Posted on 04/24/2018 6:00:08 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
This is bad news for small inventors... and business as usual for Big Tech “efficient infringers” who game the IPR, PTAB system and bleed small firms to death.
Big Tech steals IP, SCOTUS drives the getaway car.
IPwatchdog on Oil States:
“If patents are public rights that can be challenged at any time and revoked that necessarily means they are not property,” said patent attorney and IPWatchdog publisher Gene Quinn. “Property rights vest and title quiets. Without that fundamental attribute, patents are nothing more than a government franchise. It is hard to believe innovators will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and up to a decade fighting the Office to obtain a government franchise that can be stripped at will.”
“Trade secrets will become far more important until Congress overrules Oil States,” Quinn said. “In the meantime, it will be hard for innovators to justify spending billions necessary to achieve disruptive innovation only to be awarded a government franchise that can and will be revoked by the PTAB once proven valuable.”
“Trade secrets will become far more important until Congress overrules Oil States,”
Those used to be more prevalent before the days of crazy software patents and the necessity to have a ton of patents in hand to do some licensing trading to avoid litigation.
Howard Hughes dad was even more of a visionary than thought. Only his people allowed on site as the drill bit was lowered into the hole as well as when it came up.
The only case example given was a Water Balloon Filling System?
Something straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
Congress listens to donors and patent attorneys: this is the kind of law that has to result.
Patent law is skewed from the inventor to the exploiter. Just the opposite of what the Constitution intended.
Gene is 100% spot on. But hey, at least we cut down all the laws to get those evil patent trolls. What’s that? Now anyone can simply know knife tpur imvention and laugh in your face? Why innovate ladies and gentlemen when you can immitate.
There are many- the Water Balloon patent is just an early example and one that is easy to understand- the PTAB death squad has a pattern of declaring after the fact that the patents that they are killing were “obvious”.
The court was basically correct. Patents are granted as a license to exclusively use an invention. To claim that they are property means that they can only be revoked by a jury full of know-nothings who are usually swayed by the David (patent troll) versus Goliath (big company claiming patent is invalid) argument. t’s about time to reign in the patent trolls, administratively.
Obvious, but no one ever saw it until the inventor did.
My brother-in-law’s brother made such an observation and got his patent.
I loaned him money to pursue getting his product to market. Now I worry about getting paid back.
Well I’d be curious by what rationale these patents are getting struck down.
Perhaps the field of ideas is today so crowded that the rule, rather than the exception, is to collide. In that case, losing patents altogether would ironically be unable to stop progress.
“Litigation continues until the weaker party runs out of money to continue the fight”
It has become a vastly larger problem since Obama signed the America Invents Act that created the PTAB and IPRs.
Obama is very closely tied to Silicon Valley and the big tech firms who wanted this bill, in order to further their strategy of ‘Efficient Infringement’- a fancy way of saying “let’s steal the patents of small firms because they’ll die before the courts force us to pay”.
IPRs permit a nearly endless string of challenges to your patents, and that can be done by parties that would have no standing in court- such as hedge funds that are shorting your stock, which benefit by means of using the PTAB to cost the patent owners a fortune in defending their patents against the very USPTO that granted it.
The PTAB has none of the protections offered by an Article III court. They can pick “judges” who were employees of the firms challenging your patent, they can stack the panel to get the outcome that the head of the PTAB wants, they can deny you the ability to offer evidence, to appeal. It’s something that Kafka would recognize.
“Obvious, but no one ever saw it until the inventor did.”
You’re not supposed to notice. The PTAB certainly doesn’t.
They have a patent killing ratio of 80-90%.
It is a creation of the Silicon Valley lobby. They wrote it, and Michelle Lee was the head of the USPTO, appointed by Obama.
What did Michelle Lee do before she ran the patent office? Glad you asked- she was deputy general counsel and head of patents and patent strategy for Google.
” losing patents altogether would ironically be unable to stop progress.”
So... you think that people will spend the time and money to create new technology that others can simply take at will?
Correct. patents are not property and they never have been. They are merely monopolies setup by the government for a presumed public good. They bear no resemblance to property rights, which exist to allocate rivalrous goods with a minimum of violence. Patents exist to artificially inflate the price of a good.
“Property rights vest and title quiets. Without that fundamental attribute, patents are nothing more than a government franchise."
Yes. Exactly. Ask yourself why, if patents are property, do patents expire after a certain period? Property rights do not.
"It is hard to believe innovators will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and up to a decade fighting the Office to obtain a government franchise that can be stripped at will.”
Name for me any property right that cannot be stripped at will by the government we live under. All it takes is a vote, or a verdict.
Ever heard of the fashion industry?
People innovate in pursuit of profit, not exclusivity. This is perfectly demonstrated by the fact that almost no inventors wind up owning the patent for the inventions they create. Most patents are owned by the companies that employ those who do the innovating. Yet those engineers and scientists and others keep on working.
Only certain types of economic activities can benefit from patents and the patent system tends to redirect investment into those areas. But that is a distortion of the market. Who is to say what would have been done with those investments if the economy had not been distorted to favor patentable innovations?
“Name for me any property right that cannot be stripped at will by the government we live under. All it takes is a vote, or a verdict. “
Do you know why we have Article III courts?
“Who is to say what would have been done with those investments if the economy had not been distorted to favor patentable innovations? “
Let’s see.... Alexander Hamilton and the Founders versus the wisdom of SeeSharp...
it’s a tough call. I’ll have to think about it.
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