patent legislation - first to file to replace first to invent

Senate rejects challenge to patent legislation


The Senate has rejected a challenge to the key component of legislation to overhaul the patent system, paving the way for passage in the coming days.

Senators voted 87-13 against an amendment by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein that would have retained the current "first-to-invent" system for filing patents. The legislation switches the country to a "first-inventor-to-file" system that is used by all other industrialized nations.

Supporters of the change say it will reduce expensive legal battles, improve fairness and support innovators seeking to market their products abroad. They said Feinstein's amendment would have effectively killed the first major overhaul of patent law in six decades.

Feinstein and her allies argued that the change will lead to a race to the patent office and will disadvantage independent and small-scale inventors.

http://www.sify.com/finance/senate-rejects-challenge-to-patent-legislation-news-international-ldfx46fjjch.html

What if I invent something & want to give it to humanity, foregoing the patent?

Also, how much old stuff is there out there that has never been patented? The bow & arrow? The lever? Fire?

:shrug:

PB

Someone else can patent something I invented?

There are plenty of good reasons not to patent certain inventions, sometimes commercial, sometimes altruistic.

Why the hell do we have to turn everything into a "property" for lawyers to fight over?

So by not filing you're already risking patent rights outside of the U.S.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/04/doj_investgates_mpeg_la_over_vp8_attack

The US Department of Justice is investigating MPEG-LA – the patent pool organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, and others – over the organization's effort to undermine the royalty-free V8 codec Google introduced last year, according to a report citing people familiar with the matter.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the DoJ has launched a formal antitrust probe into whether MPEG-LA or its members are trying to stunt the growth of VP8 by creating legal uncertainty around the open source technology. In May, after Google open sourced the V8 codec under a royalty-free license and rolled it into a new web media format known as WebM, MPEG-LA chief executive Larry Horn said the organization was looking into the formation of a patent-pool license for VP8 and WebM. And last month, the organization made an official public call to patent holders, asking them to submit patents that may be essential to Google's codec.

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Patents were created to encourage progress in the technical arts, not suppress them. I'd like to see corporations that are clearly impeding progress and abusing the patent system for profits not in the public interest crushed by anti-trust actions and eminent domain proceedings.