Fix the patent system!

[WendyBG]

If ever there was a topic that deeply impacts the Macro economy, it’s the patent system.

The purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation by giving an inventor control for a limited time. Unfortunately, companies are gaming the system by getting patents on minor tweaks and on concepts that have never been demonstrated to work. This makes drugs more expensive and blocks real inventors.

This is a hot-button issue for me because I have read patents that were nothing more than science fiction. I have tried to reproduce patented processes in the lab, using the instructions in the patent, without success. The system is broken and counterproductive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/16/opinion/patents-reform-dr…

**Save America’s Patent System**
**By The Editorial Board, The New York Times, April 16, 2022**

**Twelve of the drugs that Medicare spends the most on are protected by more than 600 patents in total, according to the committee. Many of those patents contain little that’s truly new. But the thickets they create have the potential to extend product monopolies for decades. In so doing, they promise to add billions to the nation’s soaring health care costs — and to pharmaceutical coffers....**

**The United States Patent and Trademark Office has long since devolved into a backwater office that large corporations game, politicians ignore and average citizens are wholly excluded from. As a result, not only is legal trickery rewarded and the public’s interest overlooked, but also innovation — the very thing that patents were meant to foster — is undermined...**

**Enforce the standard that already exists: To secure a patent, an invention must be truly novel and nonobvious, it must be described in enough detail for a reasonably qualified person to build and use it, and it must actually work. The problem is these rules are poorly enforced....** [end quote]

The article has several other helpful suggestions.

The Senate confirmed Kathi Vidal, a Silicon Valley patent attorney, as director this month. Let’s hope that she seriously addresses these problems and isn’t just a revolving-door insider like so man other government officials. Too many patent office directors have come from or gone to industry jobs within months of holding the federal post.

Many billions of dollars and the future of innovation depend on an honest patent office that only awards patents to genuine innovations.

Wendy

[steve203]

iirc, the last time there was an attempt to “reform” the patent system, the result was to render patents held by garage inventors unenforceable, dressed up with a lot of posturing about “patent trolls”. So now, iirc, patents can only be enforced by large corporations. Basement tinkerers, like Bob Kearns* are now out of luck. Their inventions can be stolen by corporations, without a nickle of compensation for an invention worth millions.

Any further attempt at reform will probably only serve to further entrench the “rights” of corporate “persons”, against the rest of us. What other result could you expect where bribing elected officials is legal?

Steve

*Bob Kearns invented the control circuit for the intermittent windshield wiper that is now standard on most of the autos produced in the world. Kearns had a solid patent on it. Ford Motor stole it. The legal establishment would not help, so Kearns had to prosecute Ford Motor for infringement by himself. He won, but that was in the late 70s. The US is much, much, shinier now.

Film about Kearns trying to enforce his patent was made a few years ago.

Flash of Genius Official Trailer #1 - Greg Kinnear Movie (2008) HD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Biy-okZ0l8

[Leap1]

Wendy,

Fixing the patent system wont fix the pricing system. Not one iota.

Medicare Section D law prohibits the government from negotiating for drugs. Until that law is changed nothing else will change ever in these situations.

The pharma companies can still hold all the patents and have to negotiate to sell the drugs if the law is changed.

Very unlike a newspaper reporter to get things wrong. /sarcasm

[jerryab2]

Medicare Section D law prohibits the government from negotiating for drugs.

True. But there ARE ways around that.

[mschmit]

*Bob Kearns invented the control circuit for the intermittent windshield wiper that is now standard on most of the autos produced in the world.

Yes, Ford clearly took advantage of Kearns and he should have profited.
But the “current” circuits are most likely not at all like what he built which were analog.

On the other hand you have true trolls who never build and implement anything and file continuation after continuation on filed patents.
The poster child here is Gilbert Hyatt who was granted a patent for the microprocessor in 1990 that he filed 20+ years before and who never built any chip.

Mike

[jerryab2]

The US patent system was recently changed to “first to file” instead of “first to invent”.

[steve203]

The US patent system was recently changed to “first to file” instead of “first to invent”.

Which favors large corporations, and, ironically, patent trolls, who have the resources to assemble and file a patent application faster than a garage inventor.

Steve

[Leap1]

True. But there ARE ways around that.

Jerry,

There are ways around that but only in unique situations.

Anything else will be seen as executive overreach. Meaning it will probably fail in the court system. Then fail when we need action in a major national crisis. The US congress needs to act not the executive.

[pauleckler]

They do tinker with the patent system from time to time.

Patents that are not novel can be challenged in court and voided. How about a Go Fund Me or public service fund to do that? All it takes is bucks.

Most of the drug inventions are modifications such as drug combinations or controlled releases.

If they are obvious they should be struck down.

Coca-Cola got a patent on polyethylene glycol terephthalate (PET) plastic made from ethylene from fermentation ethanol claiming this is an improved “green” plastic. People have been making ethylene from fermentation ethanol for eons. Its conversion to ethylene glycol is old hat.

How can you patent something like that? They claim its a novel concept.

[jerryab2]

How can you patent something like that? They claim its a novel concept.

Easiest way is to look at the market. Are they collecting royalties for their patent from other companies?

If yes, then they win.

If no, then they lose.

[jerryab2]

There are ways around that but only in unique situations.

This is not unique.

Anything else will be seen as executive overreach.

The executive branch has nothing to do with it. Congress wrote the law, and there is a massive hole in that law–if you look for that hole AND know what to seek.

[steve203]

Coca-Cola got a patent on polyethylene glycol terephthalate (PET) plastic made from ethylene from fermentation ethanol claiming this is an improved “green” plastic. People have been making ethylene from fermentation ethanol for eons. Its conversion to ethylene glycol is old hat.

How can you patent something like that? They claim its a novel concept.

Most inventions build on previous inventions. There is a trial sequence in “Flash of Genius” where Ford Motor challenges the validity of the Kearns patent, on the grounds that Kearns did not invent any of the components of the device (a transistor, capacitor and variable resistor). Kearns’ reply is that he put them together in a novel way. He reads a passage from a Dickens novel, to demonstrate how Dickens assembled existing words, in a novel way, to create a new product that could be copyrighted.

We really old phartz remember a TV series from the late 70s “Connectons” that followed invention threads, each inventor building on the work of predecessors.

Connections is a science education television series created, written, and presented by science historian James Burke. The series was produced and directed by Mick Jackson of the BBC Science and Features Department and first aired in 1978 (UK) and 1979 (US). It took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention, and demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology. The series was noted for Burke’s crisp and enthusiastic presentation (and dry humour), historical re-enactments, and intricate working models.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documenta…

Steve