Comments on: The Qatent Office

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:38:46 +0000

This idea has been suggested over the years as a way for indigenous people to protect their traditional knowledge from other people’s patents. The problem is that the only advantage, really, is that you don’t have to incur the expense of patenting, given that if you get a patent you can always license to anyone or everyone, or even abandon the patent to the public. And there are disadvantages. For one thing, inventions often cost more to create than do copyrighted works, so getting one’s money back is a bigger deal. (That’s probably why the idea was raised more in the traditional-knowledge context, where return on investment is not the primary goal.) And the patent-as-bargaining-chip you mention is important in some industries, mostly those related to computers. Unless everyone agrees to eschew patents, everyone needs his bargaining chips. And of course if everyone agrees, that would be an antitrust violation.

By: paul

paul — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:01:56 +0000

Oh, Dennis…

It’s easy. The federal government doesn’t actually do the research. It funds it through grants and contracts, and “public/private partnerships” and various other mechanisms. And somehow the contracts get written so that the stuff that’s patentable “belongs” to whatever private entity is involved. Often by having the feds fund everything through proof-of-concept, and then leaving the private side to created patentable solutions to all the gotchas that stand between the proof of concept and large-scale production.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:15:06 +0000

Ummm, if the Federal Gov’t is going into battery research in a big way, aren’t the patents generated automagically in the Public Domain? Or have the Republic’s figured out a way around that bedrock principle too?

By: Joe S.

Joe S. — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:37:31 +0000

Patents are not as controversial as copyright, but they are controversial. The consensus among policy types is narrow: the pharmaceutical system as we know it today couldn’t exist without patents. There are many supporters of patents for other inventions, but also many opponents. Both offer good arguments based on empirical evidence and rational economics. The opponents of patents further argue that there are other ways to structure the pharmaceutical development system.
That all being said, I can’t see any problems with a qatent office. Patent offices have their own registries of prior art, but there is much to be said for open-source competition. There are a few practical problem: indexing, quality control, incentives. But it just might work, either on a standalone basis, or as a kind of indexing system appended to Wikipedia.

By: paul

paul — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:50:08 +0000

The big thing a Qatent Office could do is to make sure that the prior art is available to patent offices and is properly taken into account. As things stand now, it’s mostly the applicant’s responsibility to fess up to relevant prior art, and only if the patent is challenged (in extremely expensive and uncertain litigation) do others get to chime in. (And there’s no penalty, other than not getting the patent, for submitting a defective application or one that gets overturned on re-examination.)

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:42:06 +0000

J: thanks for the typo pickup, I’ve corrected. The pun works better I think without the u; though the pronunciation must of course be parallel. Qinetiq have shown the way! Though they pronounce “kinetic.” I’m happy to let the market decide.

Blake: right. A friend of mine, Mike Spedding, chief pharmacologist to a big French company, has been trying to draw a line around cell receptors – which should be in the public domain – and the chemicals that lock on to them, which should be patentable. There’s already a public-domain database. For now, I’m only suggesting that the arguments on such matters will go better if there’s a good vocabulary.

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:00:12 +0000

There is at least one other huge huge problem with the current patent system beyond those listed in the article. The very concept of software, business process and genome related patents is ridiculous.

By: J

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:10:14 +0000

“Welcome to the world of quatents. My coinage: qatent is to patent as [...]”

Lexicography fail. If you yourself can’t keep straight whether it’s supposed to be “quatent” or “qatent”, nobody else will be able to, either.

Then there’s the question of pronunciation – how the heck do you want English speakers to form that initial u-less q? Is is a glottal or uvular stop, as in Arabic? Or are we supposed to say “katent” or “kwatent”? Or perhaps “chatent” (following the use of q in Pinyin)?

Don’t take this personally, but you’ve hobbled a perfectly good concept with a perfectly horrible word. Maybe wait a few weeks and re-launch the idea with a different name? Otherwise, whenever the subject comes up, what people will remember is “that crazy unpronounceable word” rather than “that nifty idea”.