White House Announces Reforms Targeting Patent Trolls 124
andy1307 writes "According to Politico (and, paywalled, at The Wall Street Journal), the White House on Tuesday [released] plans to announce a set of executive actions President Barack Obama will take that are aimed at reining in certain patent-holding firms, known as 'patent trolls' to their detractors, amid concerns that the firms are abusing the patent system and disrupting competition. The plan includes five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations. They include requiring patent holders and applicants to disclose who really owns and controls the patent, changing how fees are awarded to the prevailing parties in patent litigation, and protecting consumers with better protections against being sued for patent infringement."
What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do these measures address arguably the most fundamental problem: too many things are patentable in the US and patents are awarded too easily in the first place?
Re:What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the President cannot simply change the rules about what is patentable. That would take an Act of Congress. Now if only Congress could produce some worthy Acts instead of sharpening their daggers for the next partisan attacks.
Re:What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The measures are going to be designed by same people who designed the current patent laws, and therefore will have the same goal: to enforce position of incumbent powerhouses against small disruptors.
Therefore patents will likely be allowed to use as a method of suppressing competition for big companies. However small company use of patents to defend and attack anti-competitive practices will likely be destroyed in the name of "defending against patent trolls".
The actual patent reform would take power from incumbent companies, and as a result will simply not happen.
Re:Good ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he can ignore the 4th amendment, occasionally the 1st amendment, and target citizens for assassination why should patent law be any different?
When I buy something, I do not enter into a license with everyone who owns a patent on every aspect of what I buy. I buy a friggin' product -- the pissing contests aren't my problem.
Like I said, by the time I can walk into Wal Mart and buy something, you need to indemnify the consumer. Because at the check out, there isn't a place where I initial a license with some company I've never heard of. If the vendor isn't compliant, well, that's their problem.
Re:What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one believes that tired old bit of propaganda anymore.
Necessity is the mother of invention, not avarice.
This is the problem when you start treating creative work as "property". You get obscene rhetoric that implies that any restrictions on the virtual land grab is some sort of theft.
Re:What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily tax payers dollars. In fact, the patents already force people to pay hidden taxes on products. You could charge the patent trolls more for their patents, have a "flood-penalty" for entities holding more than a few patents, etc. It would be extremely unfair to make the tax payers bleed for being ripped off. Punish the wrongdoers, not the victims.
A related issue is that the USPTO is a net contributor to the budget. They don't even get to use all of the patent examination fees that they generate, with some being "diverted" [wikipedia.org] to the general budget.
A "flood-penalty" along the lines you propose would punish those corporations which generate and use a large number of patents, such as IBM, Toshiba, Siemens, and so forth. A better idea would be to take the ratio of implemented patents (in products produced and marketed by the patent holder) to unimplemented patents (whether licensed to others or not), and use that as the basis for a tax per patent or per unimplemented patent more than a few years old. This would still hit patent licensors such as ARM, but if the tax were relatively low, it would not hinder them much while the trolls would find it a great inconvenience.
Re:What is patentable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerely, I doubt it would work. First, you are adding yet another middleman, increasing practical costs and bureaucracy for no reason. Second, there is a huge incentive for the USPTO to reject things to cash the fee. Third, it would imply a process of appeal that will never be used by the little guy.
I mean, the end result might well be less patents, but the mechanism is equally flawed and a burden for those who should get one. I would love to see less patents around, hell, after reading this [ucla.edu] long paper on the topic I'm convinced no patents are needed at all, even for pharmaceuticals. But unless you abolish patents completely, you need some system that minimizes abuse.
Re:What is patentable? (Score:4, Insightful)
The alternative to the patent system isn't everything becomes public domain. It's no one tells anyone else what they've discovered.
Yeah, if Amazon hadn't revealed their revolutionary one-click ordering brainstorm to the world on their patent application, then we'd still all be sitting here wondering:
"How the hell did that Amazon order happen so easily? God, I wish I could figure that out! There must be some trick to it."
Re:What is patentable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Silverware. Silverware is not patented technology. It's not copyrighted either. Yet I can go to a score of stores in my medium size town and buy enough silverware to host a meal for a thousand people or more for less than a day's wages. Aspirin, acetaminophen, and penicillin are no longer covered by patents, and those are still readily available. Coca-Cola, even with it's secret formula, is famously available and identifiable world-wide. Your assertion that without the power of a legally enforced monopoly that nobody would produce goods for profit is absurd.
People that make things do so because it makes them money. It makes them money whether there is competition or not because people need things. Patents allow limited time to make more money by suspending the power of competition to artificially compensate for the cost of development. A tax based on the value of a patent or copyright over it's lifespan is perfectly acceptable. As GP said, if IP holders are so insistent that IP be subject to the benefits of property laws, then let them suffer some of the drawbacks as well.