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posted by mattie_p on Saturday February 22 2014, @10:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the it'll-never-happen dept.

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."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 24 2014, @12:27AM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday February 24 2014, @12:27AM (#5396) Journal

    WHY you right it never enters into the discussion of what is and what is not art.

    The idea that code is not meant to be read by humans if just not true. If it wasn't meant to be read (and maintained) by humans, we would all write it in binary 1s and 0s. Instead we use languages, invented by and for humans, which some machines have the ability to carry out the instructions there in.

    By work of art I meant Art in the sense that literature is art. Music is art. Sculpture is art.

    Music is the closest equivalent to Code. Sheet music is the closest thing to instructions for some other entity (human or synthesizer) to perform a task (make sounds) in a specific order.

    In short, I don't believe you get to preempt the definition of a work of art SIMPLY because it can be read and action-ed by a computer. I believe that has already been done:

    To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

    I'm sure you would agree that code is "Writings".

    So I don't understand your current nit-picking here. The Constitution was meant to be a

    • framework

    . It was never intended to be omniscient, or predict future methods.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
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