Opinion: Engineers Should Stage a Patent Strike

I wonder if arrogance is edible?

And if it is truly the goal to wrench the current patent system, rather than strike, all an engineer would have to do is publicly post the substance of the patentable information online.

Having created public "prior art" it would become indefensible.

Of course he'd get fired.

But this smells a lot like the "We're running out of engineers" articles that always track back to manufacturers or Universities.

Again, since engineers rarely profit from a patent - what is my motivation?

And since the patent system is largely dependent on overseas legal systems for defense - it all turns into legals fees.

Be first, be best, innovate faster than they can steal your work.

Ok the company owns my idea, but I couldn't afford to patent it on my own (and wouldn't bother).
Maybe a royalty clause would be more valuable?
Anyhow, unless the idea is outside the remit of your employment I think it's fair enough that the company owns it.
So.... If I invent a new accounting system (stop sniggering) that saves the company time and money, then I think I should own it and proffit by it.
But if I just do my job and write a new user friendly whatsit, then the company should own it.
Del

*snigger*

Enough of that. Now then...

Do you really trust the company with the royalty payment? I don't know about who you work for, but I worry that many would look you straight in the eye and swear that they haven't made a single one of your whatsists. While just over their shoulders you'd see an endless line of them on the conveyor to the Shipping Dept.

Then again, I also suspect that they come into my room at night, numb my scalp and pluck out hairs while I sleep. Presumably to make me seem aged beyond my years and therefore senile. Also to jealously hinder my legendary success at wooing all the pretty young things in the offices. So perhaps I'm not the best judge of such things.

The current USPTO laws provide for patents to be pursued without the direct inventors involvement. This is likely a rare occurrence. The inventor must still be given the credit for the idea but if the right conditions are met, the inventor can be left out of the process and I am pretty sure this can be done without his or her consent.

Please don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger!

If I have time later I will look into the MPEP (Manual of Patent Examining Procedure) and make a specific reference.

I'm adding some more information to my previous post.

United States Code Title 37 CFR 3.71 states: "One or more assignees, after becoming of record (see below), may conduct prosecution of a national patent application or a reeexamination proceeding to the exclusion of the inventive entity." One application of this would be a corporation which has been assigned (or has sufficient propriatary interest in) the commercial rights to an idea can prosecute a patent and exclude the inventor(s) from the process. Although the inventor(s) is still credited with the invention.

Another part of law that has an impact is MPEP (Manual of Patent Examining Proceedure) 409.03(d) II Proof of Unavaliability or Refusal to join [R-3]. This section discusses the options and limitations if the inventor(s) refuse to sign patent application documents. Actually much of 409 deals with this.

Obviously if all inventors went on a "patent strike" it would have a chilling effect. It would stop many patents because they would be harder to prosecute without the inventors involvement. In some cases (maybe where large financial benefit were at stake) I suspect patenting would continue.

I can state with certainty that at least one patent has been issued without the inventor's knowledge (though with his name on it). I was looking at several patents issued in my name, and wondered if there were any other members of my family who held patents. To my surprise, I found one issued nearly twenty years earlier to me. The company that I worked for then was sold and re-sold in a three-month timespan; then business dropped off and I was let go. A few months after that, apparently, they applied for a patent in my name, and assigned to this newest owner. It had already expired when I first learned of its existence (I remembered the item, though!). And because the last parent company had been sold in the interim, I have never even been able to learn who applied, etc., nor how they did it without any legal signatures. I never even got the "One US Dollar and other good and valuable considerations" promised by the standard form . . . Did somewhat better with most of my others, but still a pittance compared to what the company stood to gain.

So, even if it cannot be legally done, a patent could be issued without the inventor's direct involvement. If you signed the automatic assignment form when hired, a company would probably be able to claim implied consent.

The little invention I actually caused to be made to accomplish a specific job never seemed particularly great to me.

I had strong suspicions there was a better way.

Haven't thought about it in awhile.

Left thing with the people who paid me to make it, and direct the rig.

Dropped the job when they pushed me in directions likely to end in injury or death.

On occassion I have read contracts and asked for changes.

For the business I ran, I rewrote the inherited standard contract down from three pages to one paragraph.

Somewhere else it was pointed out that Engineers are not particularly well organized as labor. There is apparently a Technical Union.

For a "Strike" to succeed" I should think more organization of either the Union sort, or Guild sort of operational procedures was required.

I myself had an experience with the Screen Actors Guild, that was very positive. I got their lowest standard pay when not working as a member, and they did a great deal of work to make sure I got paid residuals.

Possibly there are some lessons for any professional groups to be learned from the way SAG operates.

Laws concerning Intellectual Property are last I knew very highly advanced, but the enforcement is a whole other world.

I'm not sure if NC Congressman Howard Coble is still the Chairman of the US Intellectual Property Rights Commission. He was long entrenched there, and in my business of movies and whatnot, I was not very happy with his performance in protecting intellectual property rights.

Maybe if all actors and creative artists suddenly became Republicans, then rip offs would diminish. I guess my bottom line is to first encourage unity for professionals, then pressure for fair treatment, and look at strikes as a last resort.

One must allow for the proactive actions producers, or employers can employ to counter your interests.

The Producers Lockout of NY in movie and Tv production, was devastating to me.

Hence my views. You may write me a Private Message, for further consultation on this sort of issue, for it is in line with some of my other work done for my own website.

A patent is nothing more than a license to litigate. The expense of all the attorney's billable hours in preparing the documentation, and the continuing cost of litigation to defend the patent make any potential increase in revenue just not worth the hassle. It seems that the primary reason patents exist is to secure attorneys' careers. That was a main reason I opted for a non-GMO cocktail of natural microbes to turn biomass into fermentable sugar (www.ire-incorp.com) Since this approach has nothing to be patented, (a slight modification in the grinder section for a standard dry-mill corn ethanol distillery is all the hardware you need) there is no way anyone else can patent it out from under me, either. And I can just follow Colonel Sanders' lead and trademark the "secret microbe cocktail" and license it to those who want to use it at a price that makes it cheaper to license it than spend a lot of time trying to isolate and identify the microbes. Just because something is patented does not mean it is the best way to do something, and just because something is not patented doesn't keep it from working with high efficiency.

Ever since the US government essentially stole two patents (development paid for by a major oil company) by classifying them as "Secret", defence sensitive (although they had absolutely nothing to do with military systems- they involved peripheral systems for deep sea oil production platforms), and denied access or use by both the inventors (one of which was me) and the original owner (the oil company that paid for the developments), I have been on a patent strike, refusing to patent anything (once a patent application is submitted, all of your work is public domain any way, and unless you have deep, deep pockets, there is little you can do to protect the "intellectual property") or participate any any project that promoted the patent of any product or concept.

Unfortunately, no one has noticed that I am on strike...

Tell us the details...they can't be 'secret' 'cos you know 'em .
They'll be even less secret if you tell us.
Del

I'll chime in w/my standard rant.

If you can't afford to defend it you don't have a patent

I was negotiating with a "hobbit" to improve his fungal propagation techniques, by applying industrial methods to what is otherwise a hippies shovels & pick ups proposition to spread starters on a 500 acre lake [mudflat] or miles of forest service roads... The breeder of the particular strain, was being protective & claiming patent rights, even though several deep pocket [simple green] companies were already stomping all over his rights. He wanted us to agree to 20% of gross to complete a project he had no hope of completing, he thought he deserved $400k for handing us a test tube & a map LOL

These things can happen when you try to deal with the greener than thou crowd, the guy has a bunch of alphabet soup after & thinks he knows something... he does know some amazing things, but has very few people skills or real world skills.