Patent Trolls Undermine Open Access; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 10/28/16

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Patent Trolls Undermine Open Access:

"...[E]ven as university research becomes accessible to a wider public, some of that same research is falling into the hands of patent trolls, companies that serve no purpose but to amass patents and sue innovators who independently created similar inventions. When universities file patents on inventions that arise from scientific research and then sell those patents to trolls, it puts a strain on innovation. That’s why EFF recently launched Reclaim Invention, a campaign to encourage universities to adopt policies not to sell or license patents to trolls...

As the open access movement continues to grow and mature, we hope to see open access allies on campus begin to take on their institutions’ patenting policies. University patenting and licensing policies directly affect how researchers’ outputs will be used in the field. The same arguments that have given way to the explosion of open access publishing also apply to patents—just as researchers shouldn’t trust their work with publishers that don’t have the public’s interest at heart, their institutions shouldn’t sell patents to trolls out for nothing but a quick buck. Instead, they should partner with companies that will bring their inventions to the public.

After all, the public paid for it."

Tell Your University: Don't Sell Patents to Trolls; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 8/17/16

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Tell Your University: Don't Sell Patents to Trolls:

"When universities invent, those inventions should benefit everyone. Unfortunately, they sometimes end up in the hands of patent trolls—companies that serve no purpose but to amass patents and demand money from others. When a university sells patents to trolls, it undermines the university’s purpose as a driver of innovation. Those patents become landmines that make innovation more difficult.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the problem of universities selling or licensing patents to trolls. We said that the only way that universities will change their patenting and technology transfer policies is if students, professors, and other members of the university community start demanding it.

It’s time to start making those demands.

We’re launching Reclaim Invention, a new initiative to urge universities to rethink how they use patents. If you think that universities should keep their inventions away from the hands of patent trolls, then use our form to tell them.

EFF is proud to partner with Creative Commons, Engine, Fight for the Future, Knowledge Ecology International, and Public Knowledge on this initiative.

A Simple Promise to Defend Innovation

Central to our initiative is the Public Interest Patent Pledge (PIPP), a pledge we hope to see university leadership sign. The pledge says that before a university sells or licenses a patent, it will first check to make sure that the potential buyer or licensee doesn’t match the profile of a patent troll"

Elsevier’s New Patent for Online Peer Review Throws a Scare Into Open-Source Advocates; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/1/16

Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education; Elsevier’s New Patent for Online Peer Review Throws a Scare Into Open-Source Advocates:

"Patents on software can be controversial. And often, so is the company Elsevier, the giant journal publisher. So when word hit the internet starting on Tuesday night that Elsevier had just been awarded a patent for an "online peer-review system and method," reaction from people aligned with the publishing and open-source worlds came swiftly on Twitter and in other online venues, much of it reflecting suspicion about the company’s motives...

The concern revolves around the patent Elsevier received for its five-year-old "article-transfer service," a propriety online system the company uses to manage journal-article submissions and the ensuing peer reviews."

Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds; Washington Post, 8/31/16

Lisa Rein, Washington Post; Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds:

"Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government potentially cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation...

The investigation scheduled for release Wednesday by the independent watchdog for the Commerce Department, the patent office’s parent agency, determined that the real scale of fraud is probably double those numbers..."

Investigators also found widespread time and attendance abuse at another Commerce agency, the U.S. Census Bureau, where employees in the small hiring office overcharged the government for thousands of hours of time they never worked. The fraud, also carried out by supervisors, involved 40 employees, more than half of the staff of the small office."

Pennsylvania wades into open data; GCN, 8/26/16

Matt Leonard, GCN; Pennsylvania wades into open data:

"The data currently available on OpenDataPA supports Gov. Tom Wolf’s three governing objectives -- education, employment and government services -- includes prison population numbers, school performance profiles and summary information on well inspections. The state also plans to release datasets from other state agencies on the site...

The administration’s main goals for releasing this data is three-fold: accountability, modernization and innovation. The portal will allow citizens to keep track of government projects, find this information in one place and use if to “make data-driven decisions.”"

Stand Up for Open Access. Stand Up for Diego.; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 8/9/16

Ana Acosta and Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Stand Up for Open Access. Stand Up for Diego. :

"The movement for open access is not new, but it seems to be accelerating. Even since we started following Diego’s case in 2014, many parts of the scientific community have begun to fully embrace open access publishing. Dozens of universities have adopted open access policies requiring that university research be made open, either through publishing in open access journals or by archiving papers in institutional repositories. This year’s groundbreaking discovery on gravitational waves—certainly one of the most important scientific discoveries of the decade—was published in an open access journal under a Creative Commons license. Here in the U.S., it’s becoming more and more clear that an open access mandate for federally funded research will be written into law; it’s just a matter of when. The tide is changing, and open access will win.

But for researchers like Diego who face prison time right now, the movement is not accelerating quickly enough. Open access could have saved Diego from the risk of spending years in prison.

Many people reading this remember the tragic story of Aaron Swartz. When Aaron died, he was facing severe penalties for accessing millions of articles via MIT’s computer network without "authorization." Diego’s case differs from Aaron’s in a lot of ways, but in one important way, they’re exactly the same: if all academic research were published openly, neither of them would have been in trouble for anything.

When laws punish intellectual curiosity and scientific research, everyone suffers; not just researchers, but also the people and species who would benefit from their research. Copyright law is supposed to foster innovation, not squash it."

The Downfall Of Invention: A Broken Patent System; Huffington Post, 8/16/16

Tahir Amin, Huffington Post; The Downfall Of Invention: A Broken Patent System:

"The cost of dozens of brand-name drugs have nearly doubled in just the past five years. Public outrage over drug prices extends from Capitol Hill to the presidential candidates to patients. In response, pharmaceutical executives are spending more on lobbying and marketing. Yet for all this attention, most of the proposed solutions for reducing prescription drug costs—tougher negotiations, appeals for transparent R&D costs or investigations into insurers—miss one of the primary sources of the problem: the way we award patents.

Today, too many drug makers receive patents for unmerited and unjust reasons...

Not surprisingly, the pharma industry employs a variety of stall tactics that make it virtually impossible for affordable, generic drugs to enter the U.S. market. In what’s called “pay-for-delay,” for example, patent owners pay off generic manufacturers to wait before entering the market, a practice that could violate antitrust laws...

It’s time to restore the U.S. patent system to its original purpose – to protect and incentivize invention, not innovation."

A World Without Patents; Forbes, 5/12/16

David Pridham, Forbes; A World Without Patents:

"On the surface, Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee is about whether the Patent Office (PTO) can use a different standard in hearing challenges to a patent’s validity after it’s been granted than the standard used by the federal courts. It’s also about whether the taking of a legal property right (a patent) ought to happen via an administrative hearing, without judicial review.

During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts seemed shocked by the PTO’s system for challenging patents, known as Inter Partes Reviews (IPRs), calling it a “bizarre way … to decide a legal question” and a “very extraordinary animal in legal culture to have two different proceedings addressing the same question that lead to different results.” He was referring to the fact that a patent upheld as valid and infringed by the federal courts can then be taken by the infringing defendant to the PTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and declared invalid!...

Even if you stipulate that there are bad patents that shouldn’t have been issued, is it really believable that 90% of all patents granted are invalid — despite being issued only after careful review by PTO examiners in a process that takes over two years and results in the rejection of half of all patent applications?

If we really believe that 90% of Patent Office output is garbage, then we should just shut the agency down and save everyone all the trouble.

There would be consequences, of course. Without patents and the competitive protections they afford, individuals and companies will not invest the money it takes to develop new cures for disease or create new technological wonders. That’s because they know others will simply copy their inventions with impunity and then sell them at a much lower cost, since it didn’t cost them a dime to develop these in the first place. This is a terrific way to drive the innovators out of any industry."