So by looking at the patents APPL just won I'm starting to get hit by dozens of industries this could effect.
Perhaps FORD has the patent on a 4 wheeled motorized vehicle. That would make every golf cart, car, truck, and RC car pay royalties to FORD.

Now naturally with no scientific basis on facts. Say Firestone came out with the first rubberized interliner on tube. The industry basically just let everyone use it because it was such a huge safety advantage. Can Firestone or whoever now go after all the cars using whats considered normal things? Where does it end?

 

It wasn't patented first... That's why you see all these companies patenting EVERYTHING and the system itself is overloaded and can't properly oversee the patents so validity is right out the window.

There is no end as things are going, at this rate a 4 dollar device will cost 6000 dollars because of licensing fees in a few years.

The cause of this is market competition which is FIERCE. Whole ecosystems of employees live and die based on these patents now-days.

From it's roots of protecting an inventor it's become corporate profit mongering and trying to protect absurdly obvious advances.

 

Kill that patent system, and you'll see innovation come back because companies won't be able to hide behind patents. they'll have to create something new after everyone else copies it.

 

I wouldn't say scrap the patent system because in some fields its needed. But a total overhaul wouldn't be bad.

 

For instance
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol...ctures-thanks-absurd-copyright-214921172.html

 

The courts broke the patent system, and I think big business like it that way, so it is not likely to be fixed.

 

Agreed, and printing text books are a much bigger biz then many people realize. Hell selling used text books is an industry unto its own.

 

Bill, it will get fixed eventually somehow, when they realize the only one that's really profiting is the lawyers, Now that Apple has opened the floodgates to patent litigation on a grand economic scale for trivial matters the genie is out, in the next few years you're going to see even bigger court cases with larger damages for totally trivial things.

The patent system is already imploding with patent troll companies sprouting up by the score. The patent database is so large and the concepts so stupid simple in many cases from a human standpoint it's virtually impossible now to make any sense of it, they're just stabbing in the dark with a big finger and stomping their feet till a judge goes 'okay'

It will progress past this current point of absurdity and big business will notice because, the current Apple/Samsung spat could net Apple 3 billion dollars in damages.

Also think about how many pantents there are how much it costs to get one and how much you can expect to retrieve is one is infringed on and how many methods there are of doing this.. You can bet now, all Samsung will have to do is send a single blueprint revision to it's case makers and a couple thousand lines of code changes to bypass the patents they're current infringing on

 

I suspect this has been going on a lot longer than you realize, some of the key decisions from the courts were made in the mid 90's. Lately it has turned into a big business.

 

the patent office has a newsletter ... you can read them at http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/independent/eye/201206/index.jsp

 

Don't forget R.C.A. and congress,R.C.A. didn't have F.M. they went to congress

had a bill passed that allowed small changes in curcuits to be another subject.

Thus R.C.A. got F.M. changing the curcuit a little. Lobbist for an Industry writes

langage and congress passes it. What about movie stars trade marking there kids

names.

 

I was only referring to the most modern court rulings that are feeding the frenzy of patents as big buisness rather than as something to protect inventors Bill. A once good system has been turned against the original goal.

It's easier to hide a lot of things nowdays behind tade secret rules rather than the patent system, it's too expensive for little things, and virtually impossible to litigate an infringement if you don't have hordes of cash.

But trade secret has serious limitations on what it can protect.

 

For those in the U.S. Trade secrets are covered in 18 USC 90.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-90

In a law opinion, written in the State of Washington, is expressed here http://www.seattlepatentlaw.com/articles/USTradeSecretLaw.pdf

There is a table juxtaposing the differences between patents and trade secrets in the brief.

Enjoy reading.

on edit ... for the Texan's out there ... more info is found at http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/trade-secrets-law-texas

 

http://readwrite.com/2012/12/20/ano...hermonuclear-war-becomes-even-more-of-a-farce

This time it's the so-called "pinch and zoom" patent getting rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and this is a big deal since that patent was one that Apple used to achieve that huge $1 bilion verdict against Samsung in a California kangaroo court last summer.
Now what happens? Does the court in California go back and subtract all the damages that the jury awarded to Apple based on this patent that Apple should never have been granted?

 

In the 1 billion link there is a correction to the record ...

Correction: September 1, 2012

An article last Saturday about Apple’s victory in a patent lawsuit against Samsung described incorrectly one Apple patent that was at issue. The patent covers a method of distinguishing between one-fingered scrolling on a touch-screen device and two-fingered gestures like pinching to zoom out of an image. It does not cover the pinch-to-zoom feature itself. The error was repeated in an article on Monday about the case’s effect on innovations in technology and it appeared again on Tuesday in an article about the possibility the decision could move Apple closer to a fight with Google.