Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Patent Reform

There is a patent reform bill before Congress. Reform is needed because the patent system now discourages new product development. It's common wisdom in the field that what ever it is, you will be sued by patent trolls, as soon as it makes any money. Research In Motion (RIM), the blackberry people, had to pay $600 million to a patent troll last year.
The reform is 68 pages long, written in old high lawyerese, meaning that only experienced patent lawyers can tell what it means. The bill's sponsors include Sen Charles Schumer and Patrick Leahy, neither of whom is confidence inspiring.
One needed reform is to disallow patents upon "business methods", which currently covers trivia like one click or two clicks to place something into your internet shopping basket. Another is to outlaw patents upon software. Software used to be considered a branch of mathematics, and mathematics was never patentable, it was considered natural law. Another needed reform is a cheap and simple process for throwing out patents that are prior art or obvious to anyone skilled in the art. The patents in the $600 million RIM case were all prior art or obvious. Plus they were software patents.
The normal way out of depressions, like the one we are in now, is thru technological invention. New desirable products (telephone, electric light, automobiles, radio, record players, TV, personal computers, cell phones, Ipods) come on the market and people start spending money on them. The current patent system discourages technological innovation by loosing patent trolls upon the innovators.

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