Patent Office Seeking Comments On How To Implement A 'First To File' Regime Instead Of 'First To Invent'
from the help-them-not-muck-it-up dept
You may remember that last fall, there was an incredibly weak attempt at patent reform known as the America Invents Act. This was the result of a nearly seven-year-long fight over patent reform, with nearly every good idea from early proposals being watered down to completely useless, and a few bad ideas ramped up for good measure. Nothing in the AIA actually dealt with the problems of patent trolls or patent thickets. One of the ideas that survived the years-long culling was flipping the US patent system from a "first to invent" system to a "first to file" system. I've long argued that this is a very bad idea for a variety of reasons. First, it encourages inventors to file for lots of patents as early as possible to beat anyone else to the Patent Office, rather than making sure that the invention is actually worth patenting. It also seems to go against the basic principle of the patent system, if it's supposed to reward actual inventors. Finally, switching to a first to file certainly seems likely to favor large companies with big legal staffs that can focus on rushing out as many patent applications as possible. Smaller entities might be in trouble.To be fair, the arguments in favor of this switch are basically (1) everyone else does it (mostly true) and (2) proving who was first to invent is a total pain in the ass and can be slow and costly. Thus switching to a first to file system could save a lot of wasted time and money in the cases where there's a dispute. That may be true, but I'm not convinced it's a good reason.
That said, it doesn't much matter what I think: it made it into the bill and is now the law. The US Patent Office is now seeking comment on how it should go about implementing this new rule. It's put out two requests. First, it wants to know how it should change the examination guidelines for patent examiners (pdf and embedded below) to take this new rule into account. Second, it wants comments on how it should amend the "rules of practice," regarding this change -- since the current rules are based on the old "first to invent" system.
For those thinking of participating, this is not the place to argue why "first to file" is a bad system (or even why the patent system is broken). I imagine any such filings will be (correctly) deemed off-topic and discarded. However for those patent holders and patent lawyers (and scholars) for whom this change is a big deal, now might be the time to share some thoughts with the USPTO for how it can implement this change with as little damage as possible.
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Filed Under: comments, first to file, first to invent, patents, uspto
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He's going to whine about the patent no matter what. We all know that. Of course, the change to first to file isn't really a big deal as there were very, very few interferences to begin with. But yeah, he can milk this for all its yellow journalism/FUD spreading worth. What a joke.
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If a million monkeys were filing a million patents for a million years would they eventually patent everything that could possibly be patented? This would certainly bolster the patent office budget and would create many jobs in the field of law, however the benefit to society is questionable at best and would be very bad for the economy.
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What do you mean by 'interferences'? How is the amount of public 'resistance' to a bill, especially if it's a bill with many ambiguously written provisions with little time for public scrutiny (because most of the bill was probably drafted behind closed doors and the bill was only openly available for a short period of time), an indication of how substantial a change was?
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Work vs Leeching
Any dumbass can sit around and file some vaguely worded idea that some dumbass at the patent office will approve. To actually make ideas work is what takes the talent. There are hundreds of patents that exist only because they were filed first, they were not put into production AND work first.
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That seems like it should be about as beneficial as anything else could be.
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Or some version of that.
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Re: Obviousness
Obviousness is already grossly overused by the USPTO. The worst is software here lazy examiners and inventors refuse to make truth tables or some standard form of logic so that vague descriptions do not get in the way of inventive contributions.
the examiner without any pre-knowledge must be given the state of the field at the time of the invention and with that alone show obviousness.
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I am always looking for the good in the bad.
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I believe James Burke already came up with something like that. He called it "Connections" and you can read more about it here.
One thing I learned from watching Connections is that everything is built on top of those things before it, and another thing I learned is there is no shortage of assholes who thought they invented something first and thus claim that they are entitled to a portion of everyone 'elses profits for inventing it. I don't have a problem with people who actually invent something making some money from it...my problem is that the system only works for the few rich folks out there who actually didn't do any work, while the inventors it was meant to help are grounded into meat under the heel of those folks. Capitalism is about inventing a better mousetrap which the customer is happy to hand over cash for. Capitalism is not about suing your customer and your competitors because you fail at life.
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First to File would make it easier to bust bad patents
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What a joke!
Then they can just send invoices to the contact detailed in the text file and once the invoice is paid it's filed.
Why even bother with the pretense of looking for prior art or questioning the obviousness of the patent itself?
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Filing first
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a third method
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First to file
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Re: First to file
Actually, we've discussed that (contrary to your snide ad hom). We didn't ignore it. The fact is that the difference is miniscule for all realistic purposes.
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Rich get richer and everyone else gets fucked!
Fuck em all.
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Inventor invents something spectacular, large corporation sees it and patents it, denies inventors accusations of theft, and then files for, i dont know, defamation, inventor brushed aside with unaffordable lawsuits
Worst case scenario
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window dressing
That's just window dressing. The PTO does everything it can to ignore inventors as did Congress when they passed the corrupt patent bill.
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More ways for trolls to profit
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