
EFF Defends Public’s Right to Access Court Records About Patent Ownership - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/victory-eff-defends-publics-right-access-court-records-about-patent-ownership
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rudolph9
Related note: anyone with a qualifying engineering degree can [become a patent
practitioner][1].

I stumbled across this while looking into law school and was surprised to see
my Computer Science degree was all I needed to qualify for the exam. The exam
is difficult from the sense that each question has a good amount of
information you need to process and 100 questions is mentally straining.
However, the exam is open book and you basically have everything you need to
figure out all the questions during the exam.

The exam is also relatively cheap, somewhere around $500 total (not including
any additional learning materials, I use [OmniPrep][2]), and allows you to
practice as a patent practitioner nationally.

[1]: [https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/patent-and-
trad...](https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/patent-and-trademark-
practitioners/becoming-patent-practitioner)

[2]: [https://www.omnipreppatent.com/](https://www.omnipreppatent.com/)

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1vuio0pswjnm7
USPTO used to have a limitation on Computer Science degree as a qualifier. It
had to be from an approved Computer Science program. There were only a handful
of approved programs; most were not sufficient to qualify. Have they changed
the rules?

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SpicyLemonZest
Unfortunately they have not. (And you may be aware of this, but I should note
that the required ABET accreditation doesn't have much to do with adequacy;
many of the best CS programs specifically choose not to seek it because they
don't agree with ABET's requirements.)

~~~
1vuio0pswjnm7
I changed the word adequate to sufficient. I have long wondered about this
issue of qualifying with a CS degree and have never met anyone who has
qualified that way. I suspect if we looked at the courses required for the CS
degree at the handful of approved programs we might see a difference from the
courses required for the non-approved programs, but I am just guessing. I
would love to know the reasoning behind this rule.

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YayamiOmate
"a prolific patent litigant" that should be urban dict definition for a patent
troll. And with addition of "losing majority of actual trials" a regular
dictionary.

I think it's becoming if not already became apparent that IP law is deeply
flawed. The sole existence of legitimate business model of patent trolls is an
indication as well as solutions hurting public designed to avoid corporate
litigations such as you tube content infrifiment marking. Its biased against
individuals.

But, oh well,bills and laws are not sponsored by public, so it's hard to
expect they work in their favour.

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yummypaint
Part of the problem is that there are no criminal penalties for making false
copyright claims as far as i know. A troll could be sued in civil court, but
it's a long expensive process with non-negligible risk, and in practice
individuals rarely attempt it because of the same asymmetries that enable
patent trolls in the first place. What we need is an actual law that levies
meaningful penalties for abuse. Maybe $100+ fine per invalid DMCA request, or
2x the demanded damages in lawsuits. That would at least help put a stop to
shotgun blast automated takedowns, and inflated multimillion dollar claims
designed to fleece teenagers and college students.

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qppo
The exact problem is that it puts the burden of proof on the accused, who has
to fight the claim under penalty of perjury (while there is no reciprocal
requirement for the accuser).

The simple fix is to make false DMCA claims tantamount to perjury.

~~~
ikeboy
DMCA claims already must be submitted under penalty of perjury. It's just rare
to see prosecutions.

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phkahler
>> that’s because private parties keep asking publicly-funded courts to
resolve their disputes in secret.

Lovely phrasing for such a practice. Glad to see Alsup still fighting the good
fight

