U.S. Supreme Court: Patent Office Allowed To Cancel Bad Patents

[Lucian Armasu]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Patent Office has the authority review and retract bad patents after they've already been issued.

U.S. Supreme Court: Patent Office Allowed To Cancel Bad Patents : Read more

 

[Soda-88]

While this does solve patent trolling, it also opens the gates for corporate corruption

 

[InvalidError]

While this does solve patent trolling, it also opens the gates for corporate corruption

I wouldn't say it solves it since considerable harm can be done to companies defending themselves against patent trolls long before cases get to Supreme Court where the patents may get successfully scrapped, but it is a step in the right direction. The real first step in protecting against trolling would be to substantially raise the bar on what constitutes a legitimate patentable invention.

 

[wiyosaya]

Maybe if the patent office did their due diligence up-front, bad patents would not be a problem in the first place. I get that recent laws have invalidated a number of patents, however, there have, AFAIK, been problems in the past with patents that should never have been granted even outside of any conditions that would have caused patents to fall into the categories of patents that have just been invalidated like abstract ideas.

 

[irfbhatt]

Who will determine which patent is good and what is bad.Only God)

 

[bit_user]

While this does solve patent trolling, it also opens the gates for corporate corruption

I wouldn't say it solves it since considerable harm can be done to companies defending themselves against patent trolls long before cases get to Supreme Court where the patents may get successfully scrapped,

The point of the article - stated in the headline and first sentence - is that the US Patent Office now has the authority to invalidate bad patents. Perhaps you missed that.

 

[bit_user]

Maybe if the patent office did their due diligence up-front, bad patents would not be a problem in the first place.

This is sort of a red herring. No matter how good the USPTO does in vetting patent applications, some bad ones will always slip through.

The system can't depend on the USPTO doing a perfect job of vetting. The right solution is to make the system self-supporting by allowing defendants to challenge the legitimacy of patents they're accused of infringing. Since most of patent trolls' business involves bad patents, this should go a long way towards shutting them down.

The other ingredient is to make obtaining and maintaining patents sufficiently expensive that companies can only afford to do it for key technologies vital to their business and not for frivolous ideas.