Tech giants score record patent stash

The US Patent and Traedmark Office issued a record-breaking 219,614 utility patents last year, a 31 per cent increase over 2009. For years, there has been lots o' talk about patent reform, but most of the action in the intellectual property arena is on the filing and receiving of patents, not on exercising some self-restraint …

[raving angry loony]

q and q

Yep, that's the US all right. Quantity over quality.

I wonder how many of these patents are absurd and/or unenforceable? I wonder how many use prior art that the USPTO saw fit to not research. Oh, right, the USPTO only gets money for patents it approves, and thus approves just about everything submitted. They're an American government cash cow that rewards short term riches over long term sanity.

I wonder how many billions will be wasted by companies fighting many of these new patents that should never have been awarded in the first place? Remember RIM, that got dinged for 650 million or so even though every single one of the patents in question was subsequently revoked. They're only the very tip of the iceberg.

I wonder how many ACTUAL innovators will be stopped from doing anything because the current patent farce is a complete sell out to the "big names" and to IP trolls?

[Charles Manning]

How many are enfoceable?

All patents are enforceable and valid until overturned.

The USPTO gets money for patent applications that are rejected too, but not as much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming up next: Patent event horizon.

But can you wear them as shoes?

[Graham Marsden]

So, basically what they are saying...

... is that the US Patent system is totally broken.

Wow, who would have guessed, huh?

[ratfox]

You ain't seen nothing yet

Considering the way business seems to be done nowadays, the number of patent is going to double... It's going to increase and increase... UNTIL IT BLOWS!!1!!

PH, she knows how to blow, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not broken

Corrupt by design?

Just asking.

[Anonymous Coward]

acceptance rate

and how many were rejected? i'm guessing that's a much smaller number

there's an easy way to deal with the backlog - everything can be done online and fully automated to speed things up, just have a web based form where you submit your application as a pdf, then when the web server gets confirmation of payment from paypal it can overlay an "approved" stamp-style image on top of it before forwarding it to a bulk printing company - and the PR department can call the upgrades "reducing delays and red tape whilst also making patents more accessible to small scale innovators"

meanwhile everyone else can stick to selling their products in countries that actually want new innovative technologies...

[Phil101]

Is it just me ...

who read IFI as iffy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can....

.............probably still patent successfully the method of applying ink (patent pending) to paper (patent pending) with the tip of the cut down wing feather of a goose (genetically engineered: patent pending).

Oh, I forgot to patent this outer garment buttoning down the front, with pockets to hold day by day necessities, such as patent application forms.

[mhenriday]

I've been considering

patenting a system for propelling a human body through water by rotation of the arms at the shoulder and beating the legs up and down (don't any of you dare to steal this idea, now that in my Reg enthusiasm I've inadvertently disclosed it !) As far as I've been able to see via a cursory examination, no such patents are outstanding ; as for «prior art», to me the term merely evokes visions of Leonardo and Rembrandt....

Henri

[Lars]

What you are granted a patent for should be an innovation

But looking at the figures, IBM must have made some new innovations at the rate of 5,896/365

, that is about 16 a day, that including weekends. Nice and rubbish.

The whole patent business has gone totally mad, and those who decide have no reason to change it. It is big business for the USPTO, for all the lawyers and for all the big companies who want to avoid any competition from upstarts.

The diesel engine, the refrigerator, for instance, where innovations and worthy of an patent.

And even to day, surely, there are innovations too.

But most of the software patents are pure rubbish.

Visicalc, the first spreadsheet, was in my opinion, an innovation, but at that time, the rules for a patent where stricter and no patent was applied for.

Compared to Visicalc, granted software patents to day are a complete farce.

PS. Why do I get these additional CR , new line all the time.

(Linux plus latest Firefox!!!)

[mhenriday]

Lars, you might find this Ubuntu-forum thread

(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=700670) helpful....

Henri