Replies to post #115222 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

LOL re this exclsuion in the US patent bill under debate in Congress:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/business/28patent.html

The bill would also change procedures for challenging patents, before and after they are issued, alter how damages can be assessed and allow the patent office to set its own fees for applicants. It also contains an odd provision that would outlaw patenting “any strategy for reducing, avoiding or deferring” federal, state or local taxes.

The most important change in the bill is to change from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system; the latter is the international standard.

[DewDiligence]

US Senate Passes Patent-Overhaul Bill

[Now it’s on to the House. Please see #msg-60150853 and the chart in #msg-37325719 for background.]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703560404576189153930311330.html

›MARCH 9, 2011
By SIOBHAN HUGHES

WASHINGTON—The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation Tuesday to overhaul the U.S. patent system, reviving a long-stalled effort and raising industry hopes that the biggest changes to patent laws in almost six decades could soon be enacted.

The 95-5 vote capped a six-year effort, and came amid a Democratic call for the country to innovate its way out of high unemployment—and concerns that China, which has said it issued a record number of patents in 2009, would gain another edge over the U.S.

"If we're going to win the global competition by out-innovating the rest of the world we need a patent system that works in the 21st century," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), who shepherded the legislation through the Senate.

Under the measure, the U.S. would shift to a "first to file" patent-rights system from a "first to invent" system. It marked a victory for big companies seeking to reduce legal challenges; a number of such companies, including Caterpillar Inc., 3M Co. and General Electric Co., formed the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform to push for the overhaul bill. But passage was a blow for small entrepreneurs, who say they lack the resources to rush applications to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The Patent Office would also gain power to set its own funding, a move that is likely to mean higher application fees but also greater resources to process an application backlog that exceeds 700,000.

The bill passed only after lawmakers dropped the thorniest issue: whether to narrow damages paid for infringing on a patent. By dropping the damages provisions, the legislation essentially leaves the matter of where to set damages up to the courts.

The result is a less-ambitious bill that also stands a greater chance of clearing the House of Representatives and becoming law.

"While it would be good to address inefficiencies like outsized damages, the surviving aspects of this bill such as ending the practice of diverting money from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, instituting new processes focused on improving the quality of granted patents, and empowering the Office to set fees to hire more examiners and upgrade infrastructure are all positive and necessary steps," said Lewis Lee, a lawyer at Lee & Hayes, which represents large patent filers including Microsoft Corp., Boeing Co., Intel Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The House Judiciary Committee plans to introduce and vote on its own bill in the coming weeks, and the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said patent legislation is clearly on the agenda.‹

[DewDiligence]

More on the shameful backlog at the USPTO and why
it can’t fix the problem (Congress steals the money):

http://blogs.forbes.com/ciocentral/2011/05/06/the-patent-office-dilemma-how-congress-robs-peter-to-pay-paul

With an average pendency of almost 3 years, there are over 1.2 million patent applications now pending, and over 700,000 awaiting initial review.

[iwfal]

Mr. Obama astonished a group of technology executives last year when he described how the office has to print some applications filed by computer and scan them into another, incompatible computer system.

I've actually seen this sort of thing - as part of a consulting job I did for a Colombian telecom company. Their telecom system had multiple interconnected service providers (e.g. caller-area x, backbone y, and destination z) but the consumer (reasonably) only got one bill. Problem: Every service provider used incompatible accounting software and they would, literally, retype it in. (thus they were years behind and with unrepairable disagreements about the books)

Much of the patent office’s decline has occurred in the last 13 years, as the Internet age created a surge in applications. In 1997, 2.25 patents were pending for every one issued. By 2008, that rate had nearly tripled, to 6.6 patents pending for every one issued. The figure fell below six last year.

Though the office’s ranks of patent examiners and its budget have increased by about 25 percent in the last five years, that has not been enough to keep up with a flood of applications — which grew to more than 2,000 a day last year, for a total of 509,000, from 950 a day in 1997.

At some point they will have to follow, at least partly, in the steps of the Copyrights. Copyrights before about 1900 were much more centrally controlled than they are now (e.g. in order to have a valid copyright I believe you had to file with the LoC) - but then the centralized copyright system couldn't keep up with the explosion of material and had to fully decentralize and let the courts deal with any items that couldn't be negotiated between patent holders. Realistically the patent office doesn't add a lot of value at this point - lots and lots of completely obvious things are patented because the patent clerks have no way to keep up with the ever widening fields of human knowledge. (I'd love to see what percentage of patents are rejected and how dumb they have to be before they are rejected).