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35 Comments
- daFilms, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20It's about time that we re-examine what is an original idea and what is an insult to our common knowledge.
...we don't need anymore 'Crustless Peanut Butter & Jam' sandwich patents... Patent No. 6,004,596...
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2687/NWW_1-29-01_opinion/
This will be an interesting and worthy follow; - mcsimpson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11It never paid well enough :p
- FlyboyP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10He should have patented his ideas.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Whatever happened to doing something for the general benefit of all mankind or the advancement of our civilization?
- Run4yourlives, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Not gonna happen.
Why? The defendant paid the royalties, then stopped. By doing so they admitted that the plaintiff had a legal right to patent the procedure. Pretty open and shut case, as the two lower courts confirmed.
It is high time for the patent system to be completely abolished for things such as software, but it won't happen with this case. - TargetDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I haven't double checked, but I heard that that patent on the crustless sandwich failed. It revolved around the 'crimping' of the edges. Who knew mom was such a visionary.
- jak119, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4it is about time that they re-examine what an original idea is, i agree with dafilms completely
- 0Troy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Looks a bit like a rip off of Crichton's article...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19crichton.html
...No wait, actually looks *exactly* like a rip off of Crichton's article... - dorkafork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That's not a bug, it's a feature.
- vertigoblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4it should only be 1,5, or 10 yr patents and categorize them accordingly
- kimastergeorge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually, you're right! Wow. But this article is actually about the case, while his is about patent reform in general. And there's no reason why Yahoo! can't write an article on the same topic. However, if you don't want people to digg this, I see your point.
- FatHed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was watching the History Channel last night, one of the Super Tools shows. They mentioned that in the early 1900s someone tried to patent making a mobile cement mixing truck, which is common today. The patent office denied the patent because they didn't think a truck could hold the weight.
Basically, patents are supposed to be inventions, ideas != invention. And not only inventions, but inventions that could be made at the time the patent was filed. They used to have the right idea, and now only seem to apply that simple view to obscure patents on things like warp drives. How can someone patent my genes, or your genes? It's happened, and there's a really clear case of prior art to genes. They would say that the patent is on the discovery of what the gene does, but that's not an invention. - geoboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@koshak
Patents provide incentive? Hardly. That's like saying copyright laws are there to provide musicians with incentive to create music. Patents are meant to provide PROTECTION. Unfortunately, this protection can end up stifling innovation or being abused.
It's naive to think no one would want to innovate or invest in R&D if the patent system were abolished. Again, using the copyright analogy it's like saying no one would want to make music anymore if copyright were abolished.
But don't get me wrong. I'm not completely against either patenting or copyright. I just think there need to be very strict limits on what can be patented and how long they can be patented. - Chaos12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hope it gets fixed
- xodex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If we were to abolish patents period, Basically there will be a couple of giants that reign over all factories and distribution centers. basically it would look like your local drugstore or supermarket where even the toilet paper is made by the store chain.
Where as the original maker of the product who put all it's money into research to produce a product is the one the dies later down the road because one of the few giants have so much income and abilities to produce that all they have to do is undercut the original maker and even then they don't take a loss profit hit.
patents are needed, I HATE to say that because look at what software patents are doing. Simply Our world is ***** business wise. - cBennett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While I don't think that this simple procedure should have been given a patent, if the court overturns this patent then we're going to have thousands of cases like this pop up over the legitimacy of other patents. It would cause a rather large problem.
- jkdrum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am going to patent and copyright the sneeze. No one will be able to sneeze with out paying me royalties.
- Lewie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Apparently 600+ people don't care
- ebunton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Of course patents can be valuable and thus provide an incentive for researchers and inventors.
Think big businesses. Most projects are prioritised based on return on investment, long or short term, in dollars and cents.
If there were no royalties to justify spending millions of dollars on research, then research would be conducted very differently (maybe not at all).
Let's not be naive here. - johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"LabCorp originally argued that the patent was overly vague, and that allowed it to use tests, called assays, developed by other companies to measure homocysteine levels."
Labcorp seemed to agree with you so they looked for an out. I would think you would be right if the supreme court hadn't thrown that curve ball, but they may have just been giving hint for how to argue this in future cases. Right now there seems to be a backlash against corporate hostility. France is talking about interoperability being required. Congress is talking about guaranteeing fair use. Patents are being thrown out in courts. Microsoft had the balls to patent the Ipod interface after it was on the market is it any wonder people are fed up? - nullcodes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Frivolous patents.
If the supreme court doesnt reject this patent, expect to see a rise in UNRESEARCHED "HIT OR MISS, GET LUCKY" frivolous patenting. For example, a corporation with no pharmaceutical research knowledge or scientists can write a simple script that basically comes up with 100's of unconfirmed guesses of correlations. For example:
Orange juice causes cancer. Orange juice cause high blood pressure. Orange juice causes parkinsons.
Bananas cause cancer. Bananas cause high blood pressure. Bananas cause parkinson's. Etc.
Ironically enough, the particular PATENTED Vitamin B correlation in the Supreme Court case, according to a recent publication in the New England Journal of Medicine .. luckily appears to be nonsense. http://www.deccan.com/Health/Health.asp
Sinisterly it could meaning the corporartion patenting the correlation probably didnt bother to research it properly.
As we know many drugs come originate plants or funguses (aspirin, cold medicin, penicillin). So they simply have to get a listing of all the viruses or funguses.
In fact they can generate a million of these statements, without doing ANY research whatsoever. They can then get 1 million patents for a cost of $300 million dollars (less if they decide on documenting it in provisional patents). This investment is far less than the $700 million it costs to research and develop a new drug. And the payoff is massive. Even worse, under current patent law, you don't need to file/pay for the patent until a year after you disclose your invention publicly.
Don't expect the patent office to be able to somehow figure out who did research versus who didnt. The patent office is not a scientific body. They have no expertise in judging validity or level of research that went into making a specific claim. Even for inventions, the patent office doesnt need or require any prototype of an actual invention for them to grant a patent. We already know their competence in judging ingenuity of actual physical inventions.
I am strongly libertarian and pro capitlism and business. I do not support the granting of frivolous patents. We already have foundations that do basic research. For example the Muscular Dystrophy association funds research in well muscular dystrophy. This is the way in which basic research is funded, and it is a system that works. If a private foundation is doing good research and finding breakthroughs many people will contribute to it, hell even corporations would contribute to it to get the drug ideas.
Drugs, by the way are actual devices that have utility and do not exist in nature .. therefore it's (rightfully) patentable.
Now, I doubt the supreme court will be able to figure this out .. let's face it's fairly complicated an issue. Even if by some off chance the Supes decide to throw out this patent claim, I expect one or two of the judges to write some sort of dissenting opinion etc. on how people need to be rewarded for their research efforts etc. But ultimately the rewards will go to those able to the unscrupulous rich who conjecture the most wild correlations of cause-effect with the hopes of one or two of them being valid.
The supreme court should reject the patentability of ideas with extreme prejudice. - SpacePirate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Or, you know, copyrighted them... Oh, wait.
- xjqcf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This appeal is NOT about novelty (35 USC 102) nor non-obviousness (35 USC 103), but, rather, whether the invention is a proper "process" as set forth in 35 USC 101, basically whether the the step of "correlating", which could be in the mind of a person, is a proper limitation in a patent claim.
Depending on whether the Court rules narrowly on the specific facts of this case or makes some broad holdings could determine the question as to the patentablility of software wand/or business methods, as well as other "processes" that are not clearly tied to specific physical means.
IIRC, there IS another case that was appealed from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dealing with the Obviousness issue, but I'm not sure if the SCOTUS has decided whether or not it will hear the appeal. - Strangers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dugg
Good guardian article on gene patenting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,397385,00.html - RobotCitizen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Forget the Supreme Court. I say let the judges from American Inventor decide this.
- mckinnej, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This was probably a business decision. In the majority of these patent-trolling cases, the settlement is cheaper than the court fight, so it is smart business to just pay them even though it is essentally blackmail. LabCorp probably reassessed the long-term costs and decided the court fight was worth it. We have the added benefit of it putting an additional spotlight on the broken US patent system.
- Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Who cares. The patent system is retarded and holds back innovation.
- gxti, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Too bad Vitamin B isn't mentioned anywhere in the poster's writeup. Come on guys, it's called the description field for a reason.
- yoshu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1that web site sux. I can't even increase the content font. Weak sauce.
- FatHed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0It should work in konqueror as well, but again, I'm not sure on the 64-bit versions.
Also, that last post that should have been a reply, that was CTRL and CTRL - I missed the plus sign apparently.
http://linuxreviews.org/kde/konqueror/
In Opera, the CTRL mousewheel actually zooms the page. - yoshu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1You have obviously not visited the site and tried to increase the font. I've tried using firefox64 and konqueror64 on my Debian Sid pure 64 box (a testing version of a linux distro). That's a cute tip though, ctrl + mouse wheel. I'll have to remember that. :)
I'm glad you "prefer it" as a browser feature to a site feature. But the CONTENT section of this page does not increase. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Pretty simplistic thinking. Abolishing it altogether would be a DISASTER. Take away the incentive to spend a lot of research to develop a new product and the amount of new products that are introduced will drop dramatically. Same with drugs.
- FatHed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I can increase the font size just fine, for any web site.
Both FF and IE support holding down the CTRL and using the mouse wheel to adjust the font size. I prefer it as a browser feature myself than a site feature, since it works for every site anyway. - FatHed, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I did try, it works for me! Of course that means nothing to you, my specs are still 32-bit, and I've only really tried it under windows. All of my UNIX boxes are in another state right now, and they aren't setup for remote access, so I can't help your situation. When it does work, it'll change the size of every font on the page.
Out of curiosity, what is your FF pref for mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action, mine is 3, I'd laugh if something as simple as that was actually the problem.
Also, give CTRL and CTRL - a try, those are hotkeys for the same thing, at least in FF.
Edit: Opps, that was suppose to be a reply. - sporkwitch, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Old news, this article adds nothing to the article in the times that was on the front page here yesterday.
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