Category: Intellectual Property

An article on the Small Times website ("U.S. patent examiners may not know enough about nanotech", by Doug Brown, 4 February 2002) describes some potential problems faced by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in evaluating what is expected to be a sharp increase in the number of nanotechnology-related patent applications. The article describes problems with both a lack of staff expertise in the relevant fields and the fact that there is no well-defined group or office within the USPTO that can develop the necessary deep expertise or consistency in examination policy. As the article notes, "With examiners ignorant of the scope of nanotechnology, companies would be faced with patents that are either rejected improperly because the examiner mistakenly concluded that the application is not new, or overly broad patents that would give a single company far too much control over a particular swath of a technological field. . . . Now, nanotechnology patents are scattered from technology center to technology center. As a result, patents live in isolation within different art units. The agency doesnít necessarily need to launch a nanotechnology center, . . . but it should put in place a system that funnels nanotechnology patents to specific people tutored in nanotechnology within the different technology centers. The nanotechnology specialists can communicate with one another, which would help ensure that only the right patents are granted for the right reason."

Note: Small Times has begun posting short notices on the latest micro- and nano-tech patents in a special section of their website.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor ("Whose idea is it, anyway?", by Ruth Walker, 17 January 2002) presents arguments from many sides of the issue that while patents have been essential to ensuring innovation, the U.S. may now be limiting innovation by putting too many new developments under patent protection.

Among those quoted in the article is Chris Peterson, Foresight Institute President, who "thinks the patent system has been overextended – not just in volume but in kinds of patents. . . . The US economy has prospered, she says, in part because of the strength of its property rights, including patent rights. ' We have deeply learned the lesson of private property … but we've gone too far. As far as I can see, the property rights model works with physical things, but not ideas. We're pretending they can't be shared.' "

The article also notes that "Patent skeptics, such as . . . Peterson, argue that to treat ideas like physical things – "rounding 'em up and branding 'em like cattle" – is to deny everyone the full benefits of an economy based on infinitely sharable ideas. The patent advocates counter that it is precisely because so many of today's new products are almost pure "idea," with little physicality, that robust patent law is necessary."

The New York Times has published a laudatory review of Lawrence Lessig's passionate new book, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World in the 6 January 2002 issue. As the review notes, Lessig argues that America's concern with protecting intellectual property has become an oppressive obsession. "The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law," he writes, "is its almost limitless bloating." As Lessig sees it, a system originally designed to provide incentives for innovation has increasingly become a weapon for attacking cutting-edge creativity.

An interesting article on dubious patents ("Owning the Future: Patent Pollution", by Seth Shulman) appears in the July/August 2001 issue of Technology Review Magazine.
Shulman points out, "as almost anyone in the intellectual-property game will tell you, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office continues to grant patents that are, well, patently invalid. I'm talking about patents for things that have either already been invented or are so straightforward and apparent they don't meet the patent's law requirements for being novel and nonobvious."
He continues, "For years, people have griped about these bogus patent claims . . . And the patent office has long promised to do better. But now two Web-based ventures, IP.com and BountyQuest, are taking their own steps to rein in bad patentsóeither by stopping them before they are granted or by knocking them out after the fact. What makes these startups really interesting is that they are attracting support across a broad spectrum of intellectual-property players — from patent system boosters to open-source programmers. In the polarized IP field, that is no small feat."

IP.com is a partner with Foresight in the PriorArt.org project, a joint venture that gives open-source and free-software developers the chance to 'defensively publish', and place their innovations in a searchable software database.