Guerilla Patent Reform
Posted by
Kevin
Congress is looking into patent reform. This could be good or just another means of “reforming” ip laws into stronger monopoly protection tools. But one disgruntled Aussie may have come up with a means of combatting patent abuse:
After trawling the US patent records, Calveley found another patent describing an “online secure financial transaction system” which had been lodged in 1996 - a year before Amazon’s.
He also found references to a so-called DigiCash payment method in which a click on a website payment link would trigger a server to send a payment request to the customer. That also pre-dated Amazon patent.
(Ironically, he discovered the Digicash evidence on an archival website that is partly bankrolled by an Amazon company.)
So he fired off a letter to the US Patent Office with his findings, requesting a re-examination of the 1-Click patent on the grounds that Amazon’s process wasn’t original.
After collecting the $US2520 fee from donors, he filed the application, sat back and waited to hear the results of his labours.
One of the reasons our patent system is so awful is that it allows the patneitng of businesses processes — and there is apparently nothing too obvious or common to be patented. A well financed organization dedicated to challenging those patents through research and lawsuits could, conceivably, drive up the cost of these kinds of patents to the point where they aren’t worth the effort.
Or maybe not. I cannot be the only person to ever think of this. Perhaps this has been tried and found wanting. But something has to be done. Our patent system does more damage to our economy than almost any other factor entirely within our control.
I think you should patent the business model of “a well financed organization dedicated to challenging those patents through research and lawsuits”.
Comment 5/24/2006