Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: patent office closure Message-ID: <5668@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 13:15:30 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.5668 Posted: Wed Jun 5 13:15:30 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 5-Jun-85 13:15:30 EDT References: <1926@watcgl.UUCP> <656@lsuc.UUCP> <5652@utzoo.UUCP>, <662@lsuc.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 67 > Henry, I'm trained in Patent law and you aren't. The fact is > that the breadth of a patent for a word processor *could* have been > that wide. It depended on when it was patented (what the state of the > art was at the time) and who drafted the patent (possibly how good > your lawyer was at the time)... Guilty. I should have made it clear that I was criticizing your specific example (the evolution of text processing has been too gradual, it seems to me, to justify a far-reaching patent claim) rather than the seriousness of the general problem. > The related problem is who is a person > 'skilled in the art' (and what exactly is the state of the art, with > all the legal restrictions). This and "prior art" are obviously sticky problems. One of the flaws in our current patent system is that almost any patent can be invalidated if you hire enough lawyers and dig hard enough for vaguely-similar things mentioned in the past. I'm not sure how to solve this, although I would speculate that the basic "new under the sun" criterion is the source of the problem, and that a workable approach might be found by broadening the rules to make ignored-and-forgotten ideas patentable even if they are not new. Maybe. > At heart I don't mind people making a fair gain on their sweat > (and often dumb luck), but why only the first person who makes it > to the Patent office? Often this is the real criterion... > ... Often more than one person > is working towards the same goal somewhere else. Through no fault > of his own he gets beaten out. Is this really so fair? ... My understanding of the origin of patent law is that it had nothing to do with being "fair" to inventors. The idea was not giving the first inventor of a concept proprietary rights because he somehow deserved them, but because it is in the interests of mankind that such ideas be published rather than kept secret. Practical ripoff protection requires either secrecy or some sort of proprietary rights; guess which method is used more and more as our patent system has become less and less effective. I would dearly love to see readable descriptions of the graphics algorithms inside Apple's Quickdraw package, and wide publication of these ideas would probably benefit mankind. Fat chance, because Apple can't patent them and therefore cannot protect them except by keeping them secret. Is this really fair to the rest of us? I agree that simultaneous invention needs better handling in patent law. In fact, current patent law is badly in need of improvement to make it effective again; it's virtually useless in its current state. Several of the issues you mention do need addressing, and could be given attention at the same time. I do not see that any of them invalidates the basic concept: limited-term proprietary rights over an idea (not just its expression) in return for full disclosure of the idea. > You know that trick of 'Copyrighting' a printed circuit board? > It looks now like that won't work in Canada (would have been an Industrial > Design and required registration as such anyway, I should add). We > need law to protect circuit boards too. Patents won't help... They won't help protect Isaac Asimov's novels, either. I never said that patents were the answer to everything! Finally, as should be clear from the above, I have no quarrel with your last point: the current system badly needs overhauling. I do feel that there is a place for patents, or something like them, in a revised scheme. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry