[HN Gopher] Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
___________________________________________________________________
Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat
Author : prhrb
Score : 1221 points
Date : 2023-06-05 16:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| so which is it? "patents" being used by trolls? or American
| Corporations protecting their investments?
|
| I remember when I realized why software patents are not going
| away any time soon; it was the same thought that I had when I
| tried to consider the quantity (amount) of dollars represented as
| 'valuable assets' in IBM's finances; assets which are just
| software patents.
| HPsquared wrote:
| You can also go a level deeper and consider what the dollars
| themselves are, and why those will not go away either.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| they'll become digital, like a cryptocoin.
|
| the push to cashless USD is here and won't be going away
|
| but what does the cashless evolution mean for wage based
| economy? I'm still thinking through this, but the future is
| catching up and it seems I will only have to wait some more
| before circumstances of life and the world force this upon
| the public; so I don't think I have to actually think through
| what this means... this will become the brave new society in
| which I'll die (assuming I survive the transition)
|
| also, let's keep in mind the dollars like the ones you refer
| too, which "wont' be going away" were re-invented around the
| 70s, during the nixon administration, when gold was thrown
| out of the equation completely. but this ain't about metallic
| elements
| dathinab wrote:
| fighting a patent is quite expensive and hard and in case of
| proper patents (and many less proper) unlikely to succeed else
| many patent trolls wouldn't be able to earn so much money
|
| This is the reason why most times patents are not fought until
| someone gets sued even through at that point more things are at
| risk, like temporary restricted sales, so normally a precaution
| patent invalidation should be preferred by the company starting
| to sell products where they know someone is patent trolling.
| But it isn't, as it's too expensive.
|
| There probably had been cases of big companies using a "try to
| drown small company in lawsuits even if they are spurious"
| approach, but IMHO this is the wrong way to limit such power
| abuse (the right way is painful panelties and reparation if
| they are found to do so and reasonable fast court actions to
| stop this abuse until courts are settled).
| dathinab wrote:
| I hope this pushes other platforms to provide some more
| memory channels, could be tricky for AMD due to them wanting
| to commit to AM5 and I'm not sure if you can retrofit it.
|
| Through then most consumer applications don't necessary
| need/profit much from the wider memory bandwidth as more
| bandwidth is harder to use then faster memory speed.
|
| And more channels in a "motherboard not on-die" setup is much
| more costly for everyone (motherboards + CPUs + end user)
| then for on die. So maybe new CPUs with some on-die memory
| with their own channels + 2 classical channels is more
| likely. But then more on-die L3 or L4 cache (e.g. X3D) is
| probably more useful then on-die RAM. Hm, it's fun how in
| some way apples CPUs mismatch most of the consumer marked,
| but then Apple PRO models don't sell to most of the consumer
| marked.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| This is one of the problems with 'Corporations are people' and
| 'Money is free speech'.
|
| Once a revenue source is generated, there are now 'persons
| (corporations)' with very loud 'speech (money for lobbying)'
| that start attempting to influence law.
|
| Governments are a collection of people that are hopefully
| optimizing toward the benefit of the people. I don't see how
| patent trolls benefit anyone that doesn't draw a paycheck
| directly from it.
| freejazz wrote:
| EFF can't tell you the difference because according to the EFF,
| there is no other kind of patent holder...
| zoobab wrote:
| The USPTO is still granting software patents despite Alice.
|
| Is there a way to make them stop?
| joemullin wrote:
| I work for EFF and wrote the text of this blog post and action.
| On here I speak only for myself, but a couple points I want to
| add.
|
| 1) EFF has only filed one IPR ever, (linked in the post), against
| Personal Audio, to invalidate a patent asserted against
| podcasting. This was crowd-funded by hundreds of people. It
| required years of litigation beyond the IPR process itself.
|
| 2) Patent challenges should be open to all. There's nothing wrong
| with a "for profit" org challenging a government monopoly - it's
| a public benefit. A good patent will often hold up (many do), a
| wrongly granted one will usually go down.
|
| Please read the examples in the post of (very) small businesses,
| individuals, and nonprofits (Wikimedia) who were protected
| because _another_ organization, often a for-profit, filed a
| successful IPR.
|
| It's truly upside down world when USPTO is concerned its very
| limited monopoly-challenging services are being overused by "for-
| profits" that file "serial" petitions. In my career I have
| analyzed hundreds of shell companies that have (each!) sent out
| dozens or hundreds of threat letters and lawsuits demanding
| patent royalty payments (patent trolls). Guess what? They're ALL
| for-profit. They ALL file serial petitions with the hopes of a
| fast payout.
|
| We have limited means to challenge this extortionate business
| model, and now USPTO is trying to drastically limit one of the
| best options. I hope they reconsider, and we ask for your
| support.
|
| Thanks to all and I appreciate the discussion here.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| IPRs are pretty useful for challenging bad patents and should
| be very broad. However, I found myself in favor of this change,
| and honestly questioning the EFF's motives given how strong and
| personal (speaking specifically to the _EFF 's_ ability to
| challenge patents, not a generic third party) your expressed
| opinions were in this piece.
|
| I am very sympathetic to the argument that Unified Patents and
| other folks who offer "IPR insurance" now can't fight bad
| patents, but hopefully if the rules pass they will be able to
| convert to either a non-profit or a financing model that allows
| them to sidestep this rule.
|
| Also, are you aware of the argument in favor of this change? In
| a recent case, a patent troll used an IPR claim to attempt to
| extort a patent owner when that patent was going through active
| litigation. Limiting IPRs from for-profit entities not
| practicing in the field (also a requirement in the rule change)
| when small companies are actively suing someone else honestly
| sounds reasonable in light of this. See:
| https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ipr2021-...
| nabakin wrote:
| I would also like a response from @joemullin on this
| einpoklum wrote:
| I've been convinced by your arguments about bad faith IPRs by
| for-profit entities! ... and therefore, I suggest the USPTO
| also prevent for-profits from filing patents.
| joemullin wrote:
| I'm aware that there are allegedly "bad" IPRs including the
| OpenSky case. The alleged "extortion" here is that VLSI, a
| non-practicing entity, I believe backed by a hedge fund,
| would lose their 20-year government monopoly and no longer be
| able to seek billions of dollars in court.
|
| I have no idea who or what OpenSky is, and I don't weigh in
| on huge corporate cases like VLSI v. Intel where everyone has
| plenty of money for their own representation.
|
| But it's really wild to me that this alleged "abuse" (that
| could lead to the loss of... a patent) immediately got the
| attention of officials, who are taking rapid action. Yet
| there are _thousands_ of victims of patent troll extortion
| every year. These extortions are real, and documented, and
| hurt businesses that are much much smaller than VLSI. (and
| operate actual businesses, which AFAIK VLSI does not).
|
| But here's the value proposition: It's just not wrong to
| challenge a government subsidy or monopoly. Period.
| Especially on computer software and hardware, because they're
| often wrongly granted.
|
| Even if you accept that the OpenSky situation is the moral
| equivalent of patent trolling (I absolutely do not), it's
| happened to patent owners ONE time. (Maybe a few others, but
| it's a count-on-your-fingers thing). I wish people extorted
| by patent trolls for real money got 1/100th the attention of
| the tiny numbers of patent owners who lost (or almost lost)
| their patent monopolies.
| [deleted]
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > But here's the value proposition: It's just not wrong to
| challenge a government subsidy or monopoly. Period.
| Especially on computer software and hardware, because
| they're often wrongly granted.
|
| I see where you're coming from, but I would suggest that
| this is pretty much an extremist point of view on
| intellectual property protections. It's easy to say that
| the online shopping cart is a dumb patent (because it is,
| and the Supreme Court generally agrees with you), but I
| think you would be hard pressed to argue against the
| societal value of patents on integrated circuit
| technologies, which can take $billions to develop, provide
| tremendous societal value, and have strategic implications.
|
| Still, that does clarify the viewpoint of the piece to some
| degree - it suggests that you and the EFF are in favor of
| "patent accelerationism": make the system so shitty for
| participants that they abandon it entirely. The system is
| definitely shitty now, but I don't really see anyone
| abandoning it.
|
| By the way, VLSI is the remains of a real technology
| company that went out of business... because its IP was
| blatantly copied. They had no choice but to sell out to a
| patent troll.
| TimPC wrote:
| They aren't making a noticeable change to the system at
| all. This method challenges roughly 350 patents a year
| while roughly 300,000 patents are granted per year.
| That's in the area of 0.1% of all patents. I think these
| numbers are very consistent with the predominant use case
| being the challenging of bad patents and there are very
| few examples of people trying to overturn good patents.
| account42 wrote:
| The percentage of total patents is irrelevant as not all
| patents are actively abused by patent trolls.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Your arguments contradict each other. If the patent
| system actually protects innovation, why did VLSI's IP
| get successfully copied?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Well, Intel eventually paid for it (a $2.1 billion
| judgment settled for an undisclosed sum). Without a
| patent system, they would have just gotten away with
| ripping these guys off for free.
| freejazz wrote:
| >By the way, VLSI is the remains of a real technology
| company that went out of business... because its IP was
| blatantly copied. They had no choice but to sell out to a
| patent troll.
|
| Ding ding ding - people don't seem to understand how the
| business model actually works... real inventors have to
| sell out, because unless they sell their stake in a
| litigation to a financier, they outright cannot afford to
| litigate an infringement case against one of the big
| companies that infringed their products and then refused
| to license
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| This. A patent is a ticket to a court battle. If you
| can't afford the court battle then the patent is
| worthless.
|
| All this talk of "small, inventor-led businesses" is
| bullcrap because no small business can afford to enforce
| a patent.
| Nezteb wrote:
| Please set up a petition with https://resist.bot as well!
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Interesting. Are there other apps and services like
| Resistbot?
| [deleted]
| manojlds wrote:
| Well, we just had Apple boast about 5000 patents.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Intellectual property demonstrably stifles innovation. It is the
| ultimate rent-seeking behaviour. It's not limited to software
| patents either. Hell, it's not even limited to patents.
|
| The Wright brothers had a patent on the flight control mechanism
| that they used to stifle innovation [1]. This problem was so bad
| that when the US entered the First World War, they were
| completely unable to produce any aircraft and had to buy them
| from the French. This ultimately led to Congress intervening to
| form a patent pool for aircraft patents, a system that persists
| til now.
|
| In the early days of the Internet (ie Napster and Limewire era)
| there was a lot of hand-wringing about "stealing" music and how
| it hurt artists. Almost no artist makes sufficient income from
| music royalties. Only the very top do. The rest make a living
| from perfrmances and music IP doesn't impact that. But it does
| help record companies to explit artists, which is the main point.
|
| The pharmaceutical industry claims patents are necessary for
| drugs. Thing is, most drug research is undertaken by government
| funding and then basically just handed over to Big Pharma, who
| spend most of their money on marketing not R&D. What R&D they do
| is largely to game the patent system to extend patents without
| minor but irrelevant changes.
|
| Copyright law is repeatedly extended (in the US) largely to stop
| Mickey Mouse entering the public domain. At this point I'd be
| happier with a carve-out specifically for the stupid mouse and
| let everything else fall into public domain
|
| We do not need intellectual property. For atistic works, 10
| years. Max.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
| api wrote:
| Network effects are far more powerful than IP. Witness the fact
| that >50% of Twitter's users hate it and think everyone should
| leave but they are still using it because they are still using
| it.
|
| Without IP the owners of the core hubs of network effects could
| take all intellectual products, monopolize them, and rent them
| back to us. We would be unable to resist because network
| effects are more powerful than we are as individuals.
| paddw wrote:
| I assume this change is related to the patent office wanting to
| reduce its workload? Funding probably should be increased. Patent
| nonsense ends up costing everyone a LOT more in the long run.
| acomjean wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the patent office is funded by fees, so its in
| their interest to keep the applications coming. They also seem
| to avoid penalties even when their bad patents are overturned.
|
| "The USPTO is a demand-driven, fee funded, performance-based
| organization with a commitment to delivering reliable IP
| protection and information to its various stakeholders;
| including serving inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses in
| the U.S. and around the world." [1]https://www.uspto.gov/sites/
| default/files/documents/fy21pbr....
| jpollock wrote:
| My reading is that it's probably related to an extortion
| attempt where a firm went after VLSI and Intel?
|
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/blackmail-at-the-uspto-dir...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| After reading the proposed rule changes, I'm not so sure it's
| bad, and I'm also not sure it hits the EFF in any meaningful
| way (unless the EFF is hopelessly corrupt, which I guess is a
| possibility). The biggest thing at issue is that it protects
| small entities from spurious IPRs ( _ie_ IPRs from parties
| not being sued) from for-profit companies while litigation is
| ongoing, which seems kind of reasonable. IPRs are expensive,
| so this is an easy way to either drive a small entity
| bankrupt during a high-stakes lawsuit or extort a payout.
|
| The EFF isn't a for-profit entity, so if they have problems
| with this rule, it might mean that they are so closely
| connected to one or more for-profit companies that they are
| treated as for-profit. That honestly makes the EFF sound
| suspect. I am assuming this comes from their ideological
| anti-IP stance rather than corruption, but either way it
| doesn't come off as an honest take on the new rules.
| chabad360 wrote:
| The bigger issue is that it allows NPEs to protect
| themselves from this process (by declaring themselves as
| "small" and "inventor-owned"), making it kinda useless.
| freejazz wrote:
| that's only true for NPE's that are enforcing patents
| that are owned by the inventor, and isn't the case for
| most of what people would call patent trolls. The EFF
| represents that the majority of patent trolls (which is
| something that EFF pretends to be the only party that
| brings patent lawsuits... lol, completely disingenuous on
| their part) are the kind where there is one person that
| invented a ton of patents and is enforcing them, but
| that's not the case. EFF doesn't even pretend to navigate
| this distinction.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| The alternative explanation is that EFF, having experienced
| incredible and well-funded push-back in its attempts to
| invalidate dumb patents, believes that this rule has been
| engineered to limit even further the ability of third-
| parties to challenge unnecessary patents.
|
| I mean, I don't want to be rude here, but it feels like
| "I've read the changes, I don't think they apply to EFF, so
| I guess the only explanation is that EFF is corrupt", seems
| a bit of a jump, compared to the simpler explanation that
| EFF _does_ believe its process to be affected, as argued by
| the OP link.
|
| (Due disclosure: I used to work for EFF. The fight for a
| reasonable way to overturn bad patents has been, IIRC, a
| multi-decade uphill battle, against an industry of patent
| troll adversaries, who did everything from trying to
| subpoena EFF's membership rolls[1], to suing in Australia
| to have an EFF blog post taken down[2]. I guess we could
| have been being paid off by Big Don't Patent Dumb Things,
| but I defy you to find any of the patents that the EFF has
| either exposed or organizationally fought that should, in
| fact, have stayed patentable [3])
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/eff-fights-
| patent-trol...
|
| [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/court-rules-effs-
| stupi...
|
| [3] https://www.eff.org/issues/patents
| freejazz wrote:
| >The alternative explanation is that EFF, having
| experienced incredible and well-funded push-back in its
| attempts to invalidate dumb patents, believes that this
| rule has been engineered to limit even further the
| ability of third-parties to challenge unnecessary
| patents.
|
| Your entire perspective presupposes that you are correct.
| I'm surprised people fall for the EFF's shtick so easily
| - it's so heavily worded in a pointed fashion, that any
| other kind of writing of this style, is regularly
| rejected in places like this because of how biased it is.
| Oh wait... you used work for the EFF!
|
| What's unreasonable about fighting patents in district
| court? EFF is trying to have its cake and eat it too.
| Pretending that it's all big bad companies _AND_ patent
| trolls. but both of those entities are on the opposite
| sides of each other. The reality is that what the EFF is
| advocating for will absolutely benefit the big bad
| companies that the EFF attempts to disavow any
| commonality with it.
|
| Of course the EFF describes anyone opposed to it as a
| patent troll, but that's totally unfair imo and pretty
| much an outright lie. any inventor that isn't one of the
| big tech co's stands to benefit from this proposed rule
| change.
|
| And your point about the patents that the EFF fights is
| completely besides the point, because the EFF isn't the
| only entity involved in patents, so who cares whether the
| EFF has challenged valid patents or otherwise, that's
| exactly what district court is for...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > The alternative explanation is that EFF, having
| experienced incredible and well-funded push-back in its
| attempts to invalidate dumb patents, believes that this
| rule has been engineered to limit even further the
| ability of third-parties to challenge unnecessary
| patents.
|
| I am expressing doubt about whether the EFF actually has
| a stake in these rule changes, as they very clearly state
| several times. The article here isn't about generic third
| parties. It's about the EFF. This rule change also came
| after someone essentially tried to use an IPR to extort
| VLSI technology and Intel. The lack of recognition of
| that extortion and the corresponding limitations on these
| rules suggests to me that the EFF is not being entirely
| forthright here.
|
| > I mean, I don't want to be rude here, but it feels like
| "I've read the changes, I don't think they apply to EFF,
| so I guess the only explanation is that EFF is corrupt",
| seems a bit of a jump, compared to the simpler
| explanation that EFF does believe its process to be
| affected, as argued by the OP link.
|
| Holy strawman batman. Read the second paragraph.
|
| Also, the rule change is in English. You can actually
| _read_ the rule change and you will realize that it 's a
| lot more narrow than the EFF is suggesting. In
| particular, the new rules only limit IPRs for (a) for-
| profit companies (b) not currently engaged in litigation
| on patents that are in litigation (c) where said for-
| profit company is not in that field. All 3 of those have
| to be satisfied for your IPR to be tossed under those
| rules. Since the EFF is a non-profit, they should really
| have no problem with this.
|
| If we were to take the EFF's words at face value that
| this rule change applies specifically to the _EFF_ 's
| ability to fight bad patents, the only real conclusion we
| can draw is that some of the EFF's funding comes from
| for-profit companies who want specific patents struck
| down (invalidating (a) above) or want the EFF to hurt
| their competitors, which would, in fact, be suggestive of
| corruption. The other conditions certainly don't apply to
| the EFF.
|
| So that leaves us with one of two alternatives:
|
| 1. The EFF actually has no dog in the fight but just
| doesn't want to have an effective patent system; or
|
| 2. The EFF takes money from companies with the purpose of
| hurting their competitors.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> This rule change also came after someone essentially
| tried to use an IPR to extort VLSI technology and Intel._
|
| the IPR process exists in part to combat patent trolling,
| which is worse than that, and happens more frequently
| than that, to greater harm than that -- unfortunately for
| the victims there, they usually aren't rich, politically-
| connected companies like Intel
|
| _> the new rules only limit IPRs for (a) for-profit
| companies (b) not currently engaged in litigation on
| patents that are in litigation (c) where said for-profit
| company is not in that field. All 3 of those have to be
| satisfied for your IPR to be tossed under those rules.
| Since the EFF is a non-profit, they should really have no
| problem with this._
|
| (1) those limitations sound bad, when I want a for-profit
| company who is not currently litigating a patent to be
| able to challenge arbitrary patent trolls' IP via IPR
| without court costs being a barrier
|
| (2) _' these limitations don't directly affect X,
| therefore X shouldn't have a problem with it'_ is only
| true if X cares about nobody but themselves, which
| obviously isn't true here, given EFF's track record
| dathinab wrote:
| non-profit is a complicated topic and companies which are
| not corrupt and "in spirit" act as a non profit might very
| well count as a for-profit company in many legal situations
| AFIK
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| So you are okay with the EFF getting a very large
| donation from an organization involved in litigation with
| the purpose of harassing the plaintiff and draining their
| resources? That doesn't sound like "not corrupt in
| spirit." That sounds like "greenwashed extortion racket."
| dathinab wrote:
| See and that is why such a law is a problem because
| people just twist your words in ways which turn them into
| something you 100% did not say (or did) and then you
| can't try to take down a abusive patent.
| freejazz wrote:
| This is exactly what the EFF does. Their statements is so
| pointed, it's hard to take seriously.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's a good thing that nothing in this rule change
| prevents the EFF from taking down abusive patents so long
| as they are not paid by a for-profit company to do it.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| So damned if this goes through, damned if it doesn't.
| jpollock wrote:
| No, the board can combat "extortion" in other ways.
|
| Don't allow the initiator to _drop_ the request once
| started.
|
| Initiator pays all costs (I think this is already done?).
|
| Then any extortion has to happen up front, and it becomes
| much more obviously extortion.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Unless they have changed it since I learned about this,
| the loser pays at the PTAB.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This seems to be an evergreen topic on HN. Everyone likes to
| rant, and nothing changes.
|
| Besides @myshpa's references below, I've published several things
| myself, and one of them made the front page of HN:
|
| https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/lets-vote-on-it
|
| https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/no-source-code-no-patent
| (front page)
|
| It's not inconceivable that Congress, even one as dysfunctional
| as this one, could eventually agree that software is not
| patentable subject matter. That's Ripley's "nuke it from orbit"
| solution.
|
| Democrats: because software patents are a tool of rich tech
| companies to maintain their dominance.
|
| Republicans: because they hate the trial lawyers, and some R's
| are libertarian-leaning as well. And because they hate the tech
| giants, too.
|
| Write your congressman & senators. Or pick some other _active_
| form of political participation.
| jsdeveloper wrote:
| patent are necessary, but they must be only granted for 5 years
| of time span. 5 years of leverage to patent holder is more than
| enough for them to cover up there research cost
| throwaway485 wrote:
| I don't think you should be downvoted for suggesting this. I
| have wondered if it makes sense to adjust the amount of
| 'research hours' to how long it would take a competitor to
| produce the same result, and protect a patent for that length
| of time. To me 5 year seems arbitrary, and the rate at which
| people are innovating seems to get faster and faster. 5 years
| used to sound reasonable, but may be exceedingly unfair at
| today's technological pace.
|
| So then you look at things like, 'well has this patent
| protected the innovation to get it to market during its
| lifetime?' Maybe it should be re-evaluated every year to
| determine if the patent is serving its purpose, or simply
| protecting no marketable product.
|
| Maybe we should look at the value of the product being created
| and once that product has earned x-wealth the patent is ended?
|
| I will admit I'm in the camp of "patents are bad -> period",
| but I was surprised to see your submission at the bottom here.
| I don't think you're far off.
| jsdeveloper wrote:
| non-patent holder can use those 5 year to improve the product
| in parallel (in shadow, without commercialization), so once
| those 5 year completes they can compete with the patent
| holders evolved product after 5 year. it do not stops
| innovation, neither prolong human progression for too long.
| myshpa wrote:
| Why Software Patents are Bad, Period.
|
| https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0027
|
| Patents are out of control, and they're hurting innovation
|
| https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/patents-are-out-of-control...
|
| Economic and Game Theory Against Intellectual Monopoly
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120121014753/https://levine.ss...
|
| PATENTS AND INNOVATION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
|
| https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2016-moser.pdf
|
| Historical record shows how intellectual property systematically
| slowed down innovation
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140306012646/http://blog.p2pfo...
|
| Criticism of patents
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_patents
| gregman1 wrote:
| There are no software patents in EU (maybe even in the whole
| Europe) with exception for specially designed hardware. Idk how
| that works.
| rayiner wrote:
| EU law only excludes patents for software "as such."
| https://www.iam-media.com/regionindustry-guide/patents-in-
| eu.... You can still patent inventions embodied primarily in
| software so long as it's in the context of an industrial or
| consumer application. So you can't patent RSA, but you can
| patent a phone that uses RSA to securely transfer data.
|
| Since the Supreme Court's _Alice_ decision in 2013, which
| tightened the longstanding exclusion to patentability for
| "abstract ideas," it's probably slightly harder to get (or
| keep) a software patent in the US than in the EU. Just
| because US courts are more willing to look past hardware
| aspects of an invention to see if the "gist" of the invention
| is an abstract idea implemented in software.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| There are no software patents in the US either, as of 2014,
| except ones that have a physical effect on the world.
| Compression, encryption, and data structures are basically
| the only allowed software patents.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Here's a thought experiment: take a look at the Tillitis Key:
| https://tillitis.se It's a security dongle that can execute
| arbitrary programs. It's hardware is actually a RISC-V core
| implemented on top of an FPGA, with some firmware on top to
| load the user programs.
|
| Now the firmware is a kind of software, so patent should not
| apply, right? Heck one could even argue that the
| configuration of the FPGA should not count either, only the
| FPGA _itself_ may count. There's a problem though: _the keys
| are locked_.
|
| They kinda have to be to deliver their security promises, and
| prevent the secret key in the device from leaking, either by
| accident or by adversarial extraction. But then what do I
| have? A hardened piece of... _hardware_ actually. And all the
| patents that didn't apply "because software", now do.
|
| Or maybe they do not, I'm not a lawyer. I just wanted to
| highlight how fuzzy the frontier could be.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| There are software patents in EPC countries (which includes
| EU, UK), but not software patents as such. A sibling noted
| that USA now requires a real-world effect, that change
| apparently mirrors the situation under EPC: software here can
| be patented if it makes a technical contribution, ie it must
| do something outside of the computer (or something that
| simulates something outside of a computer! see Halliburton).
|
| What is and isn't technical is largely down to convention and
| can't be readily reasoned over IME. In the UK you only need
| to be familiar with about a half-dozen pieces of caselaw to
| be able to make a pretty good guess.
|
| It's established caselaw that compression is a mathematical
| method (not patentable); but you can implement that as a
| computer program (probably not patentable); but you can apply
| that to image compression (probably patentable, see Vicom).
|
| _Any opinions here are my own and do not relate to my
| employment. This is not legal advice._
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| When hardware is designed to be controlled by software, then
| you can't exclude software from the patent, because such
| patent would describe nonworking hardware. But that software
| isn't patentable separate from hardware.
| puvxiolo wrote:
| Now I am afraid of writing solutions to problems that are
| already solved for fun.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I'm starting to believe that all patents are at best
| ineffective, and at worse harmful in a globalized world,
| because it's not like airpods clones off aliexpress are
| actually being stopped at the port all too often.
| vxNsr wrote:
| That's a different problem entirely. It used to be stores had
| to carefully source the products they sold to make sure they
| weren't selling something that wasn't allowed to be sold in
| the US, with the advent of Amazon that all went out the
| window, now the name of the game is defraud everyone you can
| and claim innocence on the backend when caught. "Our
| algorithm didn't catch it, we stopped selling it as soon as
| we were made aware it was definitely illegal".
|
| The funniest hypocrisy of Silicon Valley/tech culture is that
| it's full of people who think the rules and laws don't apply
| to them but they vote every year for more and more
| regulations, that they then brazenly flout and act all
| indignant that the government has failed to do the things
| they voted for (and thus we need more government) but then
| refuse to actually follow.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is a bad example though, because everyone knows who
| Apple are. There's no point inventing anything as a new
| company if an existing one can just copy it and outspend your
| marketing.
| strbean wrote:
| Patent law doesn't provide you much protection unless you
| can outspend infringers in court.
| lazide wrote:
| And the infringers can be reached/influenced by the
| court.
|
| Random resellers on China have no reason to care about US
| patents.
| Taywee wrote:
| And there's no point inventing anything as an established
| company if you can just aggressively buy IP and leverage
| existing property.
|
| There's a balance to how much IP protection actually
| encourages innovation, and we're far on one side of it.
| TimPC wrote:
| If companies choose not to innovate and purchase their
| innovation instead that still creates a market for
| innovation and a source of funds for doing so. I'm far
| from convinced this is the case as most big tech
| companies have entire research divisions regularly
| producing papers and patents and we've seen some big AI
| products recently launch out of internal big tech
| initiatives.
| lend000 wrote:
| You need to have enforceable NDA's, keep things as trade
| secrets, and have a well built organization that simply
| continuously out-innovates AND out-executes the
| competition.
|
| I think patents are okay, but the maximum duration should
| be 5 years and there needs to be some proof of utilization
| of the patent to sue for damages.
|
| 20 year patents are ridiculous, and it seems like even in
| the 1800's that should have been considered a bit extreme.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It should probably depend on the product type. I get 20
| year parents for medicine where research is expressive
| and time-to-market is long. But for most fields 5-10
| years is plenty to make back your R&D investment and make
| a profit. And after your patent expires you still have
| the first-mover advantage
| Zigurd wrote:
| Pharma "research" categorization of expenses is
| maximized. In part to create sympathy for long patent
| terms, in part to obscure the role of government funded
| research underlying many pharma products, and in part to
| maximize tax benefits.
| anankaie wrote:
| And in large part because FDA multi-stage trials are very
| expensive to get through and the risk of failure is high.
| I know it is popular to hate on the pharmacy companies
| right now - and deservedly so - but the research costs
| are not totally made up like you are implying.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Maximized is not "totally made up." You will find
| software companies maximizing R&D tax credits, too, for
| example.
|
| A JHU study found median costs for clinical trials of $19
| million.
|
| That's expensive relative to software. If I piled HIPAA,
| payments processing, and whatever telcos might require
| for hooking up to SS7 in one app (call it "X") I doubt I
| could get halfway to $19 million.
|
| But $19 million is peanuts compared to pharma revenue. I
| stand by the assertion that pharma gets undeserved
| sympathy for long patent terms.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I stand by the assertion that pharma gets undeserved
| sympathy for long patent terms.
|
| Sure. That's an assertion that's easy to stand by because
| it's so easy for it to be true because it's so open ended
| and unbounded.
|
| I think most people believe the pharma companies are
| playing it up some and getting some undue sympathy, but
| 10x the sympathy and 10% more sympathy are vastly
| different situations and your assertion is "true" for
| both. It's less a question of whether that assertion is
| true, and more about to what degree, because that's what
| really matters in a discussion like this.
|
| A statement about the median cost of a _single_ study
| across an industry compared to pharma revenue (across an
| industry, across all studies done, whether resulting in a
| successful product that can make it to market and earn
| revenue), is not something we can make useful assertions
| from, whether or not I believe your assertion to be true
| (I do). It 's just throwing disjointed numbers around and
| using implications instead of data to link them, which
| isn't a useful way to convince people who want to
| understand what's going on.
| Zigurd wrote:
| How is an industry-wide _median_ cost "disjoint?" What
| number would better represent typical clinical trials
| costs?
| kbenson wrote:
| Is it the median cost for _a_ trial or for all trials
| that a company does? A company might have many trials
| going on at once, of greater or lesser costs, but revenue
| is an aggregation of everything over a year. A company
| with $100 million in revenue and 10 trials ongoing and a
| company with a $1 billion in revenue and 10 trials
| ongoing would possibly lead one to specific conclusions,
| but even when it 's broken down that much it doesn't
| really mean anything for the examples presented, because
| the mean cost of the trials that the company in question
| has ongoing could be entirely different. The 10 trials
| the $100 million revenue company is administering could
| average $1 million, and the 10 trials the $1 billion
| company is administering could cost 80 million each, by
| nature of the types of drugs they and markets they are
| aiming for.
|
| It could also be that there's lots of low cost trials
| around $20 million, but slightly less than half of the
| trials that are done are _very_ expensive, and 4-5 times
| the cost. This would be more obvious if there were values
| for bot mean and median, instead of just median.
|
| The looser the data, the less you can actually infer. Any
| time someone tells me the _median_ cost for something
| across an _entire industry_ , my immediate reaction is to
| wonder what that means, not assume I actually know what
| it means, because it's far too little data to really
| know. How many trials are done in a year on average? How
| many a year do companies average based on revenue? Or
| simple, what's the actual amount spent on trials compared
| to revenue, and over how many years are those trials run?
| Is yearly cost of a trial really a good indicator, if
| trials take 5-10 years to run, so a failed one results in
| not just loss of money spent but opportunity cost over
| many years?
|
| Note: If you provided a reference for that median number
| I would have actually looked it up to see if it made
| sense to me, or if I had additional questions about how
| they went about their measurements. Instead, all I have a
| questions about what the numbers mean because I have no
| context.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Here is a link to the JHU announcement:
| https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2018/cost-of-clinical-
| trials-fo...
|
| You will like some of the numbers on that site even less
| than the $19 million median cost for a trial.
|
| The study was published in JAMA, link on the JHU page. I
| hope this does not sound like an appeal to authority, but
| good luck discrediting the numbers.
| kbenson wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| > You will like some of the numbers on that site even
| less than the $19 million median cost for a trial.
|
| > good luck discrediting the numbers.
|
| I'm not sure why you would think I wouldn't like the
| numbers. I'm not pro-pharma, I'm just pro-informed
| reasoning.
|
| That said, the article you reference is a bit more
| nuanced than your take. By the studies they're citing,
| while the trials _for drugs that were approved_ have a
| median cost of $19 million, they are clear to outline
| that it does cost a lot to develop a new drug:
|
| _The $19 million median figure represents less than one
| percent of the average total cost of developing a new
| drug, which in recent years has been estimated at between
| $2 to $3 billion.
|
| "The cost of generating this fundamental scientific
| information is surprisingly low given the total cost of
| drug development and the high price tags on many drugs,"
| says study senior author G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS,
| associate professor of epidemiology and medicine at the
| Bloomberg School._
|
| So, while studies may not be a large cost center for new
| drug development, they state that new drugs are very
| costly to develop. Or maybe studies are costly, and it's
| just that it takes very many of them until one shows
| success. Ten concurrent studies on ten variations of a
| drug to look for something promising would cost ten times
| the amount, and there's still no guarantee that any one
| study will end in a positive outcome.
|
| If we're talking about the justification for patents for
| pharma companies, it seems like we should focus on the
| "total cost to develop a new drug is estimated at $2 to
| $3 billion" part and not the "$19 million median cost to
| run a study" part[1], which as I noted is lacked enough
| context to know exactly how much it relates to drug
| development cost.
|
| That said, I'm not sure the total cost number referenced
| above is accurate (to my taste) either. How much of that
| is advertising? How much of that is kickbacks and trips
| and drug rep lunches and free samples to doctors? I'm not
| sure because I don't have access to the full paper, so
| I'm not sure what their methodology includes. It wouldn't
| surprise me to learn that a few "blockbuster" drugs had
| 80% of the cost in massive advertising and good-will
| pushes to seed the public consciousness about them so
| they could make more money in the end, so I'm really
| skeptical that $2 to $3 billion is an accurate indication
| of drug development cost just as much as I'm skeptical
| that a $19 million median trial cost equates directly to
| the drug development cost in a way that's obvious from
| that number alone.
|
| 1: Referenced and linked in JLU article, but here's the
| link as well: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/artic
| le/abs/pii/S01676...
| thfuran wrote:
| The term (in the US) wasn't originally that long. It was
| decided individually but not to exceed 14 years. That's
| long, but much more reasonable in a time when it could
| take months for just some basic roundtrip long-distance
| correspondence.
| TylerE wrote:
| I don't think you can just state that in good faith while
| ignoring how much harder/more expensive R&D is these
| days.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| How much harder/more expensive is R&D these days?
| rudyfink wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it takes 5 years (or more) to
| both get a patent and litigate it though any appeal.
| FWIW, in the current U.S. system, my understanding is the
| time it takes to get the patent comes out of the 20
| years, though I think you can get some time back if it
| takes a very long time.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Correct. There IS a "patent term adjustment" if the PTO
| takes longer than it should.
|
| The term you want is "prosecute" not "litigate."
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Besides, airpods clones off aliexpress are supposed to be
| stopped by trademark law to begin with...
| jojobas wrote:
| They're typically not in breach of trademark, but airpods
| are protected with a bunch of "design patents" as well.
|
| https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/08/apple-has-been-
| granted...
| r00fus wrote:
| Patents are a feudalist holdover in a modern capitalist
| economy.
| rocqua wrote:
| I could imagine patents limited to physical designs, with a
| lifespan of say 5 years to actually be beneficial to
| innovation. Perhaps also a requirement to license patents at
| a 'reasonable rate'.
|
| I'm thinking of the 'sawstop' and 'festool domino'
| woodworking tools here. Which are important innovations that
| were probably motivated by patents, but whose patents have
| run long.
| xahrepap wrote:
| I actually think that Sawstop (in general. Might be some
| details that are bogus) is a great example of the patent
| system working as intended.
|
| The inventor reached out to several saw makers to license
| his new invention. None of them took it seriously. So he
| went and started a company with his new patent and became
| successful. Then other companies (Bosch specifically) tried
| to rip his tech off after they saw how effective it is, and
| he got to sue them and win.
|
| Also, their patents are about to or have already expired (h
| ttps://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/p6bhhb/so_are_the_sa
| ...)
|
| Sounds like the 20 years gave him just enough time to:
|
| 1. Attempt to license the product and fail 2. Create a
| company 3. Market the company / product effectively 4. Exit
| ( https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-
| tts-t... )
|
| And now competition will begin to roll out their similar
| saws. I think 5 years would've been far too short for him.
| He would've been squashed. There would've been no
| motivation for companies to license his tech or buy out his
| company. They would've just waited 5 measly years and then
| stomped him.
|
| Now. If this was software, this whole thing would've played
| out in what? 5 years? 10 tops? So 20 years, to me, seems to
| be about right for some things. but absolutely TERRIBLE for
| others.
| Taywee wrote:
| I think that exemplifies why the patent system should at
| the very least not have the same rules and terms for
| physical products as for software, if it should exist for
| software at all. The time and capital investments to
| start up are just so dramatically different.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| What I see is most physical patents involve something
| that is actually novel--the low-hanging fruit was picked
| long ago. Most software patents involve something that
| would be the expected product (or one of a small set of
| possible products) of assigning a software engineer to
| solve the problem. (To me the clearest example of this is
| blinking cursors. Draw by inversion or draw with a
| backing store--both are obvious techniques to any
| software professional, both were at one time patented.)
| xahrepap wrote:
| I absolutely agree. My point was more that using Saw Stop
| as an illustration of the broken system is a poor one.
| Because I think the patent on physical tech enabled a
| real disruption to the status-quo. Allowing "the little
| guy" to establish themself as a real competitor to some
| huge names.
| shagie wrote:
| Another "working as intended" patent: Light-reflecting
| board game https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242
|
| And the lawsuit over it:
| https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-
| wins-1-6-milli...
|
| > November 26, 2012 - Innovention Toys LLC, a company
| headed by a Colorado professor named Michael Larson, won
| its patent infringement lawsuit against MGA, Wal-Mart
| Stores and Toys "R" Us. A federal jury in New Orleans
| found that the defendants had infringed Innovention's
| patent on a strategy board game using lasers and mirrors.
|
| ---
|
| Back in the days of http://www.gamecabinet.com being one
| of the primary sources for board games on the web you'll
| note a search on it:
| http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html
|
| One of the things this let people do is find games that
| were patented, but never published.
|
| Sid Sackson wrote in A Gamut of Games:
|
| > The files of patents that have been granted are a
| fruitful hunting ground for forgotten games, although
| going through these files, as anyone who has ever been
| involved in a patent search well knows, is a time
| consuming job. Often the patented games are downright
| silly, such as a set of dominos made of rubber so that
| they can double as ink erasers (No. 729,489) or a sliding
| block puzzle with edible pieces so that a player who
| despairs of a solution can find collation in gratifying
| his stomach (No. 1,274,294). Often the patents are
| repetitious: There are over a thousand different baseball
| games.
|
| The publishing of a patent maintains the ideas - even if
| they never got anywhere. If you know how to look, its an
| archive of decades of board games rules... written in
| patentease.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Sawstop is a fabulous example. After the patent expired
| too, what are those other companies doing? Well, when I
| looked into European table saws last year, they started
| using it as a market segmentation tactic and putting stop
| tech only on their upper tier of $$$ saws. Disgusting.
| Felder, go fuck yourselves.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the US you can be sued if you have a safety system
| that isn't on some models and someone gets injured. check
| with a laywer for details.
|
| Note that despite the above, don't buy a tool without
| those safety features. Better to spend more now and live
| than get your heirs a pile of money.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Not sure about the details of that, you can definitely
| buy Hammer/Felder table saw products in the USA (not that
| I want to, given their shitty attitude about using this
| feature as a market segmentation tactic).
|
| It's frustrating because I'd much rather have a proper
| European sliding table saw like the Robland CZ-300 II,
| but I don't want to give up the safety of a Sawstop
| system.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can be sued, and will probably lose in court. however
| that is a risk you are allowed to take. They are allowed
| to see such products even though nobody should.
| Eventually regulations will take over, but for now it is
| just a economic optimization problem: will the monetary
| loss from killing/injuring someone and losing the law
| suite be more money that just putting the system on the
| say - I hope you feel icky just reading that.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I don't think this true of all patents. Patents for drugs are
| obviously necessary in the current environment. But software
| patents are definitely bogus.
| mughinn wrote:
| I'm not sure about "obviously necessary", but they are one
| of the few cases where they may be somewhat justified
| cycomanic wrote:
| It is funny that pharma is always brought up as an example
| for industries where patents "obviously" make sense. Pharma
| is in fact a pretty good example why patents don't make
| sense and hinder innovation.
|
| Historically, before the homogenization of IP law,
| pharmaceuticals had different patent protection in
| different countries, ranging from very strong (the US), to
| weak (most of Europe) to excluded (Switzerland). The most
| successful and innovative pharma companies who were
| outspending everyone else on R&D were from Switzerland.
| Patentability of pharmaceuticals suddenly gave US companies
| a big boost and was really a lobbying success, so they
| managed to gain strong market positions without much
| innovation.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Do you have a link to an article or book that covers
| this?
|
| I'm trying to workout why Swiss companies would outspend
| the rest, is it that patents incentivise sitting on your
| laurels? And did drugs require the huge testing they need
| now?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The cost of FDA approval was at least an order of
| magnitude lower back then. Why would anyone spend a
| billion dollars getting a drug FDA approved if after they
| do anyone else can manufacturer it?
| jsmith45 wrote:
| You still need FDA approval to develop a generic. The FDA
| will not approvea generic unless both the patents and
| other legal exclusivities (I think the FDA sometimes
| grants exclusivity beyonbd the end of the patent).
|
| If patents were abolished, the FDA could instead be
| authorized to blanket grant such exclusivity to genuinely
| new drugs, with pretty much the same effect as patents.
| contravariant wrote:
| I agree that it is the obvious choice for medicine, but is
| it really the best option? Do we really have no other
| methods to fund medicine? Is it worth prioritising new
| patentable discoveries over other ones like making drugs
| cheaper or using them more effectively?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? "
|
| We have. Public funded (also via universities) and
| donation based research.
|
| But investment money is kind of big and if it would
| suddenly disappear, it will hurt current research as most
| (?) of it is dependant on it. But all that money would
| not necessarily disappear, when patents suddelny gets
| abolished, as there is also the option of increased
| secrecy.
|
| Meaning they make effective pills, and work with
| regulators to test them - but share little about the
| manufacturing process. I believe that is already
| happening to some extent, but would likely increase a
| lot.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I think the current system probably funds it about as
| well as we could do. We get a bunch of startups
| attempting to push one drug through--succeed and it's a
| big payoff for it's investors, fail and they lose their
| investment. It's actually a bad bet for investors so it
| moves money from overly optimistic investors to the
| public.
|
| We do have problems elsewhere in the system, though:
|
| 1) Drug ads. They should be pretty much nuked from orbit.
| Drugs are a medical decision, any promotion activities
| should be directed at doctors, not patients. I would make
| an exception for drugs that radically improve treatment
| for something patients might have considered something
| they just have to live with and not told their doctors
| about. (I have Viagra in mind here--and that's the only
| one that comes to mind.) In such a case I would only
| permit "there is a new treatment for X, talk to your
| doctor", no names of either the drug or the company.
|
| 2) Dodgy approval decisions. The recent Alzheimer's drug
| comes to mind.
|
| 3) Drug companies should not be able to find out what
| doctors prescribe. That creates a conflict of interest.
|
| 4) I question whether drug makers should even be allowed
| to do the phase III testing at all. That puts the
| researchers in a position where a no decision could be
| bad for them down the road.
|
| On the flip side, I think we could benefit from having an
| appears-to-work type of approval. It would require
| extensive real-world use data (either from foreign use or
| like what we have seen with marijuana being widely used
| for chemotherapy nausea) but not the usual approval
| process. Obviously, no patents, but all companies selling
| it would be required to put some specified percent of
| sales into a pool used to fund more research. (And I
| wouldn't mind doing something like that for all drugs,
| albeit at a lower percentage. Every drug has say a 5% tax
| that goes into a FDA account for that drug. When there's
| enough money in the account to fund useful research about
| it the FDA does so. Common off-label uses would be prime
| candidates for such studies.)
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| That public funding has to come from somewhere, though,
| to the tune of quite a few billions of dollars. Do we
| really believe the tax increases required will be
| palatable to voters, and politically possible for elected
| officials? In the US, we can't even get universal public-
| funded healthcare.
|
| Not sure the increased secrecy would help all that much.
| Is drug manufacturing that complicated that a motivated
| company could not reverse engineer a new drug solely from
| its off-the-shelf product, without too much trouble?
| flangola7 wrote:
| Where is that money coming from right now? Ultimately
| it's still coming out of the average person's pocket.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Except that they are excessively gamed with reformulations.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Not sure why drug patents are obviously necessary. There
| are tons of issues with them including big pharma gaming
| the system to keep drugs protected for decades.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Without patents existing, who would pay for the trials
| required to bring a drug to market?
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Well obviously. How else could publicly funded research be
| price gouged?
| yebyen wrote:
| "Obviously." I like how this is the argument for drug
| patents, and if you don't just simply agree with this,
| the only real other option is to accuse the person
| arguing that it "obviously" is the right decision of
| arguing in bad faith.
|
| ...because it's an argument in bad faith? I too don't see
| why drug patents are "obvious" or clear case that it is
| helpful enough to be in the public interest to maintain
| drug patents. Is there any evidence that drug patents can
| actually enter the public domain productively at their
| end of their expiration period?
|
| I mean, if James Collip and Charles Best sold the insulin
| patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1 each,
| "so that everyone could have it" and we still don't have
| universal low-cost insulin over 100 years later, and
| prices continue to skyrocket, I'm more inclined to
| believe that for-profit medicine is just evil.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| I believe the original insulin is cheaply available. But
| newer, faster acting, variants which are easier to
| administer are still patented.
| yebyen wrote:
| I don't know much about it honestly, but this article
| that talks about PBMs is very interesting:
|
| https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/eli-lilly-lowers-
| insulin-p...
|
| > "Even though they're dropping their list price by 70%
| and capping their cost to patients at $35, it's important
| for us to make this very, very clear--the company is
| still making a profit,"
|
| ...
|
| > During a 2019 congressional hearing, insulin makers
| admitted that there's pressure to keep list prices high
| so that PBMs can also profit.
|
| > PBMs favor the drugs that will yield them higher
| profits. By lowering prices, Lilly runs the risk of being
| excluded from formularies, meaning the insurance
| companies will no longer cover the product for their
| patients.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Is there any evidence that drug patents can actually
| enter the public domain productively at their end of
| their expiration period?
|
| Practically all generic drugs are available because the
| original drug is off-patent. You picked one (insulin) and
| ignored all the others:
|
| https://www.healthgrades.com/right-care/patient-
| advocate/dru...
| yebyen wrote:
| I picked the one that was donated on purpose by its
| creators though, and it's still making profits for the
| drug companies 100 years later. So why do we need
| patents, then?
|
| From the page you linked:
|
| > While these drugs are nearing the end of their patent
| term, the release of generics may be delayed due to
| litigation, acquisitions, or other exclusivities. As a
| result, some expected generics from previous years may
| still be in progress.
|
| The point about the PBMs is that apparently, drugs have
| to be profitable or they are not made anymore. So even
| the generic companies need to position themselves in a
| way where their products are profitable, not only for
| them but for the insurance (or they will be dropped by
| formularies, and nobody's insurance will cover it.)
|
| If patents are the only way for firms to protect the
| profitability of their drugs then we are doomed.
|
| I picked one, sure, and you provided a list as counter-
| example. But the FDA also ships its own list... of off-
| patent approved drugs without an approved generic (and
| the current publication is a full 16 pages of drug
| names):
|
| https://www.fda.gov/drugs/abbreviated-new-drug-
| application-a...
|
| If the pharma companies can make a change to the formula
| so that the new formula of a drug is no longer covered by
| the original patent, they can get a new patent. I'm not
| an expert, but this is how I've understood the problem
| through reading about it. Yes, we have generics, but what
| doctor will prescribe "worse-pirin" when there's a better
| aspirin on the market now? What insurance company will
| cover it?
|
| So, with 20 years of head start and a deep war chest, the
| companies you mentioned can all iterate, stop research on
| the previous drug, put up legal roadblocks in the way of
| their competition, put out a new drug which cannot be
| copied, while it costs a lot of money (and time) for
| competition to get their generic form of the drug tested
| and approved. It's not as automatic as the term "patent
| cliff" might suggest.
|
| I'm just saying that the intent of patents in general is
| for innovations to enter the public domain after the
| period of exclusivity on the idea that enables their
| creators to enjoy profitability and a legally protected
| (temporary) monopoly on the idea. It seems like a fair
| question to ask, is that really what's happening? (What
| percent of time does it happen like that, what percent of
| time does it go down some other way?)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| First of all, you made a general statement and I
| demonstrated its falsity. Now you're changing the subject
| to, "Oh, but not all patented drugs become generics."
|
| I never said they did. However, there _are_ giant
| companies that do almost nothing but generics, like Teva,
| so obviously lots of generics exist:
|
| https://www.tevapharm.com/our-company/teva-facts-figures/
|
| As for "what doctor will prescribe "worse-pirin" when
| there's a better aspirin on the market now? What
| insurance company will cover it?"
|
| nearly all insurance companies require a generic to be
| used unless there's a very strong reason to use the
| branded product. In your example, if the new drug
| genuinely _is_ better, then the patients deserve to have
| it. If it 's a trivial improvement then it won't get
| approved.
| yebyen wrote:
| > First of all, you made a general statement and I
| demonstrated its falsity
|
| This is an extremely disingenuous reading of our
| conversation. I made a specific statement about a
| particular instance (which you dismissed as cherry-
| picking), and I asked a question at the same time. Which
| you reduced overall to a "general statement" while
| dismissing the specific example that was really important
| to the context of what point I was trying to make:
|
| > James Collip and Charles Best [donated] the insulin
| patent "so that everyone could have it" and we still
| don't have universal low-cost insulin over 100 years
| later, and prices continue to skyrocket
|
| > Is there any evidence that drug patents can actually
| enter the public domain productively at their end of
| their expiration period?
|
| There's an impedance mismatch between "nearly all
| insurance companies require a generic to be used" and
| "drug patents should be clearly in the public interest"
| when "drugs have to be profitable or they are not made by
| companies anymore."
|
| Why not engage a bit more directly with the original
| example, if you're going to accuse me of generalizing
| now? Let's talk about insulin, I'm sure I picked it for a
| reason.
|
| Is there a generic insulin that is chemically identical
| to a name brand insulin with the same efficacy? No, there
| apparently is not [1] - I won't claim to be fully
| informed on these issues, but it seems pretty clear from
| reading that the issue cannot simply be reduced to "lots
| of generics exist, so you are mistaken."
|
| Why can't we have low cost insulin from an entity that
| operates like the post office, that exists as a public
| benefit corporation without any profit motive?
|
| Does it really make sense that people who have insurance
| that is not "top tier" will not have access to the better
| (still patented) drugs, if they are really better? Are
| they better, or are they really just "evergreening"
| patents? If insurance typically only covers generics,
| then it's really problematic that there is no generic
| form of this lifesaving drug, and the monopoly persists
| more than 80 years after the patent should have expired
| on the original invention!
|
| The deal was supposed to be 20 years. What went wrong,
| does it "go wrong" a lot, and does it "go wrong" more or
| less frequently when human lives are at stake? These
| aren't unfair questions, and if Teva (or any company
| other than Eli Lilly) made a generic form of Humalog
| insulin then I probably would not ask them at all. But
| only Eli Lilly does, only Eli Lilly can.
|
| The same company apparently makes the so-called "generic"
| insulin that also makes the top-tier patented "Humalog"
| so maybe there are too many regulatory hurdles or
| something else is wrong. (I thought that the generics
| were supposed to represent the competition, that comes to
| save the day after patents expire...)
|
| If we're central planning, wouldn't we want to promote a
| resource arrangement such that the best drugs with the
| most promise and the greatest life-saving properties will
| go to the most people? Is it really so off-base to
| conjecture that a resource arrangement that actively does
| something else is "really evil?"
|
| [1]: https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/why-is-
| there-no-gene...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| No, you said, "Is there any evidence that drug patents
| can actually enter the public domain productively at
| their end of their expiration period?"
|
| How is it "disingenuous" to quote that? I'm not "accusing
| you of generalizing" -- you did it.
|
| I don't care to engage with you about insulin or indeed
| drug patents in general. Just say what you actually mean.
| yebyen wrote:
| If you want to go ahead and remove again the specific
| context of my question/assertion after I re-added them
| back together, to emphasize how important that context
| was, go ahead and do it. I said what I said, in the order
| that I said it, on purpose.
|
| I put the context back there together literally in the
| comment right above this one (and it was there in my top
| comment, too) because that was the context that I felt
| was most important, but now you've cut it right back out
| again.
|
| Humalog as we know it today was first released in the
| 90's and it's still patented. What are the actual
| enhancements that have been released in 2018-2019 to
| warrant the granting of a new patent for Eli Lilly's
| Humalog? Or is it out of patent?
|
| (Why can't anyone make Humalog other than companies that
| own patents on insulin, if Humalog has been out of patent
| since the mid 2010's?)
| monocasa wrote:
| It's funny, the people I know in biotech say the opposite,
| that biotech patents are bogus but they don't think they'd
| be able to get rid of the system because of how much
| traditional tech relies on them. Their minds are blown when
| I tell them how much of an issue they are for us in
| traditional tech too.
| orangesite wrote:
| The default narratives used to justify questionable
| industry practices fall apart so quickly when we engage
| in even the smallest amount of inter-disciplinary
| dialogue.
|
| I'd love to see more of this.
| drschwabe wrote:
| Thanks for the links. How do you suggest startup entrepreneurs
| work around the broader moral dillemma here?
|
| On one had, we shouldn't feed the flames but on the other hand
| - we may need a foundation of patents for defensive measure or
| to reaslitically compete against the likes of IBM who have a
| gajillion patents.
|
| And I'm aware of at least one government grant programs that
| requires patents apart of their application process. From what
| I can asertain this is otherwise money on the table, after
| meeting that prerequsite.
|
| Are you suggesting we walk away from technology grants and just
| wing it with regards to what may happen when IBM legal team (or
| other patent troll) comes knocking ?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > How do you suggest startup entrepreneurs work around the
| broader moral dillemma here?
|
| Turn your invention into prior art. Publish it, in detail,
| publicly. Then, if someone else tries to patent it, it's much
| easier to contest the patent application.
| joemullin wrote:
| Can you point me to the government grant program that
| requires patents as part of the application process? That is
| potentially very concerning. I would be interested to learn
| more.
| varispeed wrote:
| I've personally witnessed venture capital firms requiring
| patent filings as a prerequisite for funding. An
| acquaintance of mine once worked for a startup where the
| team was diverted from product development to ideation on
| patentable processes. The focus was less on innovation and
| more on creating a unique claim to secure funding, which I
| find misguided.
|
| The VC, instead of nurturing the inventive process, largely
| contributed to the crafting of a patent application. The
| objective was to design it in such a way that it was
| cryptic and as widely applicable as possible. Despite its
| questionable practices, the patent was approved, leading to
| the subsequent funding of the startup.
|
| However, the market didn't respond well to the idea,
| necessitating a pivot. Meanwhile, there were other
| companies independently pursuing similar ideas. They could
| have invested significant time and resources, unaware that
| they were infringing on an existing patent. It's a
| speculative guess, but I can't help but wonder if the VC
| fund is vigilantly searching for successful implementations
| of the patented idea, ready to initiate lawsuits for patent
| infringement. This illustrates the potential misuse of
| patents, which, rather than fostering innovation, sometimes
| stifle it.
| drschwabe wrote:
| It's a Canadian tech grant; non-dilluting - and they don't
| explicitly specify it is a requirement, but from the rep
| directly working for the program and anyone who I've talked
| to who has applied to the program your chances of getting
| the grant are basically zero if there is no IP.
| Coincidentally, they have another smaller grant you can
| apply for that goes direct to a service provider of your
| choice; and basically they suggest you use this first to
| pay for a law firm to get a patent started and then apply
| for the larger grant thereafter.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you are in the game, you have to play it.
|
| You don't have to advocate for it, and you can advocate
| against it. But you may not have much a choice on playing.
|
| Anyway, defending a patent requires some deep pockets, and if
| you don't defend them, they are just cost with no benefit.
|
| Besides, the IBM legal team _will_ come knocking, won 't tell
| you anything that can let you understand why, and you will
| have no other option but to comply. How many patents you
| have, or if they actually have one that you are infringing
| isn't really relevant.
| drschwabe wrote:
| Good points
|
| > Anyway, defending a patent requires some deep pockets,
| and if you don't defend them, they are just cost with no
| benefit.
|
| unless you just need them for gov't grants that require
| them - in this case it's an investment into a pre-requisite
| and if the net capital from the grant is higher than the
| cost of the patent you got then hypothetically you are
| ahead; unless there are recurring/other expenses involved
| in 'maintaining' the patent that I'm not aware of.
| le-mark wrote:
| Can anyone comment on which government grants require a
| patent?
| neltnerb wrote:
| SBIR grants will see it as a positive if you have a
| potential monopoly. They want you to have a successful
| business and a valid exit strategy is to sell out the IP
| or license it.
|
| Require is a strong word, it's just a strategy they
| recognize as valid.
| moneywoes wrote:
| > And I'm aware of at least one government grant programs
| that requires patents apart of their application process
|
| Any examples? Interesting, first time hearing about this
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I worked with companies that were funded by DARPA and
| patent filings were required. This was all in defense
| related tech like vision systems, robotics, communications,
| etc. There's a special portion of a patent application
| where you have to disclose that government funding was
| involved, so it must be a common occurance. If the company
| decides to later change the strategy for handling pending
| patent applications, they needed to get DARPA approval
| first.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'm not sure radicalising this debate helps anyone. We are
| trying for a narrow victory of preserving IPR. Turning that
| into a broader argument about software patents plays into the
| opposition's hands.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I agree that, in general, a series of narrow, tactical
| victories, especially those which lend themselves to being
| enshrined in legislation, do more to help a movement than
| trying to overturn an entire system in one stroke. Base hits
| rather than grand slams. It's not sexy, it's not what
| revolutionaries scream about, but it's about a million times
| more effective.
| bityard wrote:
| As long as people keep focusing solely on these "narrow
| victories" in order to simply maintain the broken status quo,
| the broader abuse of the patent system to serve as a legal
| anti-competitive moat in service of large companies who can
| afford expensive lawyers will continue. It's not radical to
| believe that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _long as people keep focusing solely on these "narrow
| victories" in order to simply maintain the broken status
| quo_
|
| I'm not saying drop the fight. Just to show a modicum of
| strategy. Turning an IPR fight into a patent debate lets
| those looking to quash IPR win while doing nothing for the
| broader debate.
|
| What _is_ smart, tactically, is doing exactly this when you
| oppose something: overscope so people disengage or get
| distracted in a juicier discussion while forgetting to send
| the relevant message to their elected or regulator.
| jjk166 wrote:
| On the contrary, continuously applying fresh duct tape to
| a fundamentally broken system allowing it to limp along
| allows the opponents to point to it and say "see, the
| system works as is" and the bias in favor of upholding
| the status quo wins out. By allowing things to fail, you
| force people to get engaged to do something to fix the
| problem, at which point actual change becomes possible.
| thfuran wrote:
| Allowing important systems to fail is not without cost.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| At some point, the immediate cost of fail-and-fix is
| lower than the total short to mid term cost of _not_
| fixing it.
|
| The problem arises when systems are intentionally set up
| to fail (e.g. USPS pensions, gutting education), because
| those who set them on a doom course usually do so to
| offer a privatized "alternative" to pocket the profits.
| jjk166 wrote:
| What course of action doesn't come with a cost? Fixing
| things well is expensive but fixing things poorly is
| generally more expensive in the long run.
| thfuran wrote:
| But the point is that what fixing something well means
| depends on the context. Total software re-writes are
| rarely a good idea for large production systems, and
| software isn't special in that regard.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Yeah, but we don't care about preserving the existing
| large production system, we explicitly want to switch to
| a different, more appropriate system.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _By allowing things to fail_
|
| Nothing in this context is "allowing things to fail."
| It's simply strengthening rightsholders' hands.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It's a failure for those who want to weaken
| rightsholders' hands, which presumably includes anyone
| who wants to see the patent system completely torn down.
|
| The point is if you want people to act, they need to
| first feel the pain of inaction. If the status quo is
| tolerable, there is less incentive to put in the great
| effort necessary for reform.
| myshpa wrote:
| Are you speaking/working for EFF? If yes, I'll delete my
| comment.
|
| Patents are abominations and should not exist. I don't see
| how informing the public about their negatives benefits
| patent trolls.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| On the other hand, it's been argued that without the threat
| of a radical faction, moderate reformers are completely
| toothless. I'm not sure there's a generic answer to this
| dilemma that applies to all situations.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's been argued that without the threat of a radical
| faction, moderate reformers are completely toothless_
|
| Once you're at the table. If you're trying to get people in
| the room, a radical faction drives them away. In this
| context, consider how many people didn't bother clicking
| through to respond to the patent office. And consider how
| many tuned out the discussion because we've seen it before.
| That's the power of radical over scoping.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| > I'm not sure radicalising this debate helps anyone.
|
| Oh but it does. That's in part how we ended slavery and gave
| women full human rights and citizenship. If anything radical
| ideas shift the Overton window into making progress actually
| happen.
|
| The second point is that the only _correct_ position here is
| the radical one: as far as I can tell, the truth here is that
| (i) patents do far more harm than good, and (ii) they cannot
| be fixed into more good than harm. Therefore, they should be
| abolished, plain and simple.
|
| Less radical positions may look reasonable, be more
| politically acceptable... but the only reality they'd be
| based on would be the flaws of our human minds and the
| existing power structures of our society. Because of those I
| indeed only have the faintest hope about patents being
| abolished in the foreseeable future. At best I'm hoping for
| some narrowing down: in scope, duration, or a strengthening
| of due process (mostly prior art).
|
| But I have yet to be convinced that the best course of action
| isn't the complete and utter abolition of the entire patent
| system. Now one could argue that that patents are a useful
| tool in our exploitation of the South, and losing it might
| weaken our position and ultimately make us a tad poorer as
| the South emancipates. That might even be true, see what
| happened for the COVID vaccines. But I don't think this
| argument would win any votes around here.
| TimPC wrote:
| Abolishing patents is likely to substantially hinder
| innovation. Maybe if it is accompanied by reasonable
| changes to other processes. But without patent protection
| there is a zero reason to spend $2 billion to $3 billion to
| get a drug through FDA trials when a competitor can make a
| generic afterwards for roughly $5 million and undercut you
| dramatically in the market as a result. People complain
| about patents endlessly without offering a realistic solve
| for this problem and think that innovation in fields where
| innovation is expensive won't be hampered at all despite
| this clearly not being the case.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| > _But without patent protection there is a zero reason
| to spend $2 billion to $3 billion to get a drug through
| FDA trials when a competitor can make a generic
| afterwards for roughly $5 million and undercut you
| dramatically in the market as a result._
|
| I see. The solution here is simple: let the private labs
| go bankrupt, hire their researchers in public facilities.
| You'll get your innovation back. As for the costs, well,
| sure you need to pay those researchers, but you get most
| of that back in the form of much cheaper medication.
|
| I mean, why keep capitalism in the areas where it is so
| obviously failing? I want effective roads, schools,
| energy, water, hospitals, mass transportation... along
| with health insurance, retirement plans, unemployment
| insurance... and for all of those, the best way I know of
| is to make them public.
|
| And while we're at it I'd like some democratically run
| media that aren't owned by a bunch of ludicrously rich
| people, so I don't get automatic propaganda about why
| making the above public doesn't work. Because it _does_.
| I'm living in France, I've seen it work.
|
| > _People complain about patents endlessly without
| offering a realistic solve for this problem_
|
| I think I just did. But you have to accept that it means
| reducing the scope of Capitalism, if not outright ending
| it. If you don't, well... explain to me how Capitalism
| will somehow not burn our planet to a crisp and depletes
| its resources. Because as far as I can tell the "only
| system that works" will not work for long. It cannot.
| Because Physics. Thus it will end, one way or another,
| and it'd be nice if it didn't take the world along with
| it.
| varispeed wrote:
| Hardware patents are bad too. Even more bad are those that
| cover both hardware and simulation of hardware in software
| domain.
|
| For example, someone "invented" a circuit that lets you control
| an analogue filter parameters in a certain way. Then also was
| granted patent for a software that mimics behaviour of such
| circuit. As if someone found a loophole to patent mathematical
| formulas.
|
| Either people that grant patents are dumb or I don't know.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| USPTO patent examiners are notoriously not granted enough
| time to review all submissions.
| EGreg wrote:
| I am glad Hacker News is still against massively centralized
| things of SOME kind. I remember when the cypherpunks here were
| in favor of blockchain and crypto. The latest zeitgeist of
| being against decentralized stuff (witness the hate of plebbit)
| is leading the "hackers" here to learned helplessness and
| support online feudalism (big tech monopolies). And I was
| worried people started to embrace patents too.
|
| Y'all will love decentralization next summer again.
| Animats wrote:
| The effect of the anti-patent push has been to pivot the VC and
| startup industry from technology to buying market share. When
| patents were strong, you came up with an idea, got it working,
| got a patent, and then went to a VC for funding to deploy. Now,
| you come up with an idea, hype it, and go to a VC for funding to
| hype it more.
| [deleted]
| xxxxx12345 wrote:
| [dead]
| dathinab wrote:
| If I where a US citicens I would want whoever is resposible for
| it to be fired and investigated for corruption.
|
| Because you need to either be severely incompetent to a point of
| by far not being qualified to do your job or corrupt to come up
| with that.
|
| If you do a bit research into the patent system it becomes clear
| that if anything challenging being to difficult and expensive is
| a problem not the other way around.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| AIU USPTO is corrupt by design: its incentive is its own
| commercial interest.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| I have a challenge out to all my friends: "Show me one, just one,
| software patent that is not obvious to someone skilled the field,
| and I will stop my annoying diatribes about how bad software
| patents are."
|
| To this day I have yet to see to a useful software patent.
| marc_abonce wrote:
| I don't like software patents but are SIFT and SURF really
| obvious? Even after 2 tries of trying to read and understand
| how they work, I've still only gotten the most superficial
| high-level view of them.
| jordanpg wrote:
| > software patent that is not obvious to someone skilled the
| field
|
| Small but significant correction: software patent that was not
| obvious to someone skilled in the field AS OF THE FILING DATE
| (or priority date).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The filing date is often a year after the provisional was
| filed, and the invention was already marketed. That doesn't
| mean that the provisional wasn't novel.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Yes, I understand and agree. I was correcting the OP of
| this thread, and got downvoted. I'm a patent attorney, what
| do I know. LOL. So many strong opinions about patents
| flying about.
| patrec wrote:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US4405829A/en
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US7478074B2/en
| feoren wrote:
| -- Method for node ranking in a linked database (PageRank)
|
| An application of Bayes' Theorem (1763) and heavily related
| to Markov chains (1906). Build a Markov chain of simulated
| users clicking around the internet and build its weights with
| Bayes' Theorem and you basically have PageRank. It's clever,
| but no more clever than what thousands of software engineers
| invent every day.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain
|
| -- RSA
|
| A pretty strong example, but largely based on Diffie-Hellman
| key exchange published a year before and known since 1969. At
| least this one was granted to its actual inventors.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie-
| Hellman_key_exchange#Cr...
|
| -- Support vector machine
|
| "The original SVM algorithm was invented by Vladimir N.
| Vapnik and Alexey Ya. Chervonenkis in 1964. In 1992, Bernhard
| Boser, Isabelle Guyon and Vladimir Vapnik suggested a way to
| create nonlinear classifiers by applying the kernel trick to
| maximum-margin hyperplanes. The "soft margin" incarnation, as
| is commonly used in software packages, was proposed by
| Corinna Cortes and Vapnik in 1993 and published in 1995."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine#History
|
| Patent issued in 2004 to none of the above people. Fail.
| Patent has FORTY YEARS of prior art. Should never have been
| issued. I personally remember SVMs being considered "old
| school" AI in my college AI class in 2005.
| patrec wrote:
| Ugh, I pasted the wrong patent there for number 3, but
| Vapnik does in fact hold a couple of SVM related patents.
| Concerning the "FOURTY YEARS of prior art", well SVMs
| without the kernel trick are about as much prior art (and
| useful) as perceptrons compared to Deep Neural networks.
| Spivak wrote:
| > An application of Bayes' Theorem...
|
| > but largely based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange
| published
|
| Novel applications are patentable.
| feoren wrote:
| > Novel applications are patentable.
|
| If they're non-obvious. Remember, the challenge was: show
| me the strongest, most defensible examples of software
| patents you can. GP did a great job coming up with 3 very
| strong examples of patents (taking his word that the SVM
| patent he meant to show is much stronger). And yet even
| in those top examples, there are (IMO) reasonable
| arguments that they still do not deserve protection. I'm
| not convinced either way, but there are arguments.
|
| My point is that "novel applications" are most of what
| software engineers do, every day. I contend that there
| are 10,000+ ideas equally as novel as PageRank invented
| every day. Senior software engineers probably come up
| with one every few weeks. This strongly challenges the
| idea that these are "non-obvious".
| Lapha wrote:
| Not to detract from the point too much, but RSA was
| independently discovered in 1973.
| Jalad wrote:
| These links seem to be self defeating in nature.
|
| First, most of them are math related, except you get the
| computer to do the math. You can't (or shouldn't) be able to
| own or outlaw math.
|
| The last link is a Support Vector Machine as far as I can
| tell. Those were discovered in like 1964 according to
| Wikipedia. And then it was patented in 199x? That's
| absolutely wild
| patrec wrote:
| > First, most of them are math related,
|
| Nope. At least not for any reasonably sane definition that
| would not apply to all software.
|
| > Those were discovered in like 1964 according to
| Wikipedia. And then it was patented in 199x?
|
| Maybe before whining about how Vapnik got an unfair patent
| for something someone else did in 1964, try learning
| something about SVMs and their history. It's quite
| insulting.
| kbenson wrote:
| From what I can gather, that's RSA, PageRank, and the idea of
| neural networks and how to train them (or some specific
| subset or advancement of that I think?).
|
| I agree these are novel and not something immediately
| obvious. I think what's happening (what _always_ happens) is
| that people overreact and have a hard time finding nuance
| when they are upset.
|
| Amazon's one-click patent was ridiculous. Is Google's
| PageRank? Maybe. Is the RSA algorithm or how to train neural
| networks? I don't know. Encouraging the development of these
| by granting limited time monopolies on them seems like it
| would encourage people to develop them, but if there was a
| different way to reward the inventors I would be interested
| in the _details_ (i.e. less blanket statements that it would
| be as good, but reasoned thought at a minimum and data if we
| are so lucky as to have some).
|
| Sometimes the problem is not the idea but the implementation.
| Maybe that's the case with some types of patents.
| patrec wrote:
| Almost, the last patent is about SVMs which are a different
| ML learning paradigm (one that completely eclipsed neural
| networks for some time, for what it's worth).
|
| > I think what's happening (what always happens) is that
| people overreact and have a hard time finding nuance when
| they are upset.
|
| Yup. I agree that software patents, in the US at least, are
| a bit of a cluster-fuck, but it's evidently not true that
| nothing non-trivial was ever patented.
| omginternets wrote:
| ARC cache is only obvious after it's been shown to you.
|
| Whether or not software patents are a good thing is an entirely
| separate question (one on which I suspect we agree, in fact)
| but software patents can and do contain actual non-obvious
| inventions.
| pas wrote:
| ARC is not completely obvious, sure, true, but it's a very
| very very hard stretch to call it worthy of 20 years of
| monopoly.
|
| It simply seems like a multi-tier cache (which it is, after
| all, it's 4 LRU duct taped together in a useful way).
|
| And, maybe there's nothing wrong with the 20 years, the
| problem is how hard much it costs to license it, how much the
| whole discovery process costs to the whole industry.
| omginternets wrote:
| Again, we're in agreement that software patents have many
| flaws, but the statement "only obvious things are patented"
| is plainly false.
| d--b wrote:
| Patents become obvious the second they're out. This is exactly
| why they exist. But coming up with the stuff in the first place
| is what's hard.
|
| I worked in video coding back in the day, I can assure you that
| there are stuff in the HEVC codec that are pretty far from
| obvious.
|
| AlphaGo is pretty high up there too if you ask me.
|
| Whether patenting software is useful or not is a different
| debate...
| kevincox wrote:
| I completely agree.
|
| Patents should be contrasted with trade secrets as that is
| their main "competitor". Is it useful to the general public
| to be shown the details of a new technology, but have it's
| use restricted for 20 years? Or is it more useful to prevent
| blocking of technology but these are going to be kept as
| trade secrets instead?
|
| From my point of view patents are probably harmful here.
| Having people be inspired and come up with alternative (or
| rediscover the same) implementations is probably going to
| lead to much better for the public than actually learning
| exactly how the original company did it in exchange for 20y
| of exclusivity (and all of the pain that enforcing the
| exclusivity brings).
|
| Remember that unlike copyright patents are not about
| encouraging the creation of work or innovation. They are a
| trade of information to the public for a period of
| exclusivity. For software that tradeoff seems far to far in
| the inventors favor.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think network effects are already so far in favour of
| software companies that the patents are not really needed.
| Look at how AWS resells free software via it's services for
| example. And anyone can copy them! And they are. But they
| are still the biggest by a long shot.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > AlphaGo
|
| What about AlphaGo? The Reinforcement Learning methods? The
| Monte Carlo tree search? The Deep Learning?
|
| DeepMind didn't invent any of these things but applied them
| in a novel way. If everything was software patented, AlphaGo
| may not have existed.
| d--b wrote:
| Again not saying I am for patents.
|
| Just answering the original question.
|
| Did AlphaGo bring anything new to the table? Hell yeah.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Did AlphaGo bring anything new to the table? Hell yeah.
|
| It is incredible software and deserves the Turning Prize,
| no question. But what new patentable tech did they
| invent?
| d--b wrote:
| Patentable tech doesn't have to be from the ground up. If
| you design something that solves a problem that wasn't
| solvable prior to your invention - regardless of the tech
| it is based on - it definitely qualifies for a patent.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Patentable tech doesn't have to be from the ground up.
| If you design something that solves a problem that wasn't
| solvable prior to your invention - regardless of the tech
| it is based on - it definitely qualifies for a patent.
|
| I asked twice what specific patentable tech they invented
| and you declined to answer.
|
| It is a straw man to suggest I was arguing against about
| any specific thing being patentable.
| d--b wrote:
| I thought it was clear it was the whole architecture,
| piping deep neural nets and monte carlo search together
| and using reinforcement learning on the whole thing is
| not something that had been done before.
|
| That guy:
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3459018A1/en?oq=EP345
| 901...
| telecuda wrote:
| The most useful thing about software patents IMO is what you
| uncover during the patent writing process. When you're sitting
| there writing the equivalent of a 10-20 page college essay on the
| problem background, operating environment, then all the present
| and future uses of something novel (the provisional stage), it
| forces you to think in a way that no typical product management
| process does. There are few (any?) other forcing mechanisms I've
| seen that produce the same results.
| nicce wrote:
| If your design or method is new and unique, just a write
| scientific paper about it. It is about the same.
| Spivak wrote:
| And then the legal team runs it through the legalese obfuscator
| 9000 to make sure no one else will have any idea what it's even
| about.
|
| Seriously, Google needed insider information at Sonos to
| infringe on their multi-room audio patent. Go read it and see
| if you could implement a working system from it
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/07/ef/fb/ac27ac8...
| telecuda wrote:
| That's true. The narrative can get lost or at least watered
| down in the process.
| freejazz wrote:
| Disingenuous at best.
| wiseleo wrote:
| Filed a comment. Please do the same. :)
| dedev5 wrote:
| Let me play devils advocate here.
|
| Although there are examples in this article of clearly scam
| patents being thrown out, please remember that there are likely
| examples of the opposite where clearly valid patents get thrown
| out without a court case, and more where it was unclear which way
| the patent office should go.
|
| Overall, this alternative system to challenge patents weakens
| patents as it is indented to. Especially in software patents this
| is may be a good thing to many, but it is clear to see that this
| system has probably resulted in some valid patents not being
| filed as their inventors lack faith that a patent will prevent
| uncompensated ip theft, and it gets hidden instead.
| jpollock wrote:
| Anyone have a link to the proposed rules? I couldn't see a
| reference to the text in the EFF release.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| The "Take Action" buttons take you to a page with both the
| rules and a way to comment on them.
| jpollock wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I assumed "Take Action" was a simple form, and I didn't want
| to do that until I read what I was taking action about.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| A valid assumption!
| jpollock wrote:
| When looking at the proposed rules, I think this is the
| problematic bit (search for "standing"):
|
| "The changes under consideration would make clear that the
| Board would discretionarily deny any petition for IPR or
| PGR filed by an entity that: (1) is a for-profit entity;
| (2) has not been sued on the challenged patent or has not
| been threatened with infringement of the challenged patent
| in a manner sufficient to give rise to declaratory judgment
| standing; (3) is not otherwise an entity that is
| practicing, or could be alleged to practice, in the field
| of the challenged patent with a product or service on the
| market or with a product or service in which the party has
| invested to bring to market; and (4) does not have a
| substantial relationship with an entity that falls outside
| the scope of elements (1)-(3)."
| jpollock wrote:
| There is also this - "intent to commercialize" would
| preclude most third parties.
|
| "The Board should first determine whether a petitioner
| meets the first three criteria--standing, intent to
| commercialize and privy/real party in interest--before
| moving to the compelling merits analysis."
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Why does the EFF have a problem with a rule about for-
| profit entities? Aren't they a non-profit?
| strbean wrote:
| These rules say that a company cannot preemptively
| challenge a bogus patent before developing something that
| would infringe that patent.
|
| This would have a chilling effect on the challenge of
| bogus patents, which is bad for creativity and
| innovation, and therefore against the EFF's mission.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You should read the rules. They only apply to patents
| that currently have ongoing litigation and parties that
| are not involved in the litigation or likely to produce a
| product. They are a lot more narrow than you think.
| strbean wrote:
| > They only apply to patents that currently have ongoing
| litigation
|
| No they don't. The allow the USPTO to prevent initiation
| of proceedings by denying petitions for IPR/PGR. The
| proposed discretionary denial criteria do not require
| that there is other ongoing litigation.
|
| Contrived scenario:
|
| - My company makes spoons, but I'm toying with the idea
| of pivoting into making keyboards.
|
| - PatentTrollCo. is granted a patent on "a button that is
| connected electronically to a computing device."
|
| - My company files for a petition for PGR on the grounds
| that this is not novel.
|
| - The petition is denied: it meets all the criteria for
| discretionary denial listed in the comment above [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36198908
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That comment is wrong. The rules clearly state that there
| has to be ongoing litigation on the patent. Otherwise,
| basically nobody could IPR anything until they get sued.
| strbean wrote:
| > That comment is wrong.
|
| It is a direct quote from the Federal Register notice
| published by the USPTO. The quote, with a bit more
| context:
|
| > The changes under consideration would make clear that
| the Board would discretionarily deny any petition for IPR
| or PGR filed by an entity that: (1) is a for-profit
| entity; (2) has not been sued on the challenged patent or
| has not been threatened with infringement of the
| challenged patent in a manner sufficient to give rise to
| declaratory judgment standing; (3) is not otherwise an
| entity that is practicing, or could be alleged to
| practice, in the field of the challenged patent with a
| product or service on the market or with a product or
| service in which the party has invested to bring to
| market; and (4) does not have a substantial relationship
| with an entity that falls outside the scope of elements
| (1)-(3).
|
| This seems pretty clear.
|
| > The rules clearly state that there has to be ongoing
| litigation on the patent.
|
| Can you direct me to the part of the new rules that state
| there has to be ongoing litigation? There are entire
| sections regarding parallel petitions and parallel
| litigation, but they are clearly presented as sufficient
| cause for discretionary denial on their own, and not as
| requirements for discretionary denial based on the other
| criteria referenced.
|
| Unless you're saying this rule will only apply to
| petitions where there are both parallel petitions AND
| parallel litigation (they are listed and discussed
| separately) AND the other mentioned criteria are
| referenced.
|
| > Otherwise, basically nobody could IPR anything until
| they get sued.
|
| Or demonstrate that the petitioner does not satisfy point
| 3) above:
|
| > (3) is not otherwise an entity that is practicing, or
| could be alleged to practice, in the field of the
| challenged patent with a product or service on the market
| or with a product or service in which the party has
| invested to bring to market
|
| This is why the EFF is worried.
| indymike wrote:
| The rule is trying to prevent commercial entities from
| having access to the IPR process. The EFF sees this as a
| threat to civil liberties in the digital world... From
| the EFF's About Us page:
|
| "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading
| nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the
| digital world."
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Someone should tell the UX/UI team at the EFF that banner
| blindness[1] (cf [2][3]) applies to bright, contrasting
| buttons in the middle of text content nowadays, in part
| because of websites like substack that way-overuse mid-
| article calls to action.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
|
| [2] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/120541/why-do-
| people-...
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32012875
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