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Fluffeh writes:
"In June, President Barack Obama called for action against patent trolls. Today the White House held a short conference updating what has happened in the arena of patent policy since then and announced new initiatives going forward — including one to 'crowdsource' the review of patents.
Currently, getting a patent is a one-on-one proceeding between the applicant and the examiner. Two pilot programs that allowed the public to submit prior art were only applied to a tiny number of patents, and in the first program, all the patents were voluntarily submitted by the applicants. Applying such scrutiny to a few hundred patents, out of the hundreds of thousands issued each year, isn't any kind of long-term solution.
Unless the crowd-sourcing initiatives were to put major new burdens on applicants — which would be resisted — the fundamentals of patent examination aren't going to change. Patent examiners get an average of eighteen hours to review a patent. Most importantly, examiners effectively can't say 'no' to applicants. They can reject a particular application, but there's no limit to the number of amendments and re-drafts an applicant can submit."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Sunday February 23 2014, @06:24PM
On the other hand, had I managed to get a PATENT on computerized accounting systems, that is far far worse, even if it only lasts for 17 years. Because then I can prevent you from writing your own.
That's not how patents work. My ex-brother in law worked at a factory, and often a manager would bring a competitor's gizmo and ask "can we make these with what we have here?" Porky asked about patents the first time ge got that question, and was answered "that's why we have lawyers. Sometimes you can get around a patent simply by making it out of a different material; say, brass instead of aluminum."
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org