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