Re: "There is no inventive concept that provides something more than the abstract idea itself"
What I'd like to see next is a party losing a patent infringement case successfully claiming its costs against the USPTO on the basis that if the office hadn't issued the patent they wouldn't have incurred their costs.
Unfortunately it isn't within the remit of patent offices to assess the validity of the patent, they're just a filing service. I think that's right and proper, because if patent offices were required to perform an assessment of that kind they'd need a lot more resources and expertise, and the process of granting a patent would become an awful lot more expensive than it is at present.
The "deal" with patents is supposed to be that inventors publish the details of their inventions and their intellectual property is then protected from being copied by others for a given period of time. This protection is supposed to be given in exchange for full and frank disclosure of the invention -- partly so that the inventor doesn't take his secret to the grave, and partly so that when another inventor comes along with a similar invention the courts can actually determine whether or not the two are the same.
We can't expect patent offices to verify that patents filed contain sufficient information to constitute full and frank disclosure (for the reasons given above) but when a patent case comes to court that is the first thing that should be examined, and if the patent is considered to be lacking then it should be declared void, and the inventor fined heavily for mis-filing.
That would help to keep the number of vaguely worded "catch-all" patents small.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
