IBM files hordes of incremental mostly insignificant patents and their conduct is one of the reasons that the patent system is burdened. They sense that their days are numbered, and that eventually they will expire with a whimper.

They have a vision for a patent system which is a king’s sport, where only the privileged vested interests can play.

There are two major big business camps promoting reformation of the patent system.

One group simply wants to eviscerate the system to mitigate the consequences of their patent pirating conduct. This group was initially formed by washed up tech companies who lost their ability to produce significant inventions decades ago and a few parasitic companies who never were innovators, rather they are shrewd predators on innovators. They were then joined by the insurance and banking industries, of which one group is only innovative at denying claims and the second group’s claim to fame is inventing ever more and larger fees. This group calls themselves the Coalition for Patent Fairness, but are better known as the Coalition for Patent Piracy. Their members have a variety of deficiencies such as being caught cooking their books, putting their customers at risk of being maimed or killed with defective products, committing fraud on the court in litigations over their patent piracy, and various other sins.

The second group are much older companies. They tend to value their patents but would very much like to reign in pesky inventors who nip at their heels. They are also hot on HARMazation of America’s patent system, a process which dumbs down the greatest patent system in the world for those company’s benefit. This group is known as the 21st Century Patent Coalition. While they are marginally better than the Coalition for Patent Piracy they are also very short term gain oriented businesses.

Both groups prey on the real inventors of our country. Both are prone to abuse the process of law in a bid to bankrupt inventors. Both ship the fruits of American ingenuity to developing countries. Both groups routinely indenture inventors in those countries and will dispose of their empty husks just as they have done to our inventors when they find a slightly better deal elsewhere.

Independent inventors have community ties and when they prosper so do their communities. But when the inventors have their spirits killed by disreputable and predatory large companies, the community suffers a much greater loss than the inventor.

Beware, for these companies are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into “reforming” our patent system to be more friendly to them and much less friendly to upstart startup companies. They know that this is a bargain if it facilitates their appropriation of billions of dollars. It is a fact that many of the companies promoting various special interest “reforms” of the patent system have been caught red handed cheating, lying, and thieving - and they are being held accountable for their poor conduct. Accountability is what drives their whining about bigger than live mythical trolls.

Ronald J. Riley,
President - (link) - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - (link) - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - (link) - RRiley at PatentPolicy.org
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.

1. The fed gov to stop skimming off patent fees for the general budget (anyone name a gov entity that’s actually cash-flow positive?)

2. The immediate firing of the politically appointed leaders of the PTO; with their replacements being experienced, long-term (minimum 15 years) patent staff who know what to do and how to do it.

3. The providing of and/or access to top-level non-patent prior art databases so the large majority of hard-working examiners can do the job we’re paying them to do.

4. The scaling back of the ridiculous time restraints and production requirements that make it extremely difficult; and often impossible; for the examiners to do as thorough a job as they’d like to.

5. The insistence that all applicants, including companies like IBM who know better, include a minimum of 10 independent and unrelated non-patent prior art references in each and every patent application.

The complaints by some against software and biz-method patents is, frankly, unfair and unfounded.

Despite the all-to-common belief of most of the public and media that only physical objects that can be touched are or should be patentable has never been the case in America.

Processes and methods which result in new creations have always been patentable as well.

A process/method of conducting business–if it is truly original and (legally) non-obvious–is no less entitled to patent protection than is anything else.

Innovation is innovation is innovation.