Open Call From the Patent Office
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The government is about to start opening up the process of reviewing patents to the modern font of wisdom: the Internet.
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The pharmaceutical sues over patent infringement.
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Lawmakers returning from their summer break are expected to consider patent law changes that have pitted two of America's most invention-dependent industries against each other.
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Experts tell lawmakers the broken patent system chills innovation and feeds lawyers and trolls. Will something finally be done? Luke O'Brien reports from Washington.
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The Supreme Court is ready to hear from lawyers from Microsoft and AT&amp;T as it considers a long-running patent dispute between the industry giants.
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(InfoWorld) - Technology industry executives are pushing the U.S. Congress to reform the way patents are issued in order to process them more quickly while also making sure they are legitimate. Patent reform was one of the major issues discussed at the Tech Policy Summit Monday in San Jose, California. Patent reform legislation considered, but not passed, in Congress last year is expected to be reintroduced. Among the key provisions sought is the hiring of more patent review specialists by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which one critic at the conference said has a backlog of as many as 1 million applications. Another provision would make it more difficult for so-called patent "trolls" to acquire a patent, claim another company infringed on it and then force the company to pay a settlement in order to keep its business going. Lastly, reform advocates seek an improvement in the quality of patents, pointing to cases where patents are issued for innovations that are not unique. They also propose a post-patent review process. In a speech Monday night at the summit, Deborah Platt Majoras, chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, endorsed the idea of post-patent review. "Patents are not a driver of innovation, they are an impediment to innovation," said Mark Lemley, a professor of law at Stanford University Law School, speaking at the summit. "Everyone has an example of silly patents, such as the cat exerciser laser pen," Lemley said, but the problems with the patent law are more serious than that. Often, one company asserts a patent right against another company and forces that company to stop production until the patent issue is resolved. "The patent holdup forces the company to settle for more money than the patent is worth," Lemley said. There are also delays in the process of approving patents. SAP AG, the enterprise software maker, once had to wait 44 months until a patent application was approved, said Tim Crean, chief intellectual property officer and a member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, an industry group advocating reform. An official of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said the agency is planning to hire 1,200 patent specialists in fiscal year 2008. The patent office receives half of its patent applications electronically and wants to increase that number. Last year it approved 350,000 patents. But some at the summit want Congress toÂ move cautiously on patent reform. A group called the Innovation Alliance was recently formed to protect companies that patent technology but don't manufacture it. Taraneh Maghame, vice president and emerging technologies counsel for Tessera Technologies, said attempts to limit the rights of companies to defend patent rights could harm legitimate patent protection efforts of some companies. Tessera develops chip packaging technology and licenses it to chip manufacturers, such as Intel. "Not all of the tech industry is behind patent reform," Maghame said. Close to 300 people, including tech executives, advocacy groups and government officials, were expected to attend the Tech Policy Summit, which continues Tuesday.
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In the wake of a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling, patent reform is bubbling toward a boil on Capitol Hill, where advocates in both parties and both chambers are urging timely action on pending legislation and contending with well-financed interest groups on both sides of the issue.
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(InfoWorld) - European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy set out his plan for a single approach to patents across the European Union on Thursday, ahead of an Oct. 12 vote on the matter in the European Parliament, winning plaudits from some erstwhile opponents. Previous attempts to introduce European legislation on patents, or to extend existing legislation to encompass software, haveÂ met stiff opposition. McCreevy spelled out his two-track approach in a speech to the Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday. His ultimate goal is a single patent system across the E.U., but he is also pushing for improvements to the existing patent regime, governed by the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich. The EPO sees two problems with the existing regime: the lack of a single jurisdiction for patents in Europe, and the prohibitive costs involved in translating the patents into all European languages. Its answer to the jurisdiction question is the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), which many opponents of patents for software-related inventions abhor. The EPLA would create one patent court for patent disputes in all countries that are members of the EPO, which include all 25 E.U. member states except Malta. In his speech on Thursday, McCreevy appeared to take some of the EPLA opponents' concerns to heart. "I recognize there are legitimate doubts and concerns" about the EPLA, he told members of the Parliament. Florian Mueller, coordinator of a lobby group opposed to software patents, welcomed the Commissioner's approach. Mueller's group helpedÂ defeat a proposed European directiveÂ last year that could have enabled patenting of software. "During that long debate about the software patent directive, our concerns were always ridiculed by the Commission, making us out to be paranoid. Times seem to have changed," he said in a blog posting Friday. "McCreevy conceded that the proposed European Patent Litigation Agreement leaves a lot to be desired in its present form," he added. Mueller, along with many other critics of Europe's patent regime from the open-source and free software communities, and members of the European Parliament from four mainstream political parties, believe that the plans for an EPLA will simply duplicate the approach to patenting championed by the EPO. This regime has granted numerous software-related patents and is considered to be much more lax in the way it hands out patent monopolies than the national patent offices in individual European countries. Opponents of the EPO object to the fact that the EPO would select judges from within its own ranks to preside over disputes, as they believe this will spread what they call the lax attitude to software patents to all EPO countries. At a hearing in July hosted by the European Commission, EPO president Alain Pompidou called for the swift ratification of the EPLA, which remains a draft agreement. "The draft European Patent Litigation Agreement must be submitted to an intergovernmental conference as soon as possible," Pompidou said then. While McCreevy appeared to favor taking divergent views into account, he did stress the need for the EPLA in his speech. Mueller took issue with that in his blog, pointing out that patent disputes rarely involve more than one country at a time. National patent courts are, therefore, sufficient to deal with the vast bulk of cases, he said. "I don't mean to say that it's a perfect state of affairs if a company may have to enforce one and the same patent in more than one country at a time. But the current practice of sue-in-one-settle-in-all works quite well. About two-thirds of all E.U. patent infringement litigation takes place in Germany [about 900 cases per year], and in many of those cases the parties settle the dispute for the remaining European countries after a ruling or settlement in the first country in which they fight it out in court. That's pragmatic," he said. The European Parliament will vote on whether to support McCreevy's approach to patents on Oct. 12.
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The Patents (Third) Amendment Bill, which might be tabled in Parliament during the coming winter session, is a Bill which will pave the way for a new patent law.
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By Avrum D. Lank, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  Sep. 17--If you hear from the Internal Revenue Service, it is prudent to respond -- unless, that is, the first contact is by e-mail.
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Considers Gowers Review recommendations The UK Intellectual Property Office has launched a public consultation (pdf) on proposals to introduce a fast-track system for patent and trade mark applications. The plan builds on a suggestion made in the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property.â¦
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The Rules Committee of the US House of Representatives is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss how the latest sweeping patent reform legislation, H.R. 1908, is to be introduced to the floor of Congress. Pending the registration of proposed amendments, it could be introduced as soon as Friday.
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Any organization willing to donate a patent for environmentally friendly technology can join the group.
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Legislation would change procedure to challenge patents and assess damages.
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UKPO considers Gowers recommendations The UK Patent Office is considering how it might implement some of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of intellectual property law in the UK. One of the suggestions Gowers made in the report was that the patent authorities should evaluate how peer review might improve the patent checking process.â¦
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Big Blue's decision to open patents to public scrutiny could spur innovation.
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Strengthening its commitment to enable customers to tap the potential for business improvement through radio frequency identification (RFID) applications, SAP AG today issued a call to action for an open public ...