The US Supreme court issued its ruling this week in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. that is being applauded. I’m certainly not qualified to opine on US patent matters, but in essence, to obtain a patent, the innovation cannot be obvious. Many patents have been criticised for being issued with too low of a threshold for obviousness. That’s a bad thing as it can lead to innovation chill.

This decision may mean that we will see fewer patents of questionable innovation being issued, and some existing patents being challenged.

For more detail take a look at:

a CNet article

a Patent Arcade post

I told myself that I was not going to comment again on the iPhone, as I risk falling into and expanding Apple’s “reality distortion field” – but Techdirt’s comment on the patent issue is worth looking at. (As is the video at the “demonstrated publicly” link showing some cool interactive display technology.)

Steve Jobs commented that they had filed 200 patent applications for the phone. Techdirt uses that to illustrate why perhaps the whole theory behind patents should be revisited.

One theory behind patents is that is encourages innovation as people will invest in R&D knowing that someone else can’t just knock off their products and sell them at a lower cost without incurring the R&D cost. There certainly is some truth to that.

On the other hand Techdirt points out that: The way to compete isn’t by catching up and “copying” someone else, but to continuously innovate. Then, even if someone else catches up, you’re still ahead — and, if anyone can keep on coming up with new innovations, it appears to be Apple. So, even without patent protection, Apple would make more than enough money to recoup their development costs.

There is no question that patents have gotten out of hand, and there needs to be a fundamental rethink of what protection is necessary and reasonable. Perhaps it should come down to some risk/reward test of the amount of time and money it takes to develop something and bring it to market, vs the ease of someone else producing a knock-off.

Take a look at the Techdirt post and the comments for more on the topic

Many feel that patents are often granted when the innovation is too obvious, and not worthy of patent protection.

The US Supreme court is considering that issue now. The KSR v Teleflex case is worth watching to see if it raises the threshold required for protection.

Details of the case can be found on the Patently O blog.

I have not mentioned the RIM/NTP patent litigation before as it seems to get lots of mention in the press anyway – but this comment by Techdirt that refers to a NY Times article is too good to pass up.

Seems that the US patent office has taken the unusual step of advising both RIM and NTP unofficially that they will revoke the NTP patents at issue in the lawsuit.

To quote from Techdirt: The move to publicly inform both parties of likely decisions is the USPTO’s way of trying to force Judge Spencer to either throw out the case on lack of merit, or delay the court proceedings to give the patent rejection process time to follow its slow course. So the USPTO has turned the pressure up on Judge Spencer — if he forces RIM to shutdown or pay-up based on what he now knows to be bad patents, he will look bad, not the USPTO. Don’t you love it when two branches of your government pass the buck while the free market and the incentive to innovate are held hostage to them?

This will no doubt increase the calls for patent reform, or at least more scrutiny on patent applications.

Read the Techdirt post

Read the NY Times article

DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – February 19, 2005

Read this on Canoe

Agribusiness and farming is not what it used to be. With today’s technology and tools, farmers can save time and manipulate their crops in a way that was considered unimaginable 10 years ago.

With the advent of genetic engineering and genetic modification, companies such as Monsanto have given farmers an edge on crop production.

Or have they?

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DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – February 12, 2005

Read this on Canoe

The open-source movement has had a terrific start to the New Year. Within two weeks , the open-source community received gifts from both IBM and Sun Microsystems. And these gifts re-ignited a debate over whether patents on software should even be allowed.

Open-source software is software where the source code, or human readable code, is readily available, such as Linux. Users are generally free to modify the software as they like — but with the caveat they must share their changes with all users.

On Jan. 11, IBM announced it would pledge open access to 500 IBM software patents. This means that anyone working on or using open-source software can use the 500 IBM patents royalty-free.

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