
White House responds to Patent Petition - tyw
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/response/promoting-innovation-and-competitive-markets-through-quality-patents
======
jxcole
What an incredible cop out. Basically this is an entire page of saying
nothing. Nothing at all. He's not saying they are going to do something about
the patent problem. He's not saying they aren't. He is just trying to inspire
you without committing to anything...at all.

~~~
someinternetguy
From what I've seen this is how the response has been to every petition thus
far. They basically give an overview about the topic and some historical
information but really say nothing and promise nothing. It's the equivalent of
setting a trashcan in your office and putting a sign on it that says
"Complaint Department".

~~~
sv123
Would be humorous if this petition got the necessary signatures to get a
response: [https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/actually-
ta...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/actually-take-these-
petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-
listening/grQ9mNkN)

~~~
thoughtsimple
Thanks. It won't make any difference but I still love it.

Everyone please sign this petition. The sign up process sucks but it will be
worth it to make the Obama spin machine have to respond to this.

~~~
hugh3
It's not that hard for the Obama spin machine to respond to this. "Blah blah
blah, of course we take all suggestions very seriously. In fact we have
already done [something unrelated]. We thank you for your interest. Give us
money."

------
fourspace
TL;DR - We heard you, we just didn't listen. We aren't changing anything. In
case you didn't know, though, President Obama is awesome.

~~~
jkeel
Yep. It makes me wonder if they would pay more attention if maybe a patent
troll came after them (I know, I know... it won't happen). They are using
Drupal for whitehouse.gov and I'm sure other open source tech as well. There's
got to be something in there a patent troll could claim. Maybe the petition
software itself. Someone's got to have a patent on allowing people to submit a
post and allowing people to vote on it. Hmm...

~~~
onwardly
I absolutely love this idea. Its easy to shrug something off when it doesn't
affect you. Eating your own dogfood is an entirely different matter.

------
ceejayoz
This is the third or fourth petition with a massive, lengthy non-answer I've
seen pop up on the site. I'm generally an Obama fan, but this is just
unacceptable.

Looks like it's time for a "Answer petitions with something meaningful"
petition.

~~~
tyw
Indeed there is: [https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-
ta...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-
petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-
listening/grQ9mNkN)

~~~
dlsspy
Is there a petition for "make login work so I can sign petitions?"

~~~
nitfol
I spent 10 minutes trying to log in using Chromium. It half-way showed that I
was logged in, but I couldn't actually sign a petition. Logging in with
Iceweasel (Firefox), it worked immediately.

~~~
sixtofour
I couldn't sign the petition (two petitions actually) with Firefox.

The maddening thing is that I was _already_ logged in (the telltale at the
bottom said so), but the Sign button was disabled.

Sent a complaint.

------
harryh
Check out the twitter account of the guy that wrote the statement:

<http://twitter.com/qpalfrey>

You can tell it's really his by who he's following (The US Gov CTO, The
Massachusetts AGO).

Incredible.

EDIT: Well, he appears to have woken up and deleted them, but his tweet stream
was filled with weight loss and "make money from home" spam.

------
noodle
so, this is basically a "no" that funnels into talking points without actually
saying "no". just like every other response to every other petition on that
site that i've participated in.

------
noonespecial
My first thought was "well Asia and India will certainly be pleased". But
that's not true. They don't care about our "intellectual property" at all.
They'll just make. We just won't.

------
AndrewHampton
From what I've read in the petition responses, it seems to me the whole system
is designed to spread information about what Obama has already done or
positions he's already taken to a targeted group of people.

------
yellowbkpk
These "petitions" are only there to find out what a small portion of the
electorate want to hear during the election season.

As mentioned elsewhere in these White House petition threads, clicking a
button on a web form does not (yet) do anything to the political process.

~~~
hugh3
It's more cynical than that. Like the vast majority of online petitions, they
exist primarily to harvest email addresses.

------
elehack
Reasonable response, especially given the current legislative and judicial
situation. USPTO doesn't have the authority to unilaterally cease issuing
entire classes of patents when Congress and the courts have, so far, directed
otherwise; what they can do, however, is seek to improve patent quality &
decrease vague patents. I'm not sure how successful they will be, especially
given funding issues, but this stance seems to be about as far as they can go
at present. We need change to come from elsewhere, including the law schools
(so lawyers get disabused of this notion that software + computer results in a
new machine).

~~~
brlewis
When you say "Congress and the courts" the truth is "only the Federal Circuit
Court". The Supreme Court of the United States' best interpretation of patent
statute is that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not
statutory material for a patent. See <http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-
startup/2011-07-28>

And now that the Fed Circuit in the Bilski case has backed off a bit from
their flagrantly wrong In re. Alappat decision and its affirmation in State
Street, one could argue that there isn't any court left claiming that software
for general-purpose digital computers is patentable.

~~~
elehack
Until the SCOTUS decisively overturns Federal Circuit precedent, it counts as
"the courts". Yes, it seems that the SCOTUS isn't pleased, and things are
looking up, but current national precedent is that software is patentable. I
believe this is based on some interpretation of congressional intent, and
Congress has not stated that it does not consider software to be patentable
but, rather, that in some cases at least it should be. I have seen this line
of reasoning used in court decisions I have looked over.

~~~
brlewis
I'm very interested in any citation related to apparent congressional intent
that in some cases software should be patentable. Please share.

I'm also interested in arguments for or against the notion that the Federal
Circuit overturned themselves in the Bilski case, affirmed by SCOTUS.

~~~
elehack
> I'm very interested in any citation related to apparent congressional intent
> that in some cases software should be patentable. Please share.

If memory serves, Kennedy's arguments in the SCOTUS decision in the Bilski
case are based in part on apparent congressional intent. I don't have concrete
citations to actual congressional activity; this impression is seeing it
alluded to or asserted in decisions such as _In re. Bilski_. I'm making the
assumption that the justices are not totally fabricating, although they may be
misinterpreting.

~~~
brlewis
I looked through <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf> and
couldn't find what you're referring to. If you find a more specific citation,
please let me know.

------
civilian
There was a HNer who was looking into translating code into formulas. It's
theoretically possible, and has a great outcome: Because mathematical formula
aren't patentable. Does anyone know where that guy went?

~~~
trobertson
I'm pretty sure there's another argument going around, that looks something
like this:

    
    
        All software can be ported to Haskell.
    
        Haskell is isomorphic to a subset of math.
    
        Therefore, software is math, and is unpatentable.
    

Whether that argument holds, I don't really know. It's just something I've
seen floating around out there.

~~~
raphman
'Patent 5,893,120 reduced to mathematical formulae':

[http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931...](http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-5893120-reduced-
to-mathematical.html)

~~~
trobertson
Yep. That is exactly where I remember this from. Thanks for pointing it out.

------
sp332
I don't think it's a cop-out. It just explains (probably correctly) that a
petition is not a good medium for expressing the problem and talking about
possible solutions. There is a link <http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation>
to the place where this conversation is already underway, and which you are
welcome to join in.

~~~
JoshTriplett
That's most definitely a cop-out, or more accurately "the run-around". It
tells a pile of people who have already expressed their views to wander
elsewhere and express them again, deflecting the original effort. That blunts
the force of the original response. Oh, and the linked site wants public
comments within the next week or two.

~~~
sp332
The site's been up for months. It seems like anyone who actually cares about
the issue would have been able to find it by now, since it's on the USPTO home
page, first link under the IP Law & Policy section. <http://www.uspto.gov/>

Not exactly _on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a
disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'._

------
mateo42
These petitions are like filing bugs against a software team that just doesn't
have any interest in fixing the system.

------
icebraining
Can anyone copy-paste it here? It doesn't load for some reason.

EDIT: It seems there's a non-JS version which works:
[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-
tool/response/promoting...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-
tool/response/promoting-innovation-and-competitive-markets-through-quality-
patents)

~~~
ars
It won't load for me till I turn off noscript completely. There isn't even a
site I can give temporary permissions to, I have to turn it completely off.

~~~
brador
How did they do this?

~~~
ars
Wish I knew. Maybe a hidden flash object?

I should contact the noscript author and ask him to check.

------
jwingy
lobbyists win again...

If only a group of wealthy individuals who were interested in improving our
political process and decision making could form their own lobbying
group...against lobbying!

------
padobson
I knew what the first two paragraphs of this response before I even clicked on
the link. Whoever wrote it is an uncreative shill, at best. The institution of
governing is old, crusty, and broken - and in serious need of disruption.

As we see around here, the best way to change the world is to build something
that changes the world, not use government to use its citizens to change
society at the point of a gun.

If you want to fix the patent system, build something that fixes the patent
system.

------
damiongrimfield
am i the only one that thinks its funny the white house office of science &
technology doesn't have html entities under control yet?

Quentin Palfrey is Senior Advisor to CTO for Jobs and Competitiveness at the
White House Office of Science amp; Technology Policy

~~~
sologoub
That's sad... also, when I was signing a petition this morning for something
else, logging in would not work in Chrome.

~~~
Zephyr314
Nor Firefox... (at least on Ubuntu)

~~~
dbingham
Clearing your cookies will fix this. But you'll need to do it every time. Can
you say "Broken site" ?

------
eschulte
I know it is easier to click a button on a web page than to make a phone call,
but perhaps you should call your representative if this issue matters to you.

~~~
sp332
Representatives are in the legislative branch. These petitions are to the
executive branch.

~~~
Klondike
The legislative branch is who needs to act here, they decide what is
patentable.

------
daimyoyo
These petitions are nothing more than a distraction to keep people busy. The
president will not do anything about them regardless of how many signatures it
gets. This is just the latest one to have shown the white house an issue
Americans clearly care about, only to receive a big fat meh in response.

------
mrj
Start another one.

------
sshconnection
Is there anything in We the People or Data.gov that could be infringing? Maybe
they'd take it more seriously if they had first hand experience with a patent
suit...

------
Aloisius
If we required patents to be commercially exploited for a period of at least 5
years and required people/companies to renew them every year for a fee with an
included statement that they were or were not using them commercially, I think
it would go a long way towards eliminating a lot of ridiculous patents.

Plus it would give the USPTO plenty of money to actually approve patents in a
timely manner.

------
gattis
[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-
ta...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-
petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-
listening/grQ9mNkN)

------
faichai
To summarise: fuck you very much

------
michaelcampbell
"Fuck you, pay me." -- Henry Hill, or... the US Senate

------
gridspy
As an entrepreneur, I'd like to see patents abolished. Totally.

The cost of the patent system is obvious. The benefits are not.

------
wavephorm
This sounds like a wordy way of saying "Piss Off".

------
alok-g
By the way, they didn't technically had to even respond to the petition since
the threshold needed of 25,000 signatures within one month was not crossed
[1].

[1] <https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions>

~~~
hrabago
At the time the petition was submitted, the threshold was only 5,000.

