep some important industries out of his way that depend on patents, such as pharmaceuticals, semi-conductors, etc. That let's him continue to single out software companies, especially small ones, who have invested their limited resources on patenting their inventions and now are trying to defend them.
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gabrielg01
450 Comments
Re: since they are obvious, no one rushes to the patent office but a few trolls
If you think of what you just wrote, you'll see that your own reasoning is killing your own argument.
Most people, who see these obvious ideas, don't rush to the patent office specifically because they think many of these ideas are too general and too obvious.
But the megalomaniacal trolls, who often tend to think they're about to save the world, rush to the patent office and patent any idea or concept they can think of. Then they do nothing for years, but wait in ambush until someone actually tries to do something in real life...Then the trolls resurface with their "submarine patents" and slap you with a lawsuit. Enough of these parasites!
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NICKWHITE1
1 Comment
Re: since they are obvious, no one rushes to the patent office but a few trolls
This whole troll issue is hysteria. Every major corporation I know has troll like tendencies. That to my mind is not the problem/issue. For the US the problem is poor quality patent examination and a crazy litigation/dispute resolution system. I have absolutely no problem with a patent owner enforcing their property right against any infringer irrespective of how they obtained that patent right and irrespective of the intention they had when acquirng that right. That's their business. Most of the bleating about trolls is down to sheer envy. People dont like it when individuals/companies make easy noney even if it is through legitimate practices.
What I do have a problem with is the plethora of poor quality patents issued by the USPTO that gives the patent system globally a bad name. Couple that with a litigous dispute resolution system and you have what you have.
What you need in the US is a low cost and effective patent revocation system. We in Europe have these systems. The US re-examination system is problematic for various reasons.
I think that what Public Patent Foundation is doing is good simply because it is forcing the USPTO to look closely at its quality of patent examination. I dont see them as Troll bashers unless of course you regard Microsoft, Forgent, Columbia University and Pfizer as Trolls!
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