

When Bad Patents Hurt Good People: Patent Threat Shuts Down Flight Planning Site - yanw
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/when-bad-patents-hurt-good-people-patent-threat

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Matt_Rose
RunwayFinder replaced tens of thousands of dollars of hard-to-use maps and
charts with a great free google maps interface. FlightPrep deserves to burn in
hell as far as I'm concerned

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patrickaljord
On a related note, the guys from Hipmunk[0] also patented something ridiculous
which is basically a simple jquery plugin.

[0]: <http://www.hipmunk.com/>

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nphase
Getting a patent for something isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.
Doing harm with those patents is. Many companies get patents to protect
themselves from situations just like this one.

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wazoox
When companies must have patents to defend themselves against patent trolls,
the only possible winners are lawyers.

Software patents are completely wrong. As a side note, pg said that if
software patents are wrong, then all patents are wrong. BTW I'm confident that
most of current IP environment (both patents and copyright) hurts people and
the economy.

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prodigal_erik
I don't think patents are wrong in all fields. They seem to work when you're
required to claim a specific, high-effort solution that the industry wouldn't
have found without you. They fail when you're allowed to claim an entire
problem by being the first to write down the features all solutions have in
common. With software, USPTO is enabling a land rush into a new discipline
that doesn't yet have enough written prior art to make any useful work safe,
and their bar for "novel and non-obvious" is absurdly low.

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yason
Patents _can_ help innovation but only in the rare cases where it's actually
worth to license the patent in order to still make serious money _now_. But
even specific patented solutions often seem to be a hindrance in overall
development.

As an example, when reading the history of steam engines, I recall several
occasions where development simply halted until some patent expired. Nobody
got any wealthier either but when the thing fell into public domain,
innovation rushed forward. And this was in the 1800's, and pretty much a prime
example of what the patent system was cooked up for: a mechanical, specified
engineering invention...

Yet it failed, already then.

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redthrowaway
Why is nobody talking about the real issue here: the slashed budget of the
USPTO that has made them unable to properly vet patent applications for a
decade? The problem isn't the trolls, it's the fact that these bullshit patent
requests are being granted in the first place. The USPTO can't afford to have
experts review patent applications, and this is the result.

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nickpinkston
I'd argue that:

1.) There are bad feedback loops between speed / quality / price of patent
examination and the amount of ridiculous patents issued.

2.) Increasing the budget to improve screening and throughput will lead to an
increase in patents submitted - will this increase at a higher / lower rate
than their budget? I.e. will new patent submissions bloat the office even more
than now?

3.) We could try to increase patent fees to cover costs, but then you'll "hurt
the little guy" and fully benefit the IBMs who can afford to blow money like
this.

4.) The boundary is quite gray between trolls (IV and others) and institutions
with near-troll behavior (IBM's if-it-sticks patent submission methods).

5.) There are higher ratios of bad patents in certain categories: process
patents, software, etc.

Conclusion: I bet that reducing the scope of what categories are patentable
scales very well in reducing bad patents than any method of trying to make a
better filter, because better filters will just lead to more patents to fill
the void.

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redthrowaway
I think you really need to re-examine 1 & 2\. Increasing the speed and quality
of patent review may lead to more patent applications, but would reduce the
number of baseless patents granted. As for price, the USPTO was never supposed
to be self-sufficient. Doing it properly means the taxpayer picks up the tab.
That's just something you have to accept in exchange for living in a highly
developed economy.

IBM's patents, as well as those of Google and others, are generally defensive.
They're meant to provide ammo to protect themselves from patent trolls.

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dhimes
Probably due to the fact that IANAL, I never understood why you need an actual
patent to defend yourself. Why doesn't just having prior art suffice? Seems
like if it's publicly reachable you should be safe. <sigh>

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dctoedt
> _I never understood why you need an actual patent to defend yourself. Why
> doesn't just having prior art suffice?_

Only having an actual patent gives you a weapon for a counterclaim. And it's a
weapon only if the company suing you for infringement is itself infringing
your patent.

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dhimes
OK- so you don't need one to protect yourself, only if you want to sue in
retaliation. Am I understanding that right? Seems if you can invalidate a
patent by showing prior art that would be a powerful deterrent to someone
wanting to sue you.

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dctoedt
> _Seems if you can invalidate a patent by showing prior art that would be a
> powerful deterrent to someone wanting to sue you._

Sometimes, yes, but not always. It once worked out that way for one of my
clients. The client got a letter from another company's lawyer, saying, "you
may be interested in this patent." That's code for a threat to sue. The other
company was a legitimate company that actually made stuff; it wasn't a troll,
er, _non-practicing entity_.

My client had solid evidence that _it_ had come up with the invention several
years before, and that it had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed the
invention. This put the client in a position to make a powerful invalidity
argument, one that can be especially persuasive to a jury -- _even assuming
this invention was patentable, we'd have been the ones entitled to the patent,
not them_.

I sent a letter to the patent owner's lawyer (whom I knew), saying, almost in
so many words: _I've reviewed some prior art not cited by the patent examiner,
and my client is not the least bit interested in discussing your client's
patent._ The lawyer asked if I'd send him a copy of the prior art. I said, _if
you file a lawsuit, you'll get the prior art in the ordinary course of
discovery._ The lawyer evidently got the message - we never heard from them
again, at least not on that subject.

(As usual, YMMV, and don't rely on this anecdote as a substitute for legal
advice. Knowingly infringing a patent without clear and convincing evidence of
invalidity could result in being held liable for _willful_ infringement. That
in turn could mean having to pay treble damages and the patent owner's
attorneys' fees, which will almost always be considerable.)

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dhimes
Thank you; I sure appreciate the insight. It's heartening to know that if you
try to do the right thing and mind your own business (as long as you
_document_ ) then you stand a reasonable chance of being safe (so the system's
not completely broken).

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CapitalistCartr
Three weeks ago they were going to fight it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2018272>

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soitgoes
And since then, he seems to be getting quite a bit of support in his fight:
[http://blog.runwayfinder.com/2011/01/07/the-lawyers-are-
talk...](http://blog.runwayfinder.com/2011/01/07/the-lawyers-are-talking/)

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cubicle67
reminds me of the crap Blackboard pull so they don't have to compete on merit

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dantheman
Another piece of evidence that software patents are harmful.

