Someone brought the following links to my attention. We have discussed this general subject before (patents in our industry), and I thought some people would be interested in the news.

The first is with regards to a lawsuit in the US where Cognex was suing a company known as "the Lemelson Partnership", which apparently had controlling American patents on bar code readers and vision systems (which they claimed to have invented back in 1954). Cognex has just managed to get the patents thrown out. Apparently, Lemelson has used these patents to extract $1.5 billion from various companies since the early 1990s. While I suspect that most people were blissfully unaware of the situation, no doubt there are some who will feel cause to celebrate.

http://www.cognex.com/news/press_releases/2004/Cognex_Lemelson.asp

http://www.cognex.com/pdf/corporate/Lemelson_decision.pdf

The PDF file contains the court decision. I didn't read all of it, but I did glance at some bits of it, and the following caught my eye (from page 9):

"Through the testimony of Arthur Steiner, an attorney who previously worked as a Patent Examiner... Steiner's testimony could be read as a strong indictment of the U.S. Patent Office in which Patent Examiners are limited to approximately 19 hours per patent review and when confronted with applications as complicated as those involved in the Lemelson patents, are put in a position of falsely representing that they had reviewed materials when in fact they had not."

I think the above quote from the court decision perhaps sums up what a lot of people have long suspected. The above was not a factor in the court's decision, but it was the result of some of the testimony presented.

On a contrary note, Opto-22 was being sued by Schneider for using a web browser with a PLC. Opto-22 has recently decided to settle rather than continuing to fight. See their press statement at:

http://www.opto22.com/company/pressroom/index.aspx

Opto-22 had something rather interesting to say (the following is quoted from their presss release):

"Fear of litigation is stifling innovation as more and more companies decide to compete in the courtroom and not the marketplace. Attorneys and consultants are encouraging their clients to set up intellectual property departments with the idea of making money not through earnest endeavors to produce and offer quality goods and services, but through continuous litigation and intimidation. The lack of resources and expertise at the United States Patent Office is only adding fuel to this fire by awarding patents that should never have been issued in the first place."

I don't have any particular insights to add to the above, but I thought these would interest a few people.

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Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
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My thought on the Lemelson matter would be that the patents should have expired. This is the deal struck between protecting the inventor and not bringing progress in the public good to a halt. It has been much abused by the private interests.

The statement by Opto22 is the obvious and tragic truth which has already had destructive impact on american industry. I don't disagree with the idea of patents, but they rely on good faith actions by the protected party and now are subject to so much perversion and exploitation that they can no longer serve the balance between public and private interests and do mostly harm. Accordingly, they should be deprecated. The software patents seen
so far are so obviously destructive that no argument of their merit is believable to reasonable people, only greedy folks and non-programmers. Someone probably "owns" the For Next loop and is preparing to sue us all.

Patents are only workable with the reasonable, ethical and honest.

Regards

cww

 

On January 28, 2004, Curt Wuollet wrote:
<clip>
> My thought on the Lemelson matter would be that the patents should
> have expired. <

I don't know the details of how the Lemelson patents were handled, but the "modern" way to invent something under the methods the US patent system uses (most other countries operate a bit differently) is to file a "preliminary" patent and then amend it over time. The US patent office will keep it secret until the patent is issued. I think the Lemelson patents were first filed in the early 1950's, but were not actually issued until the early 1990's. A patent's time limit begins at the point it is issued, not from when it was filed.

If you see a promising field of technology that is many years away from practical application, you simply file a preliminary patent and add to it as "continuations" the work of other researchers as they make advances in the
field. When the technology becomes feasible, you now have a valid patent which was *filed* before anyone else's. This is known as a "submarine" patent.

> This is the deal struck between protecting the inventor
> and not bringing progress in the public good to a halt. It has been
> much abused by the private interests.
<clip>

Patents were originally intended to provide lucrative monopolies to people with good political connections. It was only relatively recently in history that the idea arose of using them to encourage invention and innovation. I suspect that in at least certain fields, patents seem to be returning to their original roots.

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Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
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Cynical, but probably true. Perhaps best to dump them entirely. I very much doubt that people would quit inventing and developing things. Patents only protect those with vast resources to defend them.

Regards

cww