Trojan horse.
Google's patent chief slammed the US patent office – now she's the agency's acting director
Google's former head of patents and patent strategy Michelle Lee has been appointed as deputy director of the US Patent and Trademark Office and will run the troubled agency until a new director is named, the USPTO announced on Wednesday. Speaking at a conference at Stanford University in 2007, Lee said that the US patent …
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Thursday 12th December 2013 22:59 GMT Turtle
@Mikel: Re: Some sanity soon
"The US Supremes are about to hear a case on software patents. Hopefully they'll just broadly outlaw them all together. That would be sweet."
"Sweet" but only because Google is built on one and only one patent: the Page Rank patent. So if patents were outlawed, there would go Google's $50bn/year extortion racket right down the toilet.
But then how ever would Google pay that "laundry list" of shills and Google Tools that you trust to look after your interests, eh? (Eighth post down on http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/08/24/google_amended_shills_list/ )
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Thursday 12th December 2013 22:39 GMT Thorne
If the patent office was tougher on BS patents, then companies wouldn't submit BS patents just to be knocked back and thus less backlog and a net result of better quality patents
When they allow the patenting of the obvious, more and more people patent the obvious and go into the trolling business for a quick buck.
The patent office made this rod for their own back.....
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Friday 13th December 2013 09:18 GMT wowfood
Mayhaps a better solution
would be additional charges for failure. As a bad example with figures from the air.
A patent costs £500 to register
Instead of charging the £500, double the fee to £1000. If the patent is successful, the extra £500 is returned to the inventor etc, if the patent fails, the money remains with the USPTO as a "you wasted our time and yours" fee. I bet that'd also encourage the USPTO to be a bit less lenient with which patents they allow.
Then again I'd also like to see them completely remove software design patents, and limit software patents in general to specific algorithms or proceses, rather tahn "A device that puts stuff somewhere"
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Friday 13th December 2013 10:45 GMT MrXavia
Re: Mayhaps a better solution
Its an idea.. but maybe have patent fees based on company value? i.e. if your Apple each application costs you $10Million, but if your an individual, its just $100?
That way the little guy is not screwed, but the rich guy is incentivised to only patent what they can make a profit on and NOT to patent tiny things that are of no real value to anyone....
Oh and if a patent is used in court to sue, 10% of the award should go to the USPTO but if a patent is overturned in court, the USPTO should be forced to fork out compensation to the victim of the lawsuit....
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Thursday 12th December 2013 23:03 GMT Turtle
While in principle a very good idea...
It is important that the quality of patents be improved, and vastly improved. But an ex-Googler is not someone I would trust to do it.
Relatedly, I would not want to see anyone working in any capacity, let alone a leadership or policy-making position, for the USPTO unless they agree not to work for any other patent-originating or owning entity for at least five years after leaving the USPTO. (Obviously such a contractual undertaking would need to be worded far more carefully than I have done here but the gist should be clear.)
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Friday 13th December 2013 00:40 GMT ops4096
Backlog ?
Nobody asks the question. Why is there a backlog ??? Perhaps it's because the patents office hasn't been allocated the resources to do it's job ??? Amerikan antipathy to government is a well established majority opinion formulated as "starve the beast then drown it in the bathtub". Unless of course it's the NSA conducting "Total Information Awareness" or the Department of "Defense" conducting endless foreign wars of aggression !!!
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Sunday 15th December 2013 19:53 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: Backlog ?
Amerikan antipathy to government is a well established majority opinion formulated as "starve the beast then drown it in the bathtub". Unless of course it's the NSA conducting "Total Information Awareness" or the Department of "Defense" conducting endless foreign wars of aggression !!!
You need to understand where that antipathy comes from. It comes from voting against the party that started the problem of expanding the NSA and starting wars of aggression and for the party that railed against those things only to have them not only fully embrace those positions once they were handed the crown but expanding them and beginning ever more expansive and expensive pseudo-populist programs.
In short it's because the current two party cartel in which each has chosen a very small subset of 'hot button' issues to differ their respective platforms and polarize the public with the help of an obedient fourth estate and each party candidate is a special interest owned lying elitist.
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Friday 13th December 2013 01:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
slam bam thank you ma'am
'GOOGLE'S PATENT CHIEF SLAMMED THE PATENT OFFICE ...'
"The Patent Office is overburdened," she said. "The volume of patents going in is huge. And the quality of patents coming out – it could be better."
Slammed ? Slammed you say ?
Look I understand journalists take daily hyperbole supplements but really - this is more like gently brushing with a kipper.
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Friday 13th December 2013 13:01 GMT Pascal Monett
"the ability and extent to which software can be patented"
That's easy : nil. Nowhere. None. There is nothing done in software which justifies a patent. A copyright, sure, but not a patent.
And as for non-practicing entities, they can fuck right off out of the tribunal. If they're not practicing, they have no right to burden the economy with lawsuits.
My solution to patent trolls is simple : what they stand to gain should be based directly on how much money they lost in sales. Not selling anything ? No loss, get out.
And do not pass Go.
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Friday 13th December 2013 18:02 GMT NumptyScrub
Re: "the ability and extent to which software can be patented"
You patent an "invention" which apparently can be a product or a process. Last time I checked processes can be implemented in software, so in a generic sense there is no reason that software and patents cannot co-exist, or that processes implemented in software are capable of violating a patent.
I do however strongly agree that the already extant tests of "obviousness" and "prior art" are not followed anywhere near rigourously enough for the vast majority of stuff filed by certain large corporations. "Sliding bolts but on a phone" is a case in point, there being physical prior art for several centuries and it being an obvious concept to anyone familiar with using physical locks as present on gates or doorways.
I'm pretty sure patents were never intended to allow people to monetise re-inventing existing products or processes, they are intended to protect novel products and processes.
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Friday 13th December 2013 20:41 GMT tom dial
Re: "the ability and extent to which software can be patented"
So while you could not patent an improved mathematical algorithm for, say, solving the general transportation problem in linear time, you should be able to patent a device containing a logic interpreter controlled by a list of instructions to do so?
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