sanking said:
In fact, this is a huge problem. There are many "patent trolls" out there who have done no R&D writing vague patents that give little detail and making vague clams." And when they find a company that violates one of their "broad claims" they litigate. And they nearly always win something from the litigation because in most cases it is better to settle a legal issue out of court than to go to trial. In the long run this kind of activity suberts the intent of laws that protect intellectual property rights. But that won't matter to the intellectual whores who do this kind of work and subvert the intent of the law, now will it?
Sandy
Sandy, you are looking at just one aspect of the patent system. The patent system has side effects, and the US Patent system has some serious problems, but the kind of criticisms that you mentioned apply to only some patents granted by the patent office. One problem is that the US uses very different system in determining the priority compared to Japan and Europe, so USPTO can't really benefit from other countries patent examiners work if the patent was applied simultaneously. Another problem is that USPTO doesn't have enough examiners to look at each case closely, yet they handle more cases and in shorter turnaround time compared to Japan and Europe. So there are many faulty patents granted by USPTO and many of them get famous. A very good example of really stupid patent is USP 6368227. The patent was granted first btu it was stupid enough it became very famous. So USPTO had to re-examine and invalidate the patent (See 6368227 C1). Another example of funny patent is 6004596. As far as I know this is also very famous but still a valid patent. Wanna see a really, really creative patent? Try 6293874. Another piece of joke? Check out 6718554. This kind of system is widely used for infants and little kids in Japan, but of course they were beyond imagination to the USPTO examiner. Other classic silly patents include: 5443036, 58511117, 5761857, 5616089, 5965809, and so on.
Entertainment industry is really big in the US and I can see there is some entertaining elements in the USPTO as well, but I am not saying that these are the proper aspect of the patent system.
On the other hand, suppose I came up with a magical compound X and hundreds of its chemical derivatives that share some aspects of the chemistry. It can be added to XTOL, D-76, Microphen, DD-X, Rodinal, Pyrocat-HD, Dektol, Neutol, almost any developer to do something useful, say increase the photographic speed by more than 1/2 stop. Say this compound can be added at around 1g/L for best results but can be used from anywhere between 10mg and 200g/L, whether it's practical or beneficial or not. Say I know the chemistry but can't really enumerate ALL compounds derived from X and still be useful, but can describe them in more general terms. Then how do you think I should write my patent? I'm going to make a few very broad claims to make my patent to cover as wide range as possible without overlapping with the prior art, and this should be accepted as long as I say that 1g/L of compound X is most preferrably added to D-76, or otherwise the best known method of implementation known to me.
Anyway, there are lots of reasons why good patents should include both very broad claims and some specifics of best implementation known to the inventor. However, the patent is concerned about the invention, and not about the product, so there is no need to disclose anything about the product in the patent. It often happened in the past that the developer formulae appeared in Kodak patents were identical or pretty close to the product formula, particularly in the case of XTOL.
However, the emulsion patnets are usually much more vague and less specific. It's really easy to criticize things that don't affect you directly, but to me, those patents are of good value worthy of the government giving them the exclusionary right. I would have much less information about the current emulsion technology if they didn't patent their emulsions and rather kept them all secret.
Of course, there are lots of useless patents given to Kodak (as well as Ilford and others). I won't name them here, but there are some pretty bad ones. Some of them make me think that those guys had to get patents for promotion or something. But they're costing their corporation and not me. They are usually harmless patents, or something that I can easily come up with a firm evidence that nullifies the patent in court, if necessary.
Yes you may infringe a patent if you make a sandwitch whose all sides are sealed, and you can get sued. It's silly. But at the same time corporations are more motivated to spend more resources for their r&d because of adequate protection provided by the patent system. And if they know that the invention can be implemented by any one of many many ways, then they should get a patent that covers the many many ways to implement it. And they should be preventing from others getting a new patent for some of the ways that are already known to the original inventor (this is called defensive rights of patent). That's fair.
On the other hand, copyright protection is way too excessive and I think is a bigger source of social problems. I won't recite too many things here, but just search for Sonny Bono Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
Finally, for the good aspect of the patent system, check out classic US Patents: 0223898 and 0226503.