[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Can the U.S. Patent System Be Saved? here

[QUADICON]

Yes it can.
First, hire people who have had hands on experience in the tech industry. I would voice for Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates to be the first to elect to the patent office. These guys have money and thus won't be enticed by corporate big shots.

Apple tends to use courts where Judges are stupid and they win because the Judges aren't tech savvy enough to understand what si braod and what is specific. We aliminate the need for a court system in patent disputes, if the patent office didn't garnt stupid patents.

Thay dont know the difference from invention vs evolution. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Today's bulbs are evolutionary concepts in designa nd capability based on todays manufacturing capability. The only thing they could patent is te processed used to make speific things. You can't repatent the light bulb itself. And this is what the patent office is allowing Aple and others o do. Repatent ideas that alread existed prior to their application.

This post has been edited by QUADICON: 19 July 2012 - 08:14 AM

[crosswordbob]

QUADICON, on 19 July 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

Thay dont know the difference from invention vs evolution. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.

No he didn't. http://en.wikipedia....i/Thomas_Edison

Quote

Nearly all of Edison's patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17-year period and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14-year period. As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented as describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds.[26]
Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light.[27] Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer,[28] William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially.[29]
In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although the English inventor Joseph Swan had used the term prior to this. Swan developed an incandescent light with a long lasting filament at about the same time as Edison, as Swan's earlier bulbs lacked the high resistance needed to be an effective part of an electrical utility. Edison and his co-workers set about the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. In Britain, Joseph Swan had been able to obtain a patent on the incandescent lamp; though Edison had already been making successful lamps for some time, his patent application was incompletely prepared and failed.[29]
Unable to raise the required capital in Britain because of this, Edison was forced to enter into a joint venture with Swan (known as Ediswan). Swan acknowledged that Edison had anticipated him, saying "Edison is entitled to more than I ... he has seen further into this subject, vastly than I, and foreseen and provided for details that I did not comprehend until I saw his system".[30]
By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application, and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

QUADICON said:

And this is what the patent office is allowing Aple and others o do. Repatent ideas that alread existed prior to their application.

Edison's was not the first light-bulb. It was the first commercially successful light-bulb. Remind you of anything?

[HankRearden]

QUADICON, on 19 July 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

Yes it can.
First, hire people who have had hands on experience in the tech industry. I would voice for Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates to be the first to elect to the patent office. These guys have money and thus won't be enticed by corporate big shots.

Apple tends to use courts where Judges are stupid and they win because the Judges aren't tech savvy enough to understand what si braod and what is specific. We aliminate the need for a court system in patent disputes, if the patent office didn't garnt stupid patents.

Thay dont know the difference from invention vs evolution. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Today's bulbs are evolutionary concepts in designa nd capability based on todays manufacturing capability. The only thing they could patent is te processed used to make speific things. You can't repatent the light bulb itself. And this is what the patent office is allowing Aple and others o do. Repatent ideas that alread existed prior to their application.

Just end all software patents. Problem solved. Glad I could help.

[aaronj2906]

The moment the patent system became a corporate weapon for companies to litigate each other out of existence, rather than use it for business competition, the answer to this question became NO.

[jonljacobi]

The problem with the patent system is the assignation of the patents. No one in the office even understands what they're issuing patents for, lacking the expertise to decide if it's novel, useful, or obvious.

The system was meant to encourage hard work and inventive genius. If it does anything else, it's broken. They could fix it in a heartbeat, but there's too much money involved.

[Yargs]

For an interesting recent opinion column featuring interview quotes from Judge Posner (the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge who, sitting as a U.S. District Court presiding judge essentially rejected both Apple's and Motorola's damages claims--and counterclaims--for alleged patent infringements by the opposing side, see http://www.nytimes.c...-war.html?_r=0.

Essentially, Judge Posner insisted that the claimants provide compelling proof of actual, specific harm flowing from the alleged patent infringements, rather than focusing on whether infringements had occurred and then, as a followup, gauging the extent of damage by today's prevailing standards of calculation (which appear to be exceedingly loose). In Posner's judgment, no such persuasive proof was forthcoming from either side, so he dismissed the case with prejudice.

Of course, the amount of proof that Judge Posner considers necessary may be unachievable by mere mortals--like the exact pound of flesh that Judge Portia ruled Shylock was entitled to from his debtor, but that in extracting he must neither exceed nor fall short of by the tiniest amount, upon pain of death.

It will be very interesting to see whether Judge Posner's ruling survives judicial review because, if it does, it may have revolutionary implications for patent law.