The wrong kind of reform. As the article indicates, it's clear that it makes a deeply flawed system in favor of large companies and patent trolls even more so.
If inventor A invents something useful and foundational and open-sources it because he feels it benefits all mankind, can some greedy turd patent it later and yank it back out of the public domain because he was "first to file"?
Currently all I have to do is invent the thing and publish it and it becomes prior art, no need to file anything because I'm first to invent and I proved it by publishing. Under this new system do I have to file first and pay for it before I can declare it public domain?
I can't see it helping the little guy, because if one party has infinitely deep pockets and the other can't afford to fight anything in court, then the larger party can lawyer up and beat the little guy into submission regardless of what the law says.
I am curious why, in light of software and gene patents becoming increasingly more relevant and flawed, the order in which patents are filed becomes "the first overhaul of patent laws in six decades".
Wow. What a horrible analogy. Completely off base.
This bill is very radical, but there has been a call for reform for some time. I think this is the wrong way to go. The first person to reduce an idea to practice should still be the first person to get a patent. Making a mad dash to file @ the USPTO shouldn't be the way you decide who gets the rights to an idea. The decision should turn on who came up with that idea first.
My 2 cents.
So the question becomes how do we deal with who should get the patent. Instead of relying on the different time-lines of the actual development of the idea and reducing it to practice (actually making it work or having a proof that it will work) the new law will switch us over to a "who got in line first" system. To me that's a loss for inventors and for innovation. I do think we need a major cleaning up of the patent system, but this isn't the direction we should be going...
Sorry for that rant, it just seems so damn frustrating what with the health-care debacle and now this.
Yes, thanks to basic economic incentives. You'd think we would start to figure this pattern out eventually, but nope, we just keep asking for new programs and committees and regulations and laws and create juicy target after juicy target and then we're shocked when corporations and politicians join forces to pick them off one by one.
Even if we go for something like national healthcare due to pragmatism and expediency, we should do so with the full knowledge that the best we can get out of it is a corporate crony controlled nation healthcare system--it may be significantly better than what we have, but it will still be sucky and corrupt because we aren't going to make structural progress until we face the structural flaws, both in our particular model of government and in government as an institution.
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/02/patent-reform-act-of...
I'm particularly interested in the new third-party challenge procedures, which would let people submit arguments during patent examination and then oppose patents on any grounds after they issue (for example, you could contest the patent at the Patent Office for being vague; right now you can only do that in court).
Bill summary here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-23
