The first is United States Patent Application: 0080270152 a patent on how to patent something that a competitor needs for a competing product and then use this to obtain a cross licensing agreement. Not only is it dodgy business practice at best but it hardly seems patentable.
Then there is the admission from James "Father of Java" Gosling that the engineers at Sun pretty had a competition to get the goofiest patent, here's a quote from his blog (via Zdnet).
There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. My entry wasn't nearly the goofiest.And I have to admit that we had similar competitions at my old place of employ. We tried to get a lot crazy patents idea through, and we also spent a lot of time discussing the silliness of the entire process.
And finally there are the continuous stream of stories of software and other patents coming out of Apple such as this one from Go Rumours. It's not that I think Apple is doing the wrong thing, in fact it would be stupid of them not to be out there patenting everything that they can think of.
The problem is that too many patents that should be chucked out get approved, too many patents that have prior art, are so obvious that everyone else with less patent lawyers sitting around have skipped past and too many patents that are on things that should be covered by copyright and not patents. Copyright is another legal construct that needs a serious overhaul.
So, what should we do? If you've been paying attention recently you would have seen a whole lot of stories about a P=NP proof, that was released. The merits of the proof seem to have been beaten down now but the process by how this occurred shows a lot of promise. It was peer reviewed by the most savage group of peers in existence, every mathematician with an internet connection. This led to the paper being quickly reviewed in a way much better than the old peer review via journal process.
How about for patents we get a peer review system? Obviously privacy needs to be considered so that ideas are stolen. Perhaps there is a pool of respected representatives in a given field. They each have the ability to review the patent application, subject to NDAs of course, with a system in place that allows them to be selected or opt in and out of reviewing a particular patent based on collection of categories, products etc that their companies work in. There are some obvious kinks to be worked out, how does one get the patent application reviewed by peers in the field without those peers getting influenced by ideas etc that they have seen in the patent. How about we start with retired people in the field, or people that have moved on to different areas of expertise.
Obviously this is all a work in progress, the ideas need to be mulled over by people smarter than me. In the mean time I am going to see if I can patent a patent vetting system so I can make some cash of it when the Patent Office starts using it!
I thought the idea of patents was that you were putting the information into the public domain (with the understanding that for 20 odd years no one else will copy you).
ReplyDeleteWhile it is true that the idea is to get it into the public domain, the secrecy of the idea needs to be maintained until the idea is actually patented. The protection under the patent system doesn't actually begin until the patent is granted. This is probably another area that needs to be addressed.
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