This way, if there are any particularly good or bad reviews, then this helps highlight them by further peer-reviewing the peer-reviewers. Finally, perhaps journals should enforce a difficult choice for most academics—to publish OR patent, but not both. A patent is a publication, after all, even if not peer-reviewed. We live in the digital age, and plenty of new innovations coming out are computer related.
The call to end software patents is growing, but doing so may be a Faustian bargain. How will we protect and incentivize the next great idea to become a reality—to move from paper to practice?
Clearly though, the list of problems associated with software patents is growing and the list of solutions needs to catch up. In IP News. Conclusion We live in the digital age, and plenty of new innovations coming out are computer related. Varun Mishra. Twitter Feeds. Consider the following:. There is another side to this debate. In an effort to level the playing field between industry behemoths and entrepreneurs, as well as to rein in expensive litigation costs, there are those who advocate weakening or even abolishing patent laws.
Weak protections of cybersecurity innovations or narrowing the scope of patent eligibility for such innovations would be contrary to the intent of founding authors of Title 35 , which was to inspire innovations and strengthen the US economy.
Any effort to reform the foundations of patent law is an extremely significant topic for the cybersecurity technology sector. An unintended consequence would be to weaken the US economy. More importantly, particularly in the cybersecurity space, slowing the cadence of robust inventions is tantamount to opening the floodgates to unfettered malicious digital attacks and thievery.
On the other hand, strengthening the enforceability of patents can spur innovation because it will force infringers to design around clear patents with new innovations. For technologies like smartphones, a patent attorney likely would need to review hundreds of patents, including many patents that are not granted until long after the new product is launched. Failure to license relevant patents creates a risk of litigation and the threat the new technology could be forced out of the marketplace.
As a result, smartphone patent litigation is far too common. Apple — a smartphone pioneer — has participated in scores of lawsuits around the globe as both a defendant and plaintiff. As a plaintiff, Apple sometimes uses its patents opportunistically to hinder innovation by its rivals. Despite strong evidence that inventors before Apple had already accomplished the key steps to implement this feature, Apple convinced the courts that their version of this feature was patentable, and after seven years Samsung agreed to pay license fees to Apple to settle the case.
Economic research suggests that these litigation costs and license fees burden innovative firms to such a degree that on balance the patent system discourages innovation. In other words, innovative firms gain a benefit from their patents on their new technology, but that benefit is more than offset by the many patents owned by others that might be asserted against the new technology.
When an inventor gets a patent, she is supposed to reveal the secret sauce behind the invention in the patent, a public document. This allows scientists and engineers to learn about the invention and use that information to improve the technology. In practice, many inventors make shoddy disclosures.
Experiments reported in patents are sometimes fictional and often rely on dubious methodology. For instance, patent law permits an inventor to disclose the fictional finding that a drug treats cancer as evidence that she deserves a patent on that drug.
Inventors applying for patents are allowed to include predicted experimental results. The intent is to allow for earlier disclosure and to help smaller companies secure funding. But when evidence in patents is wrong, other innovators can be misled. Further, if other innovators want to figure out if the patented drug really treats cancer — or any other disease — they need a license from the patentee. Sometimes key pieces of evidence are missing entirely from patents. Imagine discovering that paper is a mediocre incandescent conductor in light bulbs and using that discovery to get a patent covering thousands of other conductors, including ones that, unbeknownst to you, work much better.
This happened to Edison.
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