U.S. Judge Calls Patents a "Problem"

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tntom

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Finally! I don't want to takes sides nor am I qualified to, but I have grown wearisome of all the conflict. Most of the lawyers I know are upset that something as dignified as the courtroom has been turned into a childish playground by lawyers who are greedy and lack ethic. It is nice to hear some public discussion on this from someone who really knows what he is talking about. But his remarks make it sound too complicated for either a simple or complex solution as who would know where to set the boundaries.
 

friskiest

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Patent trolling,. Until there's enough political will to demolish or at least revise the patent system,. it'll be hard NOT to find trolls trolling others.

 

DroKing

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Took this long? It's been problematic for how long? tooo fcking long. You old farts are sucking up to much of our taxes for what sitting on yall fat asses acting all wise? disgusting judges.
 
There are no problems with patents, there are problems with how easily some patents are given out. Patents may put Google and Apple at each other's throat but at the same time they also keep less remarkable companies from simply reverse engineering someone else's work and bypassing the R&D costs completely.
 

K2N hater

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Patenting pharmaceuticals should be forbidden in 1st place. It's not about hindering technology in its advance but depriving billions from the latest and most effective treatments. Several treatments cost more than it takes to build a house... a month.

Yes, patents are a cancer indeed.
 

wopr11

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About time judges start speaking about the abusive and criminal patent abuse of companies like apple.
I wonder if we will ever get to see when all those criminals get put into jail.
 

nesk

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@K2N Hater the problem with banning patents pharmaceuticals is that not a single private company will invest on it as it will not generate enough returns over their invesments, then we don't have any research done and no new medicines made .So who is going to invest then? the goverment? I guess we need a new model, maybe licensing the meds so every pharmaceutical can make them at a cost or some subsides from gov but then where are you going to take money? Change it's pretty hard i guess.
 

Marcus52

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[citation][nom]K2N hater[/nom]Patenting pharmaceuticals should be forbidden in 1st place. It's not about hindering technology in its advance but depriving billions from the latest and most effective treatments. Several treatments cost more than it takes to build a house... a month.Yes, patents are a cancer indeed.[/citation]

When you or someone you love gets cancer, be sure to ask them to treat with drugs that did not cost millions of dollars to find or create, and make. Tell them you only want those cheap drugs.
 
[citation][nom]Marcus52[/nom]When you or someone you love gets cancer, be sure to ask them to treat with drugs that did not cost millions of dollars to find or create, and make. Tell them you only want those cheap drugs.[/citation]

K2N hater didn't say anything about the R&D costs, only the costs to buy the medicine when you need it.
 


Once the drugs are ready for general consumption, the medical company could be required to have fair prices through some sort of regulation. They could license it out as you stated or do one or more of many other things. There are changes that could be implemented. Granted, as you said, change is hard. Greed rules in the business sector and this industry is particularly ingrained in that because it can be, although I'm not downplaying the depth in which greed infested other industries.
 

drednoxx

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Pharma patents are nothing like the tech patents. There are many differences which most of you here are unaware of. While there are plenty of greed based abuses by the pharma companies, you have to keep in mind that they are afterall businesses and do need to make money. My wife did a study on the pharma R&D not long ago from multitude of companies and multitude of drugs.

Some drugs and treatments take as much as 20 BILLION USD to complete (although thats the highest end) and entire lifetimes of highly educated professionals who dedicated themselves entirely to the development process.

They also take 10-20 years, and it some rare cases much much more, entire generations.

Can you compare that to the software and tech industry ? What would happen to android and crapple if their stuff took 20 years and 20B$ per feature to develop ?

Also, on many drugs the patents can only be enforced within the 1st 5 or 10 years (dont rememebr exactly), this is to help these companies recoup the initial investment. Often times it takes about a decade before they see 1st positive ROI, not so in the software industry.

Hence pharma and tech patents are not a very good comparison.

I do applaud judge Posner, may there be many more like him, patenting needs to be sorted out and applied where its needed and functional not just because an entity files for it.

 

drednoxx

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Forgot to mention, one of the solutions would be to impose expirations on the tech pattents much like the one in the pharma industry. Once a drug goes retail it is exclusive for a number of years, after which the patent expires and you see generic and other versions of it on the market.

This would solve a lot of problems in tech world, dont want to litigate or deal with lawsuits ? Wait then out.
 
[citation][nom]drednoxx[/nom]Forgot to mention, one of the solutions would be to impose expirations on the tech pattents much like the one in the pharma industry. Once a drug goes retail it is exclusive for a number of years, after which the patent expires and you see generic and other versions of it on the market.This would solve a lot of problems in tech world, dont want to litigate or deal with lawsuits ? Wait then out.[/citation]

I'm pretty sure that tech patents do expire. It might be something like 10 or 20 years, but they expire eventually. The problem that I'd see with them is that many of them wouldn't expire until they're almost useless for anything other than patent trolling.
 

ashinms

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All of this talk is meaningless unless it gets legislators off of their asses and gets them moving. My worry is that it takes too long for any action to be had and this fizzles out. First comes talk, then comes action. Let's just nail the transition between the two.
 

davewolfgang

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The problem isn't really the "idea" of patents, but the fact that they are LETTING these companies patent OBVIOUS things that should never, ever even be ALLOWED to be patented in the first place. Things that OBVIOUSLY have been around and other companies have USED before - but yet one company files and gets it locked up.

Every single thing a iCrap device can do that they have "patented" - I had a iPaQ that could do it back in the 90's (and actually do it BETTER). What would crApple have done if HP had patented all of that??
 
G

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Didn't congress pass and with presidential signature, pass a patent reform bill that fixes the patent system for the wrong reasons a year ago?
 
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