<story><title>Patents are about sharing information – don&apos;t shroud them in secrecy</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/patents-are-about-sharing-information-public-dont-shroud-them-secrecy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mschuetz</author><text>I do research in computer science and in the last few years, lots of trivial and dumb patents in my field appeared out of nowhere. However, I can only assume that they really are trivial because they are written in a way to claim a lot without actually describing how any of it works. These patents have 0% information in them. What&amp;#x27;s more, they all read like a rewrite of papers that were published years ago  (before the date filed) into lawyer speak with no amount of information. I have no idea how any of these were ever granted since there is prior art all over the place.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Okay to be fair, there is maybe not 0% but 10% information in these patents, but it&amp;#x27;s encoded into unintelligible lawyer&amp;#x2F;patent talk that is not at all fit to convey technical information. They are written in a way to get a monoply on results without disclosing how these results are obtained.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ImprovedSilence</author><text>The patents are written with the most broad and generic claims as possible first.  Then the claims are re stated like 3 or 4 times, that would seem identical, but each re statement of them adds like one or two words of detail or specifics each time down. (So maybe claim 2 won’t stand up in court, but claim 23, a derivative  of 2, will, the idea that you sue for infringement of as much as possible) I’ve submitted a patent before, and hardly Understood my own patent by the time the lawyer was done with it.  But after really paying attention, I guess all the technical details are there.  I think larger companies that aren’t specifically patent trolls patent as much as possible just for their own defense too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Patents are about sharing information – don&apos;t shroud them in secrecy</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/patents-are-about-sharing-information-public-dont-shroud-them-secrecy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mschuetz</author><text>I do research in computer science and in the last few years, lots of trivial and dumb patents in my field appeared out of nowhere. However, I can only assume that they really are trivial because they are written in a way to claim a lot without actually describing how any of it works. These patents have 0% information in them. What&amp;#x27;s more, they all read like a rewrite of papers that were published years ago  (before the date filed) into lawyer speak with no amount of information. I have no idea how any of these were ever granted since there is prior art all over the place.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Okay to be fair, there is maybe not 0% but 10% information in these patents, but it&amp;#x27;s encoded into unintelligible lawyer&amp;#x2F;patent talk that is not at all fit to convey technical information. They are written in a way to get a monoply on results without disclosing how these results are obtained.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kurthr</author><text>If the specification is not enabling and novel to one skilled in the art (much less obvious), then it is not valid. Under rexam or court proceedings they will be worth the paper they&amp;#x27;re printed on. That&amp;#x27;s an expensive way to determine things, but it sounds like that particular section of art at the patent office isn&amp;#x27;t doing much. On the other hand they only have to hide one novel idea and unique claim in the list to have a right to enforce.&lt;p&gt;I do think the EFF&amp;#x27;s concern about claims and documentation already debunked&amp;#x2F;invalid being hidden behind seal is pretty serious and I think judges approving it are doing the public no service.</text></comment>