I very much agree. The ptab is not a bad idea in principle but unfortunately it operates in a way that favors large companies who can use IPR to out spend small inventors instead of paying a fair license. I am experiencing this first hand with a company that approched me to license a patent that I had. I also had a small company making and selling products with our patented technology. Our company was ~1/100th the size of company licensing our patent. A year into our contract the big company decide it wanted out of the license and has been using the IPR process as a threat and leverage point to try and not pay the agreed royalty. It could cost me 300 to 500k to defend my patents through the IPR process, money I don't have but large company does.
One big problem that never seems to be discussed when talking about the PTAB and IPRs is the collateral damage it causes for small business and small inventors. The big tech companies lobbied to set the rules in their favor. "Patent Trolls" are not the problem they are a symptom of a different more fundamental problem. If you are a small business owner or small inventor the patent system is to expensive for you to use on an even footing with large companies, so you can be put into a situation where you have to work with a "patent troll" just to have the legal resources to play the game.
By the way my company built it's own factory to build our products in the USA. We have since had to close our factory down and let all our employees go becuase we have been unable to protect the unique IP of our product, I know of at least 100 companies using the IP we created, and have 3 patents coveeing. As a small business entrepreneur the patent system and the IPR/ptab system has utterly failed me so far.
You can start by googling "Waldorf toys". The Waldorf educational method is similar to Montessori in that it focus on collaborative exploration (the pot + spoon example above is spot-on).
This story reminds me of the dangers of metal grill brushes. Public service announcement, don't use a metal brush to clean your grill. The metal strands can breakoff and if they get lodged in your food and accidentally swallowed it causes serious health issues and surgeons have a very difficult time removing them. These brushes are actually outlawed in Canada but not in the USA.
Does anyone know what the status of using kite powered systems for off shore power generation is? I know makani has been working on that for over a decade now, it always seemed like a really promising approach to me but I haven't heard of any commercial applications of it. Here is a link to makani...
The Makani ones that Google were funding are basically wing shaped drone planes on a tether, usually the rotors on the front of the wing turn in the wind to generate power but they use their rotors running backwards under power provided by the tether to land vertically back at the base when there's no wind.
This is a cool design. I think the group from University of Maryland developed a single motor single actuator drone back in 2009, here is a link to video...
Good on her for speaking up but I would postulate that minority groups gets talked over by the majority group and that this is not sexism. Should people try to be more mindful of the people around them? Absolutely, but jumping to the conclusion that it is sexism is just counter productive.
Anecdotally as a man any time I am in a group that has a majority of woman the men get talked over by the woman all the time. I grew up in a family that was a majority woman and the same thing happened all the time, I would say generally in social settings where one sex has the majority they tend to talk over the opposite sex and control the conversation. It is human nature. However we can and should be better then that but it is hard.
As a small business owner inventor, and patent owner I think what the parent is talking about is the PTAB and the Inter Partes Review (IPR) process that is very expensive for a patent owner to defend against and. Lee is seen as someone who could place more limits on IPR's but has not. This directly benefits large companies at the expense of small patent holders.
For example, say you as a small time inventor have a valid patent on some great new widget. Big company X starts selling the widget you invented, you approach them and ask if they would license your patent, Big company X can afford to keep filing IPR's against your patent and it will cost you ~$200,000 each time. Big company X can milk you dry and draw things out for years so it becomes much more difficult as a small business to defend and license your patent. Lee seems to have really helped large tech companies at the expense of small inventors.
You are wrong. IPRs are much quicker and less expensive that district court litigation, which is what it replaces. If you're afraid of Big. Co.'s deep pockets, they're much scarier in district court! The PTAB is designed to be more efficient, quicker, and cheaper than district court, and it is by a long shot. And no, they can't file serial IPRs for the most part, there is strong estoppel that comes with an IPR proceeding to prevent just that very thing from happening. So if your patent is valid, then in less than a year and about $200k you can have that sucker gold plated and anointed by the PTAB and then enforce it to your hearts delight! Much better than several million $ and at least 2-3 years for a district court if you ask me. And if your patent is garbage, well you'll find that out quicker too and free up resources to go do something else.
and one in particular that explains how Lee's management of USPTO policy has hurt small business patent owners...
"The AIA also allows the Director discretion to stop harassment of patent owners, but Lee has never once used that power despite the fact that at least several patent owners have had seven or eight inter partes review challenges filed against the same patent. The PTAB itself has finally started to consider harassment as grounds to refuse to institute. So bad and lopsided are the PTAB proceedings, that the Federal Circuit has found PTAB decisions to be arbitrary and capricious, and with respect to covered business method (CBM) challenges, the Federal Circuit has slammed the PTAB for creating its own definition and standard while ignoring the statute and regulations. So if Lee was referring to the PTAB and post grant challenges the most honest assessment is that the Office has utterly and completely failed patent owners and the patent system."
The pop mechanics article is clearly written by a non-lawyer and retells the story of a guy who got a patent invalidated at the ptab. How does that support the conclusion that the ptab is bad for small businesses? That's like saying county court is bad for drivers because I got a speeding ticket. First you have to establish that the court/ptab got it wrong, and then prove that they get it disproportionately wrong for a certain category of people - small business. I just don't see that proved up in the article. And Gene Quinn is rabidly anti-ptab so I can't really rely on him to be impartial.
Edit: and the guy complains about spending $100k in defense... lol, that number would have been 10-30x higher for a district court proceeding to get to the same conclusion. And it would have taken years.
Interesting to read the argument of the side we don't usually hear from around here.
I guess we can hope that an entrepreneur starting a technology company would be equally concerned with both possibilities: getting sued unfairly vs. being unable to protect their own inventions. Around Silicon Valley, I think the former has been the greater concern, but I guess the pendulum is now swinging the other way.
Of course, ideally we would minimize the likelihood of both of those problems. But that seems to be very difficult.
