Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Antioch]

Let's talk about the lovely world of patents!


I came across an article from 2012, stating how tech companies like Apple and Google spend more money on patent lawsuits than on actual RnD. I can't imagine the situation has much improved since then.

http://www.androidauthority.com/google-apple-spend-patents-120824/

So what do we do?

Cut patent duration? Abolish patents all together? Do nothing?

[Sonlirain]

Cutting patent duration won't help since the companies fight over and patent new ideas anyway.

Also...
"Companies are filing for patents on ideas, before they have an actual working method to produce something."
That probably should be looked at because it's open for abuse and produces patents google and apple are tussling for.

[NullForceOmega]

The thing to remember is that patents exist to disseminate new ideas, they actually help with spreading new tech around.  That said, most of the problem is that the laws need to be updated, currently the system is very abusable by large concerns, while it does offer protection to individuals and small entities, the law doesn't do enough to level the playing field.  Interestingly enough cutting duration might be somewhat viable, as the companies would have a built-in obsolescence point.

[Zangi]

Life cycle of Patents:
Company A has idea -> Company A patents idea -> Company A fails -> Company A's assets are liquidated -> Company B acquires patents -> Company B sits on patents and does absolutely nothing with it -> Company B tries to sue others for infringement monies

There might also be the problem with the rubberstamp happy US Patents and Trademarks Office.  Make very minor change to patent, USPTO rubberstamps it, effectively extending the Patent.

"Do it on a computer/network/interwebs."

[Antioch]

The thing to remember is that patents exist to disseminate new ideas, they actually help with spreading new tech around.  That said, most of the problem is that the laws need to be updated, currently the system is very abusable by large concerns, while it does offer protection to individuals and small entities, the law doesn't do enough to level the playing field.  Interestingly enough cutting duration might be somewhat viable, as the companies would have a built-in obsolescence point.

Personally I would say the patent duration still comes from a time when technological innovation was simply a lot slower. 20 years is insane in certain fields, in area's such as computers and smartphones a lot of things are already completely obsolete after a couple of years.

[smjjames]

The thing to remember is that patents exist to disseminate new ideas, they actually help with spreading new tech around.  That said, most of the problem is that the laws need to be updated, currently the system is very abusable by large concerns, while it does offer protection to individuals and small entities, the law doesn't do enough to level the playing field.  Interestingly enough cutting duration might be somewhat viable, as the companies would have a built-in obsolescence point.

Personally I would say the patent duration still comes from a time when technological innovation was simply a lot slower. 20 years is insane in certain fields, in area's such as computers and smartphones a lot of things are already completely obsolete after a couple of years.

Yeah, especially electronics. Consider 20 years ago from today, that'd be the year 1996.

[NullForceOmega]

It would certainly be a change worth looking at, the laws just aren't adequate anymore, but they really are necessary, without them big companies would have an even greater stranglehold on development.

[i2amroy]

Are patents necessary? Yes, because they protect smaller companies. Is the current system highly open to abuse due to the incredibly long durations of many patent types? Yes. The funny thing is that we actually raised the duration of patents in the last 11 years; it was 17 year durations up until the year of 1995.

Honestly what I would like to see is a system of "usage patents", where if you were making an effort towards developing on and producing an item then you could have a long patent term (like the current 20 years), while if you are just sitting on the patent without making any effort towards production then your patent lifecycle is greatly shortened down to like 5 years or something similar. That seems like it would still give smaller companies (that are much more likely to have a small number of patents they are actively working on) protection while stopping larger companies from filing or obtaining a huge number of patents only to sit on them for the next 20 years suing anyone who looks cross at the, all while preventing anyone else from developing said technology.