Bonum Certa Men Certa

US Government Wrestles With Patent Dilemmas

Temple with blue sky



Summary: Patents on life are challenged by the federal government while NASA (mis)uses public money to make and trade software patents

THE Obama government is in a position where it must serve the public and not worry about shareholders of its own (or increase internal levels of work like the USPTO does), so it finally decided to look into the dilemma of gene patents and the outcome was reasonable. "U.S. Says Genes Should Not Be Eligible for Patents," reports the New York Times (a very government-friendly publication):



Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.


Software patents too ought to be brought to the government for more independent scrutiny. They are controversial and very harmful as well (many patent trolls use them). Glyn Moody says that "the software patent rot begins to spread" as he points to this news from London:

As a result of the mixture of 'technical' and 'non-technical' features in the claimed invention, the Board took into account the type of analysis normally carried out for computer-implemented inventions. The applicant argued that the mathematical parts of the claim contributed to the technical effect of the invention, and should therefore be taken into account when assessing inventive step. The opponent, however, argued that the mathematical parts "did not require any further technical considerations" and were to be disregarded in the assessment of inventive step.


So, bioinformatics too are now harmed by software patents. Time for the Obama government to weigh in?

Sadly, the government too is biased. It knows that patents are a tool of power and leverage over other countries. Right now it goes further and does something controversial with NASA (which we occasionally bring up due to its relationship with Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]).

“[T]he public paid for these software patents from NASA and now they could go to patent trolls who attack the public.”"NASA to hold auction for automated software development patents," says ZDNet.com (also in ZDNet UK), but the public paid for these software patents from NASA and now they could go to patent trolls who attack the public. This makes no sense. This news got covered in this press release and then mentioned by many news sites [1, 2, 3] including some from IDG [1, 2]. The Sun Herlald says: "NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is auctioning an exclusive license to five patents for automated software development on November 11, 2010. The patents encompass a new method for automatically creating software code which is verifiably equivalent to user requirements specified in natural language, graphic formats, or other formats with a known semantic structure."

Patents are a form of weapon used to protect a monopoly. Has NASA begun producing such weapons at taxpayers' expense? If so, what does that say about the government's priorities? NASA should invent, not patent and sell patents (which is a waste of time and effort, leading to increased market risk). Those Teflon fairy tales won't be enough to guarantee NASA future funding; neither will patent zealotry.

Recent Techrights' Posts

What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
 
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025