Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has endorsed some key reforms that Congress is scheduled to consider this year.

Patent Office chief Jon Dudas said Monday that federal law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim and to permit review of a patent after it is granted. Currently patents are awarded to the first person who concocted the invention, a timeframe that can be difficult to prove.

"I think we can implement that," Dudas said about the post-grant review suggestion. "It will take resources, and it will be necessary for us to get the resources in place" through a larger budget. [ed: OK someone explain this to me... How does 'first one to the door wins' cost more to implement than 'we have to investigate when parties X, Y and Z might have done something somewhere in the past'?] The Patent Office already has a backlog of 490,000 applications and is planning to hire 800 more patent examiners, bringing its total to 4,400. It approves more than 500 patents per day.

Monday's hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee kicked off a process that's expected to end in new legislation being drafted by the end of the year.

As a result, technology companies including Microsoft and Oracle recently have stepped up their lobbying efforts. Microsoft has gone on the legislative offensive after a jury awarded Eolas Technologies $565 million in damages--which has been partially reversed--in a patent dispute over Internet Explorer.

A National Research Council study on intellectual property rights also endorsed reforms. In a summary prepared for Monday's hearing, the committee said patents should not be awarded when they're "obvious" to people familiar with the state of the art in a field; that researchers should be immune from patent infringement lawsuits; and the U.S. patent system should be aligned more closely with Europe and Japan.

News.com.com.com.com.com

You know, now that India has rejected software patents and Europe has the backfield in motion, maybe when Oracle and Microsoft tell Orin Hatch & Co. that they are retarded we might get somewhere here.