Tim should put a disclaimer on this post: “only rant in approval, but don’t ask critical questions.”

I’m not going to answer your questions either, but I’ll ofer an analogy that may be helpful. If a citizen is angry that the government has raised their taxes, is it their responsibility to research 200 years of the history of taxation, and to write an essay describing the pros and cons of justificiations for taxation? No. They just vote out the SOBs that raised their taxes. End of story.

Happy world IP day to you too!

Happy World Intellectual Property Day.

I think Tim makes his point nice and clear. Patents are regulation. They regulate what companies and individuals may produce, and therefore they regulate what products and srevices are available for all of us to use. You appear to suggest that only a class of specialists (by “patent agent” I presume you mean “IP lawyer” BTW) is qualified to understand and critique these increasingly arbitrary and invasive regulations.

You can live your life being told what to do by a bunch of self-serving IP lawyers if you want. I think I’ll take a pass, thanks.

Tim has written about a dozen posts on patents in the past week, and in almost every one he makes some claim to the tune of: “but I don’t see how” or “can somebody tell me why” or “I’m confused.” Well it might be that he’s not a patent agent, he takes a skewed view of innovation and does not really consider some basic elements such as those I outline above. Granted, I will probably disagree with his responses, but I posed the questions so he would at least address some recurring themes.

Noel, please do also clue us in to any responses you may have to the many examples made in the excellent book Steal This Idea: The Corporate Confiscation of Creativity by Michael Perelman in which it is exhaustively documented that the present IP regime has retarded innovation, and in particular, during times of mandatory licensing, there tended to be much more innovative product development (for example, the development of consumer radio in the aftermath of compulsory licensing of radio technology.

Since neither you nor anyone at IP Central has ever undertaken a critique of this important work, I assume you are unable to do so…

As for who would argue that the above patent should have been granted? Well, I’m guessing that a certain scholar that supports relatively obvious patents for inventions without unclear commercial value, may support it. However, he would probably argue that the patent’s scope should be interpreted narrowly, and its scope further limited by technical disclosure in the claim. Of course, I could tell you who it is, or simply do a write-up on IPcentral about him:)

Oh, and Tim, you’d forgotten to mention that, for numerous items, Apple had copied things they’d seen during a visit to Xerox’s PARC. For some reason, the normal procedure of having visitors sign NDA’s was waived for Steve Jobs and Wozniak…

Is there any punishment for filing fraudulant patent claims, BTW?

If so, has anyone recently been prosecuted?

Saw RMS yesterday, and was happy to hear he was still on message about software patents.