Companies Not Rushing To The Patent Office For Accelerated Review Of Green Patents
from the perhaps-they're-not-in-such-a-rush? dept
We were a bit worried late last year when the USPTO announced plans to speed up the review process for so-called "green tech patents." Speeding up the review process of a system notorious for granting bad, innovation-hindering patents doesn't seem wise for an emerging market. The USPTO said it would cap the trial period to just 3,000 patents to keep it from getting overwhelmed. However, it turns out that the USPTO needn't have worried. They haven't even gotten halfway to the cap yet. To date, only 1,477 requests have been made for the accelerated review program. Apparently this has lots of lawyers scratching their heads, wondering if the program is too expensive or what. Of course, there is another possibility as well: the really innovative folks working on greentech breakthroughs are focused on actually innovating, rather than worrying about the patent office. But, perhaps that's just wishful thinking...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.
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Filed Under: accelerated review, green tech, greentech, patents
Companies: uspto
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Unfortunately for the innovators
When I first came to this blog, I thought you were full of it. But after reading here long enough and seeing how patents and copyrights are stifling innovation and creativity, I am a convert. Personally I think copyright and patents should be pared down to the bare minimum and then trimmed some more. But I don't believe for a minute that will happen.
We, the US, don't manufacture much anymore so we are left with IP as our main output. So the government is going to beat on every other country in the world to honor that IP in the hopes we can stay on top in that realm. We will never learn how to make money from IP unless we can keep it artificially locked up.
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Re: Unfortunately for the innovators
Stockpiling patents only help (as deterrance) in a patent nuclear war, where both sides make products that infringe on the other sides overly broad patents. Stockpiling doesn't help against a patent troll, because there's nothing to counter-sue against if the troll only owns a few pieces of paper that say they own an idea.
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Re: Unfortunately for the innovators
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Re:
I don't think it is trademarked but accross large parts of Europe they use "blue" to avoid confusion witt (or sugguested endorsement by) pre-existing, non-environmental political parties. Hence the VW "Bluemotion" series of cars.
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If you don't rush it no one knows they are infringing.
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Extension
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Not hard to understand at all
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Yes - we are busy "innovating"...
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What's green about a patent/trademark?
The attitude of most inventors/innovators in 'green tech' is that the patents process makes such developments far too expensive for the resulting inventions to benefit the environment,.. so they publish the whole thing as free and it then gets far greater use with other applications built around it.
The 'green tech' community has been telling governments and legal bodies to 'foxtrot-oscar' for years!
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