WTF patents

Worded badly, I know. The point is that the holder of the patent is assumed to have the legal right to enforce the patent, until proven otherwise.

That's not true. The holder of the patent is assumed to have been given the monopoly to use the invention disclosed in the patent. The only defense for infringing on the patent is to have the patent invalidated. If you infringe on the patent and the holder sues, you're assumed to be in the wrong (the USPTO is regarded by the courts as being the expert). I hope you have deep pockets.

If you read it carefully you will see he is patenting the specific case where with one connector plugged in you get the battery working the electronics and producing and output signal and where with different connector plugged in you get power routed to the battery to charge it.

That is a very specific and hence narrowly applicable patent made worse by the fact it applies only to musical instruments.

Quite a neat idea. Has possibly been done before but it definitely is NOT the same as phantom power.

Ian

AFAIR the DCMA has NOT been adopted here in Europe and neither have we adopted the other US silliness the software patent.

Ian

Ian

Written by someone who has no clue as to how patents work in practice.

Ian

"If you infringe on the patent and the holder sues, you're assumed to be in the wrong (the USPTO is regarded by the courts as being the expert)."

No, there are no assumption mades, when the holder sues he has to prove that you infringed on his patent in the first place, this is not a simple or obvious task as patents are complex documents with many possible loopholes, omissions etc. the patent is just part of the evidence, he has to show evidence exactly how my gizmo is infringing on his patent, that I haven't added any improvement or adjustments that would constitute a new idea, this is all before I even begin to attempt to invalidate his patent (thru prior art).....the courts don't say, ok he filed a lawsuit, therefore I must of infringed on his patent, that's silly, thats why we have courts....

No, Keith's right ... if sued, there's a *presumption* of infringement. The defendant has to prove he *isn't* infringing. Ass-backwards from criminal cases.

I'm afraid that's *exactly* how it works. The court's assumption is that a patent holder wouldn't sue without good reason.

James Arthur

How do you get that? Seems to me that he's trying to patent a whole variety of things, including the case you mention but also the case where the connector carries signal and power at the same time. But I'm not sure I know how to read patents; are the claims supposed to be ORed or ANDed? (That is, does each claim stand on its own, or does the patent only cover the case where all the claims apply at once? I've been assuming the former.)

I agree; phantom power is smarter. I don't see where there's any ingenuity at all in the idea of feeding power through the same connector as signal, either at alternate times or at the same time. My bicycle light's rechargeable SLA battery does it, for instance. So does my iPod. If some lawyer wants to articulate to me the difference between an iPod and an electric guitar, I'll be amused.

One of the things that confuses me about patents is that it seems that even if an idea is obvious in general, it is possible to patent a specific instance of it. Like, the idea of using rechargeable energy sources to power things-in-general is not new; but he seems to be trying to patent the idea of using rechargeable energy sources to power musical instruments.

Depends - there can be dependent claims which work as a group, and independent claims which work in isolation.

In patent terms there is a lot. I have patents in my name that apply only to electronic label printers but which draw on techniques used elsewhere. The novelty is being smart enough to realise the techniques could be used in that application. That's another example of narrow patents but in the case of my patents there were there to protect a specific type of product from its competitors. This guy's patent is narrow in the same way. So long as you don't use it on a mucical instrument you are OK to copy it.

No he isn't - he is patenting a specific method of using a single socket and two types of plug.

Ian

This puzzles me as well. Numerous patents were spawned at the dawn of the internet for doing XYZ (where XYZ was some prior art involving communications between two points) using TCP/IP. Even funnier, patents along these lines claiming XYZ using 'the web'. So, if I use something other than HTTP on port 80, I'm not infringing, right?

'The Internet' and its various protocols like TCP and IP, were invented with a scope of general purpose communications, i.e. transporting data of any sort from point A to point B. When it was invented, it would have been patentable (except for the saving fact that it was developed with gov't funds and placed into the public domain). This patent would logically have covered all cases of 'doing XYZ' (and anything else) when implemented using these protocols. Doing XYZ itself is not patentable, since it is prior art. So, what makes XYZ over the internet patentable?

But what about the guy who holds the patent for the technique in general?

My old cell phone had this feature. So do many other devices. Somewhere, a long time ago, somebody may have patented this idea to cover the general case. Or maybe not, but it has become common practice.

Many years ago (back in the horse drawn cart days) somebody patented the pickup truck, to be used for transporting material from point A to point B. But I don't think there is a patent for transporting _pumkins_ from point A to point B using a pickup truck. So, file the patent!

My feelings exactly.

AIUI, the point of patents is to encourage inventors to disclose inventions that they would otherwise keep private, in order to encourage further development. In return for said disclosure, they are able to retain commercial rights for a certain period of time.

That is, patents exist in order to encourage disclosure - not in order to encourage the having of clever ideas. Even without exclusivity, there would continue to be clever ideas.

So, I understand patents on things that need disclosure. For instance, if someone invents a new formula for synthetic rubber that makes tires more puncture-resistant, the world benefits if the inventor discloses the formula rather than keeping it as a trade secret. I'm willing to cede temporary commercial rights to that inventor, in return for the disclosure.

But when the patent system is used to protect ideas that are self-disclosing, I wonder who is gaining what. When the "invention" is something like "using a rechargeable battery in a certain device that otherwise would use primary batteries," all the important aspects of the idea are immediately obvious to anyone who sees the product. There is nothing to be "disclosed." The inventor is not giving up anything, in return for their patent rights; there is no trade.

So in that circumstance, the government is saying "whoever has a clever idea first, they have commercial rights to it for the next however-many years". What a crock! That does not benefit anyone other than the inventor. I do not think there is a "right" to exclusive use of a clever idea, in any meaningful sense of the word "right"; and there is no reason for citizens (via the government) to grant privileges to individuals when they get nothing in return.

I did not know that. ISTM that copying the device for personal use reduces the market for the patented device.

Concerning patents, *anyone* is free to copy as they see fit - for

-->personal

Some argue that patents are necessary to protect investments in R&D even when the incorporated idea are not novel. I can accept that. However, there exists something called a 'design patent' which can protect a particular innovation and prevent someone from copying existing engineering work. In the rechargeable musical instrument case such a patent would protect another manufacturer from copying the circuits and connector dimensions, but would not prevent anyone else from developing their own.

I have a hard time understanding that argument.

Consider a market with several manufacturers selling a roughly-equivalent product. The question at hand is whether any one of those manufacturers will do the work to develop a new feature, knowing that the feature may be copied (sans development cost) by the others as soon as it is released.

I would argue first that it is clearly the case that they *will* add features, even without protection. People are creative even when they are not being rewarded; anyone on this forum should be well aware of that. And if no one is innovating, someone who does will gain customers for at least a little while, in the same way that oscillators usually start up sooner or later. Every feature that's ever been added to a product without being patented is evidence for this.

Second, I would argue that whether or not patents are necessary to protect investment in R&D is irrelevant to whether the governments should grant them. There are plenty of things the government could give me that it doesn't - for instance, money. If the government gave me money, it would make my life better, and it would make my business more successful. But it would do so at a cost to whomever it got the money from; it should only do that if the net result is positive.

So, the government should only help company A by protecting its R&D from competitor B if the result is positive, on the net, for both. That criterion may be met when company A is forced to divulge something of value, that would not otherwise be divulged, to competitor B in return for the protection. The criterion is not met, when the information being divulged would have to be revealed in the course of ordinary business. Company A was helped, certainly, but only at competitor B's expense; there was no net benefit.

If the government wishes to support R&D more than the market itself would support it (and I don't know why it should, except in the case of basic science), it has non-restrictive ways to do it: for instance, by funding grants, or by providing R&D tax exemptions. Trying to encourage R&D by forcing companies to walk the patent-infringement tightrope seems stupid to me.

Not by much; few people do that, and on a number of patented items, it is either too impractical or too expensive. Examples: integrated circuits, chemicals, biologicals, mechanical apparati for starters.

A design patent is next to worthless, as all that is required is to make some small change and one is not intefering.

Would you still hold the same view if company A was in th USA and B in China?

Ian

Patents were great when there were not that many inventors and inventions. In some cases that still applies.

But these days patents seem more like protectionist tools, protecting large business from small and protecting local businesses from imports.

The effort to make sure one is not infringing a pentent should be much lower than doing the actual invention, otherwise something is wrong, as this will hinder, not speed up innovation.

In some cases (the oft-cited drug developments) patents with their 20 year lives make sense. In other cases, being first to market is enough. IMO this is definitely the case with patents for 'business methods' and software.

It can be equally argued that patents put a brake on innovation. Business invents, has monopoly on product, and sells it, but never improves on it as there is no competition anyway.

Something could be changed here by not giving a monopoly to the patent holder, but by setting a predefined percentage of sale price that the patent holders can argue each other over. A manufacturer pays the percentage divided by the number of claimants to each, and they can start sueing each other if they like, but not the manufacturer.

However this would be an invitation for sleazy 'IP' outfits to go after anyone who doesn't pay a lot of patent holders yet.

OTOH fixed price licenses have problems as well, especially in the software area where distribution can be very inexpensive and a fixed license cost can drive free software makers out of business.

Thomas