What A Sarbanes-Oxley For Computer Security Might Look Like

Latest Attempt At Patent Reform Introduced

from the another-year,-another-attempt dept

Thu, Feb 1st 2007 2:10pm — Mike Masnick

Representatives Rick Boucher and Howard Berman have decided to take their own stab at patent reform. While we (pretty obviously) have been pushing for patent reform for quite some time, we've been mostly disappointed by the attempts from Congress in the past. From the article discussing the Boucher/Berman bill, it sounds like it's a step in the right direction, though hardly a comprehensive reform plan. It would add two useful features: letting third parties comment during the application process as well as setting up a program for post grant reviews (hopefully one that's a lot more efficient and useful than what's in place now). Of course, none of this gets to the heart of the problems with the system, but if they can slow down the more egregious problems of the system, that's not a bad thing.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous of Course, 1 Feb 2007 @ 2:37pm

It's progress
I like it. It IS progress and positive feedback
to the responsible Representatives is in order.

When the dog finally lies down on command
you don't tell him you're disappointed because
he didn't roll over as well.

Give the nice politicians a cookie.. err I mean
encouraging comment.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
PhysicsGuy, 1 Feb 2007 @ 4:11pm

so...
basically, mike, you're the environmentalists of the patent world. you bitch and moan about something and when someone attempts to do something it's never enough. lovely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
vapiddreamer, 1 Feb 2007 @ 6:03pm

for once I have to agree with PhysicsGuy
This is a potentially HUGE step in the right direction. You do seem to expect some magical overnight destruction/transformation of a system that has been being built up for a very long time. That's not how the real world works. And when it is the way that it ends up working, the results usually as many or more problems than the original.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gregory Bloom, 1 Feb 2007 @ 6:57pm

Obviousness Bounty
To really reform things, they should require patent applicants to post an obviousness bounty. Then let a bunch of college students read the claims for the patent and brainstorm for a couple of hours on possible inventions that would satisfy those claims. If the college students come up with the same solution that's being patented, they keep the bounty, the patent is denied, and all the brainstorms are entered into a huge "prior art" repository. I mean, if all it takes is a bull session of a few college students to come up with the idea, there's not really what you'd call a "spark of genius" worth protecting, is there?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
|333173|3|_||3, 1 Feb 2007 @ 7:18pm

RTFP
He said that it did not fix the central problems, but that it was not a bad thing (as in saying that someong is good, but not wonderful)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ex-PTO Employee, 1 Feb 2007 @ 8:09pm

Buy a new Eight Ball
Seriously, when I worked there, examiner's used them to grant patents.

What do you expect? Does anyone really expect much quality on something when you one have a few hours per case? No exaggeration, my case load was ~ 8 hours per one case. Can't do much in that amount of time.

Time for reform in this office is LONG overdue.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
mjr1007, 1 Feb 2007 @ 9:08pm

A different perspective.
How can anyone think that laws about IP from a preindustrial age could possibly work in the information age. Sheer madness.

Public review from people who would like to use the new idea would uniformly be negative. Of course it's obvious, that way I can use the idea without having to license it.

It's just replacing one bad idea with another.

The right approach is to have open licensing. All manufactures paid a fixed percentage to license all the IP in their products. Since they have to make the payment and all manufactures do there is no incentive to sue. The IP holders can bicker amoung themselves to see what share goes to who.

When an important patent expires the goverment get's that share as a tax.

Clean and simple, no muss no fuss. Of course it's unrealistic since it looks forward and not backwards as lawyers often do.

mjr1007
[ link to this | view in chronology ]