Re: IBM bathroom patent symbolic of US patent ills

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"pltrgyst" <pltrgyst@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:qqnou3tbp8pl1s16ahqnbv1ltc7veb3oqf@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:03:31 -0400, "John J. Bengii"
<nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> >The US Patent Office and system is a crock of shit.
>
> Ah, well, there we have it.

Indeed.

> The US Patent Office and system are exactly what Congress desires them to
be.

"We the people" seems not to factor into it, unless you're of the opinion
that Congress serves the people, and not itself.  Most of us would kill for
a health care and pension system they voted for themselves while they were
passing other, not so nice health care laws for common people.  The problem
with changing the USPTO is that it's probably not going to help Joe Citizen
ad mush as it helps Big Business.  It's much the same as what happened with
changing copyright and DRM laws.  It's obscure, highly technical stuff of
virtually no interest to the common man until he hears "Your Blackberry may
have to shut down because of patent issues." or realizes he can't record
video without BigBiz's explicit permission.

> >There is only one prerequisite for a patent to be approved in the
USA...did
> >they apply?
>
> Hmm, maybe you didn't read the OP's "Over the last 40 years, the USPTO
> granted 62-72 percent of all patent applications, but that number has been
> dropping. In the first quarter of this year, only 43 percent of
> applications have been granted."

Numbers are often deceiving.  When I first read that I asked myself what it
could mean.  Did a fiat come from high above to change the end result?
That's often the case for Federal programs.  Like veteran and disability
programs, the bottom numbers can change pretty quickly if the right kind of
attention (i.e. the Walter Reed fiasco) is focused on the issue.  Are they
reviewing patents more thoroughly?  Or are they just disapproving more based
on some arbitrary standards change?  Some of the stories told by former
patent examiners aren't exactly heartwarming tales of an agency in
continuous improvement.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/42207.html

Says "the Electronic Frontier Foundation  launched a "Patent Busting
Project" partially predicated on the notion that patents harmful to
innovation were being issued by the office because it was doing an
inadequate job of discovering prior art."

http://w2.eff.org/patent/

EFF has a hit list:
Acacia Research Streaming Media Patent
Clear Channel/Live Nation Live Concert Recording Patent
 Acceris VoIP Patent
Sheldon F. Goldberg Online Gaming Patent
 Ideaflood/Hoshiko Personalized Sub-domain patent
Neomedia Technologies Identifier/Directory Lookup Patent
 Test.com Online Test-Taking Patent  (A personal favorite bad patent:
http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/patent.php?p=test )
Nintendo Handheld Software Emulation Patent
 Firepond/Polaris Natural Language Processing Patent
Seer Systems Digital Music Encoding Patent

 > >This has been proven in many patent infringement suits in the
> >USA to date.
>
> Proven? Do you have any statistics concerning how many of the up 150,000
to
> 200,000 patents issued each year are challenged? Did you ever consider
that
> maybe the relatively few patents that are ever challenged are the ones
most
> deserving of challenge?

As long as a big company can wait out an inventor until he's near death, the
rich and powerful will be able to game the system.  Patents need to protect
the little guy just as much as the big, something the Feds are now finding
out with the mortgage crisis.  Consumer protection protects the entire
economy, eventually.  So should a robust, reasonable and workable patent
system.

I believe I read somewhere that Spain and Germany are out-patenting the
living daylights <groan> out of us in the area of solar power, and that's
pretty scary.  We're losing the lead on important innovations because we're
so addicted to oil.

> >If you contest an Intellectual Patent, once they look at it,
> >they overturn it.
>
> And just what is an "Intellectual Patent"?

The opposite of an "Anti-intellectual Patent?"  (-:

> >They don't know Jack about the product.
>
> There's certainly someone here who doesn't know Jack ... and,
coincidentally, he
> might even be called Jack, since his stated name is John!

What's the product?  I thought this was about patents.  And bathrooms.
Eeeiiwww!

> -- Larry (anti-patent, but in favor of a little bit of logic here and
there...)

-- Bobby, (pro *reasonable* patents and *reasonable* copyright laws but
willing to admit that's not the place we're in or the direction we're
headed.)