‘Dangerous Patent Law’ warning
p2pnet.net News:- Innovators, especially those working on Free and open source software projects, are in serious danger from a patent law ruling, says the EFF ( Electronic Frontier Foundation).
In a recent decision, the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed its own “suggestion test” but in an amicus brief, the EFF says the test, has led to a massive surge in bogus patenting, especially in software.
Even the most obvious incremental advances and add-ons can be patented unless the Patent Office, or a defendant in court, produces a document that shows someone else suggested it prior to the patent being filed, says the foundation.
“The Federal Circuit’s suggestion test forces litigants to search through reams of technical papers for a document in which someone, somewhere, bothers to state the obvious,” says the EFF’s Corynne McSherry, who co-authored the brief.
The case, KSR International Co v Teleflex, Inc., and Technology Holding Co, is scheduled for oral argument in front the Supreme Court this fall, says the EFF.
Also See:
EFF – Dangerous Patent Law Ruling Threatens Free and Open Source Softwar, August 23, 2006
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August 26th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Really the entire concept of patents must be revised. The same for copyrights. Here is my argument.
All technology development is done with money from the people, the customers and the taxpayers. Simply put, the money of the people filter up to corporations who then spend some of it on development. To think that the source of the money comes from “investors” is naive. The idea of “investors” is plain psychological corporate manipulation.
Much of the people’s money spent on development is just a waste of money. For example, many companies may have identical labs trying to develop and improve the same products. Much work of duplicated. I personally worked as a develpment engineer in a electrical equipment product (circuit breakers) research and development department. All we did was duplicate the work of perhaps 15 other(throughout the world) circuit breaker manufacturers and that made circuit breakers far more expensive than they were. It also meant the waste of resources that were really needed for solving other pressing problems of society that were and are still attended improperly. And then the patents themselves were an impediment to making an ideal product, as the thousands of circuit breaker partents were divided among many companies, so no one product woudl have all of the best features. It was actually crazy, if you ask me, that we could not adopt many commn sense ideas becase these had been patented by our competitors.
Then much of the development is for armaments. Companies get the money from the government and then patent in their own name the fruits of that development. Again, the people’s money spent to develop private corporate patents.
Then the little inventor cannot either file or protect a patent. Legal expenses are out of this world. Of course, that’s the whole idea. If you want to be a inventor, you better work for a large corporations. We all know that lobbies are for that.
We must then ask the fundamental questions. Is the patent system idea of hundreds of years ago really a good idea, for the people? Or is it just a good idea for big corporations? I propose that patents, like copyrights, are the wrong method to promote tecnology or cultural for the good of the people, ignoring what is good for corporations.
Just think, why not enough money was spent on the protection of New Orlean, or on a cure for cancer or diabetes while trillioms of dollars of the american people’s money have been spent on duplicate patent development work in just the last few years.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com