Patent

The Patent Class

This American Life

• Patents make safe to share your ideas

• 2004-2009, +70% patent lawsuits and +650% license requests

• “Patent Troll”

– Hoarding IP, make no products, look to sue

• Lawsuits slow innovation; raise costs

• Re$ource based activity; those who can pay can play

• Software patents used to be copyrightable only

• Patents prevent innovation / Patents ARE NOT inventions

• “shell companies”

Leadbeater

Leadbeater Cont'd

• Bottom up creativity vs. Top down

– Producers consume consumers' ideas

• Innovations are collaborative, develop slowly

• Payoff for innovation is greatest when uncertainty is greatest

– Consumers help dictate the uses of an invention (invent the USE); uses of invention worked out through use

– New ideas are disruptive and don't happen within large organizations...corporations follow. Emerging markets are creative

– Innovation comes from “pro-ams”

Motion Pictures Patent Company

• 1908-1918

• Edison controlled most motion picture patents, but those expired in 1910s

• Vertically integrated, from film stock, motion picture cameras, projectors, etc.

• Distributors, exhibitors would “infringe” on the patents if they didn't use/license from the Trust

• Attempt to standardize the industry; both delivery and content

• 1915, Supreme Court “busted” the trust; Cartel, monopoly (violated anti-trust)

Edison Phonograph

• 5 main parts, based on prior art:

– 1) the trumpet, sketched by da Vinci and used in communication systems for the Duke of Milan

– 2) the diaphragm, articulated by Hippocrates of Greece and used in drums

– 3) the stylus, used in pictographs by Egyptians and Assyrians

– 4) moving cylinders, used in lathes

– 5) the feed screw, an innovation of Archimedes

– 6) the wheel.

Patent Basics

• 35 U.S.C. (Constitution, and Statutory)

• Receive limited monopoly of 14-20 years, in exchange for making idea “public domain”

• While idea is public domain, to use it a LICENSE must be obtained from patent holder

• By applying the idea is made public (except design patents)....“enabling”

• Right to PREVENT others from using idea within a country (territoriality!!!)

• “World wide patent”=went through patent process in other countries

Patent Basics Cont'd

• Exclusionary right granted to natural people (inventors), assigned or licensed to corporations

• NO corporate authorship!!!

• Employees usually must assign patent to corporations when made under employment

• Limited property right, shared w/ public 14-year (design patents) and 20-year durations

– Extendable for patents that must go through FDA

• Patent scope determined by claims in “file wrapper”

Filing

• $$$$$ and knowledge for application

• Patent examiner (lawyer) at USTPO

• 20 rejections for every allowance

• Unless inventor has capital/knowledge, must partner w/ corporation or sell

• Patent award to individual(s), then assigned or licensed to companies with the means

• “Patent Pending”= a warning that patent application filed; protect against injunction, etc.

First to File v. First to Invent

• Steps of Invention in US

– 1) conception

– 2) reduction to practice (filing patent and uses)

• America Invents Act of 2011

– US a first to invent to a first to file system

– Goes into effect March 16, 2013

• US only FTI, rest of the world is first to file (FTF)

What Does Patent Protect

• Plant patents: asexually reproduced plants

• Design patents: ornamental design; not function

• Utility patents: “patents for invention”; 90% of patents are these

• Improvement patent: if technology underlying the improvement is still patented, inventor cannot exercise the improvement (cross license or “license pool”)

But not...

• Cannot patent laws of nature

• Cannot patent mathematical theory, just how it's applied in inventions

• Cannot patent abstract ideas

• BUT, medical procedures, living organisms and DNA are PATENTABLE