There is, also, the more cynical argument, which is that since the USPTO is funded by fees, and as it is always looking to increase its budget (what organization doesn't?), it approves more patents to get more applications in, knowing that it can get more money that way.
I'm not saying that this couldn't be the thought process of the USPTO, but I think the logic is flawed, specifically the "it approves more patents to get more applications in" part. Why would approving more patents get more applications in? When some inventor or company has a "great idea" that they want to patent, I don't think they first look up the recent approval/rejection stats for the USPTO. They go see a lawyer and get the ball rolling because they have a "great idea". Maybe it would reduce the applications by some, but I personally don't think it would be as much as is apparently driving this line of thought.
As I alluded to in another post, they don't even seem to be considering the option of just rejecting more applications. "Nope, sorry. Your idea is completely obvious and even though I'm not an expert in this field, it took me all of two and a half minutes to find over a dozen examples of prior art. Rejected. Better luck next time." Pocket the applicaiton fee, mark one off the backlog list, and move onto the next.
Re: Question the Legitimacy of Patent Applications
The pile could probably be wittled down quite rapidly if all the absurd patents were tossed out.
My thoughts exactly. Fair enough if you don't agree that rejecting more patents is the right option to reduce the backlog, but to not even acknowledge that it is an option is greatly shortsighted.
[Chris Castle] seems to think that the business models that got them paid back when he was a child should somehow be forced by law into never changing and staying that way forever.
I read a quote last night that seems to fit perfectly the attitude referenced in the quote above (and frequently on TechDirt)...
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."
Because of the broken patent system, the Government has to have a protection portfolio just like everyone else.
The fault in your logic is that "the Government" dictates what the rules are, so if there was really the will, they could change the rules to obviate the need for government-held patents. In other words, coming from an organization that could change the rules if they wanted to, "Hey, I'm only following the rules" sounds quite hollow.
It seems to me that all it would take is for the addition of a kind of public domain patent and the whole MAD issue would be moot.
I know what you're saying, but if the Canadian politicians are anything like the US ones, principle has little to do with it. In fact, it's the exact opposite of voting on something based on principle. It's voting based on a knee jerk response. If Proposal.Author.Party != Me.Party then Vote = No.
If the goal is really to get the technology out to the private sector, why lock it up and look to license it?
If I were a government official, I'd explain that the reason is to ensure that the technology gets out to the private sector of the United States and not to other countries who could use it to compete with us.
As for the real answer to the question, it's so that government can exert more control of course. (But you knew that already.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What could have been going on in the mind . . .
But pressure was mounting to clear out the backlog, and that meant either hiring new qualified people, or somewhat blindly approving or dismissing applications.
A ha. Very interesting. I think "pressure" is just another way to say "incentive" or in the case, "disincentive" would be more appropriate. In other words, if the problem is that the management of the PTO office is being measured by the size of the backlog, then the system needs to change to factor out the backlog. If Congress doesn't want to pay for more examiners, then fine, less patents will be examined. But surely there is a system that could be put in place that used a metric of how much work examiners are doing and (gasp!) the quality of the work that didn't punish the organization for something that was out of their control.
Well approving applications rarely increases the workload. Rejecting them however ensures that some percentage of those applications will contest and drag out and just be a general nuisance.
But not all, so if you gave rejecting a patent application equal weight for an how the performance of an examiner is measured as accepting or re-evaluating a patent, then this wouldn't be an issue. In fact, it might even increase the number of rejections and that probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
Also, I think it's helpful to make a distinction between "workload" and "backlog". An individual's workload is whatever they say it is. If an examiner has to accept, reject, or re-examine (in the case of a contested patent) X number of patent applications, then that's
their workload. For the most part, an individual's workload should be independent of the organization's backlog.
The insight you've provided just makes me think all the more that we (people who are concerned about the issues highlighted on TechDirt) should be focused on supporting a restructuring of the PTO's reward system. Heck, couldn't the president just issue an executive order to make this kind of change? It wouldn't be changing any material aspect of patent law, just how to process performance evaluations for patent examiners and their supervisors.
HR could knock out the new forms in a few hours! /s
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What could have been going on in the mind . . .
the PTO takes no money from Treasury, they're funded via fees
By itself, this doesn't seem to be a conflict-of-interest problem, but if this gets pushed down to the individual examiner level such that they are rewarded for more approved patents, then yeah, that'd be a problem in my mind.
I'm actually not sure if what the incentive is for an individual examiner, but however it works, it just seems to me that much if not most of the discussion on TechDirt of patents would be moot if the patent office incentives were corrected.
Re: Re: Re: What could have been going on in the mind . . .
Who pays their salaries? Inventors paying filing fees.
So, is it really just as simple as that? The patent office is incentivized to approve more patents because they are paid per approved patent? (It seems like they should get paid regardless of whether the patent is approved or not.) If this really is the case, then whenever someone suggests a major overhaul of the patent system or even getting rid of the patent system, the reply should be "Well, why don't we just start with the relatively small change of altering the incentive so that patent approvers are not paid per approved patent, but per reviewed patent." In my experience, implementing a small change that can have a big effect is the better option than jumping right to a major change.
a patent...so broad and so generic, it's hard to see how it could possibly have been approved
This question comes up all of the time on TechDirt, but as far as I've seen, it seems to always just be as background leading to a another example of an outrageous patent. But seriously, why do patents like this get approved? What could possibly have been going on in the mind of the person who approved this patent? I believe that the patent office is incentivized to approve patents, but it just seems like there has to be more to it than this.
Has there been a study actually done of the patent office itself or interviews done of patent office employees?
Don't the people who work in the patent office know that to a large segment of the population, they are a laughing stock?
Do they just not care that people think they're stupid, evil, or both?
(Personally I'd be in favor of major patent reform, but it seems like even if just this simple problem could be identified and fixed, a lot of the worst examples would go away.)
Re: A pledge that's not worth the air it's breathed out with.
unless you choose to ignore a ringing phone while driving
You make it sound like it requires some herculean expenditure of will power not to answer a phone that is ringing. If you're driving and you don't have a headset, then don't answer the phone. Simple.
BTW, I'm not saying that it doesn't affect a lot of people or even that I'm trying to exclude myself from this, but there seems to be this irresistable, Pavlovian urge to answer a ringing phone. And I would say that this urge is almost completely unrelated to the actual chances of getting an emergency phone call. I'm not some Luddite that thinks people who have cell phones are self-centered, pompous assholes, but come on people, the caller will understand if you don't answer because you're driving. That's what voicemail is for.
This is a rhetorical question because I already know the answer, but instead of the first reaction being "Let's pass a new law!" why not just create a public service announcement and publish it to TV, radio, and the Internet? I guess the lowly PSA has fallen out of favor, but when I was a kid, I remember seeing quite a few PSAs. [Hold on, I think I see someone on my lawn. OK. False alarm.] Sure, most of them were quite corny and didn't have the best production value, but they seemed to be effective in getting the word out on certain topics. If I had the option between some politician trying to make a name for themselves by trying to, but not really address the moral panic of the day or a cheeseball PSA, I'll take the PSA every time.
(Would it cost some money for these PSAs? Sure, but I think you could make the case that the production and publishing costs would be much less than all of the wasted time caused by the blowhards in government.)
For one, it's not the government singling out one little distraction.
That's not what Carlo said. He called it "a very narrowly defined distraction". Sure, it's a fine point, but use of the term "little" implies that Carlo was trivializing the issue of driving while using a cell phone. I don't think he's saying that it's a little problem. It's actually a big problem, but one that happens to already be covered by existing laws. There's no need for additional laws that target specific examples of things that are already covered by other laws.
Do you think it's a good use of a politician's time to enact the same law over and over every time a new gadget comes out because (they think it) makes them look good to the public?
more like todays satire is tomorrows 'we have already shown that...' line that makes masnick so entertaining to read.
I'm sure it's perfectly clear in your mind what you mean by a "we have already shown that" line, but for the rest of us, would you care to explain? And by "explain", I think you know I don't mean rote regurgitations like "typical masnick overreach", but an actual rational statement backed up by some supporting ideas.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you want to make something criminal...
So unless you personally can enforce your right to free speech, you can't gurauntee that you in fact have it at all.
This is a bit of a stretch from what Lobo Santo actually said. To the extent that anything can be defined at a right, its existance is completely unrelated to the ability to enforce it. No reasonable person would expect that a government or any entity can completely guarantee that all rights will be enforced. Rights are "unalienable" and "self-evident" and do not depend on enforceability in any given situation.
Did the students at Kent State have the right to free speech? They were supposed to....then they got shot by the Nat'l Guard, so it turns out they never had it at all in practice.
"In practice"? OK, if you want to throw in extra qualifiers, then you can change the original statement. But I think we're devolving into "If a tree falls in a forest..." trivial semantics territory here.
Don't confuse "rights" with right and wrong. No, it isn't okay. But again, if you can't enforce that right yourself and are relying on a shakey group of others to do it for you, do you actually have that right at all?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you want to make something criminal...
Realistically speaking: Any right which you cannot personally enforce is a right you do not have.
Wow. Just...wow. This is either a brilliant troll or you just flat out didn't think before you posted. Not that the US constitution is the end-all-be-all for defining rights, but it's a good place to start, so let's take just three examples...
"First Amendment - Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, Freedom of Religion, and of assembly; right to petition"
So, according to the Lobo Santo Rule, if I can't beat up the crowd of people who come to knock me off my soap box, I really don't have the right to free speech.
"Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure."
If I don't have enough guns to fight off the police when they come to my house with a bad warrant, I don't have a right not to be searched unreasonably.
"Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment."
If I don't have Jason Bourne-like fighting skills, then it's OK if some government spooks waterboard me.
Re: Re: Re: If you want to make something criminal...
I DO despise the "I'm a victim" mindset.
So...simply stating that the woman is a victim is an example of the "I'm a victim" mindset? It seems like you're falsely equating the simple term "victim" with some broader, subjective idea of responsibility.
You know how third-party organizations rate charities on how much of the donated money actually goes to the intended recipients versus what goes to administration? If there isn't already, it'd be nice if there were organizations who published similar stats for collection agencies.
"Oh, you represent the starving artists, now do you? Well [shuffling some printouts] it says right here that only 15% of the money you collect actually goes to the artists. Hmmm. Interesting."
On the post: USPTO Ramping Up Patent Approvals
I'm not saying that this couldn't be the thought process of the USPTO, but I think the logic is flawed, specifically the "it approves more patents to get more applications in" part. Why would approving more patents get more applications in? When some inventor or company has a "great idea" that they want to patent, I don't think they first look up the recent approval/rejection stats for the USPTO. They go see a lawyer and get the ball rolling because they have a "great idea". Maybe it would reduce the applications by some, but I personally don't think it would be as much as is apparently driving this line of thought.
As I alluded to in another post, they don't even seem to be considering the option of just rejecting more applications. "Nope, sorry. Your idea is completely obvious and even though I'm not an expert in this field, it took me all of two and a half minutes to find over a dozen examples of prior art. Rejected. Better luck next time." Pocket the applicaiton fee, mark one off the backlog list, and move onto the next.
On the post: USPTO Ramping Up Patent Approvals
Re: Question the Legitimacy of Patent Applications
My thoughts exactly. Fair enough if you don't agree that rejecting more patents is the right option to reduce the backlog, but to not even acknowledge that it is an option is greatly shortsighted.
On the post: Music Industry Lawyer Complains Both That Musicians Don't Get Paid... And When They Do
"strange doctrine" indeed
I read a quote last night that seems to fit perfectly the attitude referenced in the quote above (and frequently on TechDirt)...
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."
- Robert Heinlein
On the post: Why Does The US Gov't Get To Patent Research Paid For By Public Tax Dollars?
The fault in your logic is that "the Government" dictates what the rules are, so if there was really the will, they could change the rules to obviate the need for government-held patents. In other words, coming from an organization that could change the rules if they wanted to, "Hey, I'm only following the rules" sounds quite hollow.
It seems to me that all it would take is for the addition of a kind of public domain patent and the whole MAD issue would be moot.
On the post: It's Baaaaaack: Canadian DMCA Bill Expected Next Month
Re: Re: Re: Back to the drawing board
I know what you're saying, but if the Canadian politicians are anything like the US ones, principle has little to do with it. In fact, it's the exact opposite of voting on something based on principle. It's voting based on a knee jerk response. If Proposal.Author.Party != Me.Party then Vote = No.
On the post: Why Does The US Gov't Get To Patent Research Paid For By Public Tax Dollars?
Devil's advocate
If I were a government official, I'd explain that the reason is to ensure that the technology gets out to the private sector of the United States and not to other countries who could use it to compete with us.
As for the real answer to the question, it's so that government can exert more control of course. (But you knew that already.)
On the post: Apple Sued For Patent Infringement Over One Of The Broadest Patents You'll Ever See
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What could have been going on in the mind . . .
A ha. Very interesting. I think "pressure" is just another way to say "incentive" or in the case, "disincentive" would be more appropriate. In other words, if the problem is that the management of the PTO office is being measured by the size of the backlog, then the system needs to change to factor out the backlog. If Congress doesn't want to pay for more examiners, then fine, less patents will be examined. But surely there is a system that could be put in place that used a metric of how much work examiners are doing and (gasp!) the quality of the work that didn't punish the organization for something that was out of their control.
Well approving applications rarely increases the workload. Rejecting them however ensures that some percentage of those applications will contest and drag out and just be a general nuisance.
But not all, so if you gave rejecting a patent application equal weight for an how the performance of an examiner is measured as accepting or re-evaluating a patent, then this wouldn't be an issue. In fact, it might even increase the number of rejections and that probably wouldn't be a bad thing.
Also, I think it's helpful to make a distinction between "workload" and "backlog". An individual's workload is whatever they say it is. If an examiner has to accept, reject, or re-examine (in the case of a contested patent) X number of patent applications, then that's
their workload. For the most part, an individual's workload should be independent of the organization's backlog.
The insight you've provided just makes me think all the more that we (people who are concerned about the issues highlighted on TechDirt) should be focused on supporting a restructuring of the PTO's reward system. Heck, couldn't the president just issue an executive order to make this kind of change? It wouldn't be changing any material aspect of patent law, just how to process performance evaluations for patent examiners and their supervisors.
HR could knock out the new forms in a few hours! /s
On the post: Apple Sued For Patent Infringement Over One Of The Broadest Patents You'll Ever See
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What could have been going on in the mind . . .
By itself, this doesn't seem to be a conflict-of-interest problem, but if this gets pushed down to the individual examiner level such that they are rewarded for more approved patents, then yeah, that'd be a problem in my mind.
I'm actually not sure if what the incentive is for an individual examiner, but however it works, it just seems to me that much if not most of the discussion on TechDirt of patents would be moot if the patent office incentives were corrected.
On the post: Apple Sued For Patent Infringement Over One Of The Broadest Patents You'll Ever See
Re: Re: Re: What could have been going on in the mind . . .
So, is it really just as simple as that? The patent office is incentivized to approve more patents because they are paid per approved patent? (It seems like they should get paid regardless of whether the patent is approved or not.) If this really is the case, then whenever someone suggests a major overhaul of the patent system or even getting rid of the patent system, the reply should be "Well, why don't we just start with the relatively small change of altering the incentive so that patent approvers are not paid per approved patent, but per reviewed patent." In my experience, implementing a small change that can have a big effect is the better option than jumping right to a major change.
On the post: Apple Sued For Patent Infringement Over One Of The Broadest Patents You'll Ever See
This question comes up all of the time on TechDirt, but as far as I've seen, it seems to always just be as background leading to a another example of an outrageous patent. But seriously, why do patents like this get approved? What could possibly have been going on in the mind of the person who approved this patent? I believe that the patent office is incentivized to approve patents, but it just seems like there has to be more to it than this.
Has there been a study actually done of the patent office itself or interviews done of patent office employees?
Don't the people who work in the patent office know that to a large segment of the population, they are a laughing stock?
Do they just not care that people think they're stupid, evil, or both?
(Personally I'd be in favor of major patent reform, but it seems like even if just this simple problem could be identified and fixed, a lot of the worst examples would go away.)
On the post: Can Oprah Do What Driving-While-Yakking Laws Can't?
Re: A pledge that's not worth the air it's breathed out with.
You make it sound like it requires some herculean expenditure of will power not to answer a phone that is ringing. If you're driving and you don't have a headset, then don't answer the phone. Simple.
BTW, I'm not saying that it doesn't affect a lot of people or even that I'm trying to exclude myself from this, but there seems to be this irresistable, Pavlovian urge to answer a ringing phone. And I would say that this urge is almost completely unrelated to the actual chances of getting an emergency phone call. I'm not some Luddite that thinks people who have cell phones are self-centered, pompous assholes, but come on people, the caller will understand if you don't answer because you're driving. That's what voicemail is for.
On the post: Can Oprah Do What Driving-While-Yakking Laws Can't?
Re: Re: PSA
On the post: Can Oprah Do What Driving-While-Yakking Laws Can't?
PSA
(Would it cost some money for these PSAs? Sure, but I think you could make the case that the production and publishing costs would be much less than all of the wasted time caused by the blowhards in government.)
On the post: Can Oprah Do What Driving-While-Yakking Laws Can't?
Re: I'm all for this
That's not what Carlo said. He called it "a very narrowly defined distraction". Sure, it's a fine point, but use of the term "little" implies that Carlo was trivializing the issue of driving while using a cell phone. I don't think he's saying that it's a little problem. It's actually a big problem, but one that happens to already be covered by existing laws. There's no need for additional laws that target specific examples of things that are already covered by other laws.
Do you think it's a good use of a politician's time to enact the same law over and over every time a new gadget comes out because (they think it) makes them look good to the public?
On the post: Connecticut Police Use Craigslist To Fight Prostitution; As Their Attorney General Grandstands To Take Away That Tool
Re: Re:
I'm sure it's perfectly clear in your mind what you mean by a "we have already shown that" line, but for the rest of us, would you care to explain? And by "explain", I think you know I don't mean rote regurgitations like "typical masnick overreach", but an actual rational statement backed up by some supporting ideas.
On the post: Connecticut Police Use Craigslist To Fight Prostitution; As Their Attorney General Grandstands To Take Away That Tool
Don't give them any ideas. Remember, "Today's satire is tomorrow's reality."
On the post: Victim Of Domestic Abuse Sues GPS Company For Helping Her Assailant
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you want to make something criminal...
This is a bit of a stretch from what Lobo Santo actually said. To the extent that anything can be defined at a right, its existance is completely unrelated to the ability to enforce it. No reasonable person would expect that a government or any entity can completely guarantee that all rights will be enforced. Rights are "unalienable" and "self-evident" and do not depend on enforceability in any given situation.
Did the students at Kent State have the right to free speech? They were supposed to....then they got shot by the Nat'l Guard, so it turns out they never had it at all in practice.
"In practice"? OK, if you want to throw in extra qualifiers, then you can change the original statement. But I think we're devolving into "If a tree falls in a forest..." trivial semantics territory here.
Don't confuse "rights" with right and wrong. No, it isn't okay. But again, if you can't enforce that right yourself and are relying on a shakey group of others to do it for you, do you actually have that right at all?
Yes.
On the post: Victim Of Domestic Abuse Sues GPS Company For Helping Her Assailant
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you want to make something criminal...
Wow. Just...wow. This is either a brilliant troll or you just flat out didn't think before you posted. Not that the US constitution is the end-all-be-all for defining rights, but it's a good place to start, so let's take just three examples...
"First Amendment - Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, Freedom of Religion, and of assembly; right to petition"
So, according to the Lobo Santo Rule, if I can't beat up the crowd of people who come to knock me off my soap box, I really don't have the right to free speech.
"Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure."
If I don't have enough guns to fight off the police when they come to my house with a bad warrant, I don't have a right not to be searched unreasonably.
"Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment."
If I don't have Jason Bourne-like fighting skills, then it's OK if some government spooks waterboard me.
On the post: Victim Of Domestic Abuse Sues GPS Company For Helping Her Assailant
Re: Re: Re: If you want to make something criminal...
So...simply stating that the woman is a victim is an example of the "I'm a victim" mindset? It seems like you're falsely equating the simple term "victim" with some broader, subjective idea of responsibility.
On the post: Irish Collection Society Wants Music Bloggers To Pay Up To Promote Music
Re: Cure
"Oh, you represent the starving artists, now do you? Well [shuffling some printouts] it says right here that only 15% of the money you collect actually goes to the artists. Hmmm. Interesting."
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