We
couldn’t help but chuckle at The
Huffington Post’s post on ridiculous patents the PTO has granted
recently. It’s just good
old-fashioned fun to vote on whether the “apparatus
for
waking a sleeping driver by electric shock” or “doll
urn” is the more absurd idea for a patent (although in our view, the
“tricycle
mower” is an inspired concept—teaching your kids how to ride a bike
while
mowing your lawn? (Where do we
sign up?!)
Still,
it’s important to remember that for every ridiculous but harmless patent
the PTO
grants, two or three dangerous ones slip through the cracks as well.
These are the types of overly broad
patents that lead to years of litigation, destroy small businesses, and
crush
the spirit of our next generation of innovators.
We have
put forward the argument that the broken patent system does more than
suppress
innovation; it’s draining our economy as well. And who better than one
of the most respected
financial/business publications in the industry to back us up on this
point?
The
Economist recently came out with an editorial
blasting
the current patent system, labeling it as an out-of-date model
that has discouraged big ideas and brought any momentum towards economic
progress to a screeching halt. It
particularly condemned the PTO’s lax standards for patent applications:
“To
be eligible for a patent, an invention must
not just be novel, but also useful and non-obvious. Anything that relies
on
natural phenomena, abstract ideas or the laws of nature does not
qualify. The
USPTO has taken to requiring a working prototype of anything that
purportedly
breaches the laws of physics. […] An end to
frivolous patents for business processes will
be a blessing to online commerce.”
Now we just need
Congress to offer that blessing. It’s up to legislators and the PTO to
take these suggestions to heart and put an end to the downward spiral
our patent
system is mired in. And if it
means we have to mow the lawn after
we teach our kids to ride a bike—well, that’s a sacrifice we’re willing
to live
with.
