Feb
26
Patent reform undermining innovation?
Posted by Dirk Avery at 2:36 pm under Incentive, Patent.
Joe Kiani, CEO of Masimo, wrote an interesting op-ed in Forbes yesterday on the potential effects of the Patent Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1145). He refers to the bill as “one of the worst assaults on intellectual property protection in the 218-year history of our patent system.” Points I found interesting:
[T]his bill may turn out to be a severe blow to a patent system that has already been significantly eroded by two recent Supreme Court rulings [eBay and KSR]… The full impact of these rulings remains unclear. Accordingly, I recommend that Congress either postpone new patent legislation or eliminate the provisions that will weaken our patent system, until we can gauge the effect of these decisions.
In making this proposal, I was inspired by a story that one of my engineering professors used to tell to highlight the importance of feedback and control theory. “If people had paused to see how many buffaloes they had already killed before they killed more, the buffaloes would not have become practically extinct.” Likewise, if Congress enacts this legislation–which was conceived prior to the Supreme Court rulings–before assessing the impact of those rulings, patent protection could go the way of the buffalo.
This patent bill is being promoted by America’s largest information technology companies, notably IBM, Cisco, HP, Google and Microsoft. Even though these companies have flourished under the protection of the existing patent system, they are now attacking it.
Perhaps they don’t recognize the unintended consequences of the changes they’re seeking. But the Chinese certainly do. In a November 2007 article in Chinese Intellectual Property News, Cheng Yongshun, a respected Chinese intellectual property judge, wrote that this bill will be “friendlier to the infringers than to the patentees in general, as it will make the patent less reliable, easier to be challenged and cheaper to be infringed.” That, of course, will allow more knockoff Chinese products to flood the U.S. market… [W]hen our economy is slowing and health care costs continue to rise, lawmakers must encourage innovation by strengthening patent protection rather than weakening it.
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what about all the junk patents that have been issued? making these easier to challenge and invalidate will improve innovation.
what exactly is a junk patent? is that akin to a bad movie? since the patent office is not involved in determining value of patents and the applicant pays for the gilded privilege of government search and examination, what exactly are you talking about?
junk patents include amazon’s 1-click patent. it should have never been patented as it is obvious and by being patented it can “block” meritorious inventions that have to rely on the technology.