[wetherbeei]

I run Google Patents (patents.google.com) - we've thought about including a way to search by expired patents (we have the expiration indicators), but in my opinion it gives a false sense of security. There's also http://freeip.mtu.edu/home/index.php, which searches over only expired patents.

The patent in question could have been improved upon, and that improvement can still be in force. Say someone patents a widget A + B, and later files a continuation A + B + C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application). The first patent could be expired, but while building your copy of A + B you might come to the same conclusion that the invention also needs to include C (which is still in force) to actually work.

Google Patents focuses on improving patent quality. There's still uncertainty if a granted patent is actually valid. If we can improve the prior art finding process for inventors and examiners, then fewer overly-broad patents will be granted, and it will be easier to tell if an invention actually infringes a patent.

Then we can start to think about making patent information more useful for part of the original purpose - as a transfer of knowledge to the public domain in exchange for a temporary exclusive right.

[niko001]

Thanks for chiming in, Ian! Google Patents is awesome :-)! You're right, there are a number of edge cases where the expiry date is incorrect - the USPTO even provides a patent expiry calculator [1] (as an Excel file, no less ;)...). For patents issued 20 years ago, the "issue date + 20 years" should hold true as a very basic rule of thumb (disregarding any improvements that may still be in force). I hope that nobody builds a business based on one of the displayed patents without first checking what other, newer patents may also affect said invention - the site is merely meant as a starting point to get inspired; the actual research should follow suit.

[1]: https://www.uspto.gov/patent/laws-and-regulations/patent-ter...

[coldpie]

> Say someone patents a widget A + B, and later files a continuation A + B + C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application). The first patent could be expired, but while building your copy of A + B you might come to the same conclusion that the invention also needs to include C (which is still in force) to actually work.

This is a perfect example of why patents are harmful. The patent on C did not in any way help the person copying A + B, it was invented on its own. But now this new person can be punished simply for being equally as creative as the other guy. It's a huge disincentive on innovation. I understand the theory behind patents, but I have a really hard time believing anyone in history has ever actually used a patent to find out how a thing was made and then improved on it; or could not have done this equally as easy without patents. Even if you can point to one or two such examples, that still has to more than balance out the loss in innovation and increased legal costs created by uncertainty of IP legality.

[abecedarius]

This solar sail patent http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H... was educational to me (at some other site which showed the figures too) -- but it's literally the only time that's ever happened in my multi-decade career. It's written in a more helpful style than usual, and undoubtedly never saw commercial use in its lifetime. I would not have even looked if it were a patent in my own field.

[kevinwang]

Without patents, inventing would not be profitable. All products would have exact copycats and ripoffs.

[ghayes]

The majority of software companies don't hold any patents (aside of copyrights). As such, it doesn't seem necessary that patents are the only means to profit from "inventing."

[kevinwang]

But as you say, they have intellectual property protection. Isn't the copyright protection that software developers get over their software analogous in this sense to the protection that patent owners get over their inventions?

Unless you just meant to split hairs over copyright vs. patent, in which case I agree. I should have said something like "intellectual property protection" instead of "patents".

[ajmurmann]

Patents and copyright work quite differently and patents aren't really appropriate for software. Patents allow you to be too granular in what you protect to make sense for software. I think a good comparison would be protecting combinations of two musical notes in music. This would dramatically impact creation of new songs because you are protecting something too trivial. The equivalent happened when software patents first were introduced.

[kevinwang]

I feel like you're attacking our specific implementation of patents (and especially software patents) in America. I'm talking about the idea of copy protection. Is it an incorrect assertion that in a world without any copy protection, people would be free to copy any invention they wanted? Thus, the original inventors' version of the product (which would be exactly the same as the copied version) would have no differentiating factors, and there would be no guarantee of profit from invention.

Yes, there are a lot of flaws in copy protection. There are a lot of instances where patent trolls and patents are detrimental to innovation.

But the main point that I was originally making was: Wouldn't a world without copy protection be a world where every invention gets literally copied, resulting in lesser gains for the actual inventors?

I think you may have misunderstood me: I did not mean to support software patents or our current implementation of software patents at all. Instead, I was countering the gp assertion that (patents are rare in the software world + software world doesn't have rampant issues with ripoffs) implies that patents are not necessary to profit off of inventing. My counterargument was that the software world may not have many patents, but it does still have copyright, and thus their counterargument does not invalidate my overall point/question: "copy protection is necessary in order to not have a world full of ripoffs"

[ajkjk]

I don't think I believe you. That's the theory of course, but I haven't lived in a society without patents so I can only trust people who say that's how it works.

My mental heuristic says that software engineering seems like it would be only improved by patents not existing. I can't speak to hardware inventions, though.

[TeMPOraL]

It could be, however, if you limited patent lifetime to reasonable market turnover rates. Say, a year or two. It's enough to establish the brand, and after that, competition is healthy.

Patents were meant to be a carrot - a way to enrich society with inventions by hacking the market to incentivize it. Instead, companies now are given a free carrot factory, so they can (and do) show middle finger to society and profit off inventions while keeping them away from people for a very long time.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Google Patents focuses on improving patent quality. //

Could you go in to that a bit. There's been fulltext, full image databases with proximity searching and bespoke classifications and such for a while, how has Google Patents improved on that. How is it better than Espacenet for example?

When I looked at patents a lot the biggest help would probably have been being able to get decent translations of Korean/Japanese/Chinese/etc. patents - I gather you were involved in an EPO project to do that. What other goodies have I missed?

>but while building your copy of A + B you might come to the same conclusion //

Worth noting is that this is fine in most jurisdictions as long as your not trying to commercialise the build.

[BHSPitMonkey]

I think they meant improving the quality of actual patents (by giving people tools to combat bogus patents), not necessarily improving on the patent browsing experience (though I'm sure they would argue that they try to do that too).

[blackflame7000]

Great insight on continuing patent applications. I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that overly broad patents, particularly with respect to technology, need serious review. It is way too easy to patent a concept instead of an invention.

An example to illustrate my point is a patent such as this: http://www.google.com/patents/US20140244001

Which basically says, I haven't actually invented anything useful, but if anyone else does they should have to pay me because I thought of something super generic first.

[monochromatic]

Why wouldn't the continuation (or CIP as you might have meant) expire at the same time as the original? Same priority date, so unless it's old enough to fall under the 17-years-from-issuance regime...

[md2be]

BC under old rule, the term was 17 years from issue date (not filing date)

[monochromatic]

Yeah but that changed a long time ago. There aren't many patents still in force that have a term calculated under the old rule.

[ww520]

Thank you for the great work. It's very useful.

[iplaw]

You run Google Patents? Where is the comment jar?

[amelius]

Yes, it would be great if patents could have user comments associated with them.

(The same can be said for publications in google scholar, perhaps you could pass it on to the appropriate team)

[panabee]

thanks for the great work and insightful comments! what are the top three things you would do if you could reform the patent system? and do you support/oppose abolishing patents for software (or any other kinds of products)?

[md2be]

Can you share your email? I'd like to reach out to you.