On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 9:20 PM, Nick Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> But the Facebook/ConnectU situation did happen in a world of patents, > they were just insufficient to help ConnectU. I'll fully agree that > giving a limited monopoly for a limited period of time does give an > incentive to both innovate and then disclose your innovations instead > of keeping them as trade, but can't we agree that the current system > has flaws that can be fixed? Isn't this exactly what I said in my previous email? I even offered two suggestions which I think would improve the current system significantly. > The notion that we must either live in a > world with the current patent system or a world with no legal > protections for ideas is a false dilemma, there are plenty of other > alternatives. > Absolutely agreed. > One that is bounced around a lot is to make it much more difficult for > patents to be granted, by improving how the patent office tests for > novelty. My first problem with that idea is that it is already too > difficult for small or independent inventors (yes, I know "coding in > your mother's basement" is a Hollywood stereotype, I was using it as a > form of figure of speech), and such a change would only exacerbate the > problem for them while making it slightly more difficult for large > like IBM or Google (as a disclosure, I should probably mention that I > work for IBM, and these are my and only my opinions, blah, blah, blah) > and their armies of lawyers to get around. And the second is that in > many cases, testing for novelty is very hard. There are some > inventions that are clearly novel, some that clearly are not, but I > have a feeling most are going to be in between. > Agreed again. Which is one more reason why I think the current system works pretty well: make the bar to file a patent relatively low (for all the good reasons that you gave) and let the market decide (i.g. go to court) if ever a patent suit actually happens. This guarantees that most of the useless patents that get filed every day won't waste too much taxpayers and small companies/inventors money while guaranteeing that the software patents that matter will actually receive the full attention of the legal system. > Another idea I'd like to put forward is to admit that the granting of > a patent is no more than a rubber stamp and the actual test of novelty > doesn't occur until either a legal challenge is made on the patent or > until a lawsuit is filed against a violator of that patent, where more > of the burden of proof gets put on the inventor. Then the actual > granting of a patent can be streamlined so it is easier for > independent inventors to go through the process (or even make it > closer to copyright law where you are automatically granted copyrights > when you produce something). Patent trolling would become less viable > if it is harder to get a court to agree with your patent. Essentially > we would just be moving some of the decision making from the executive > branch to the judicial branch, which I contend would be more effective > since then you have advocates for both sides debating the merits of > the patent. > Agreed again. Glad to see someone share my views. -- Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
