• empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    So, if you have enough money, you can just fire off a shitload of ex-post-facto patents after a competitor releases a prior-art product, sue them, and win using patents that didn’t exist when the competitor’s product was created???

    Might as well just close the whole patent system and leave, there’s quite literally no point to obeying it if you can so blatantly steal anything and everything.

    • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      There’s no point? There is a point: To protect the rich and powerful. The patent system is serving its purpose here as intended by the people who have been making these rules.

      • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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        1 day ago

        That is not the official goal of the patent system in any country, and any behavior like that should be stopped.

        • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          The stated purpose of the police is not “protect the rich from the poor”.

          The stated purpose of war is not “to extract resources from that country and fund the industrial war machine”.

          Many things are made for serving a purpose that’s not said out loud.

    • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      It’s about proving who was the original creator/user of the IP, instead of who is the first to file to have that IP protected.

      The flipside of this would be having random holding companies just mass filing for ownership of everything posted online, said, written-down, or created, in the hopes that they get approved first so they can sue others, even the creators, for using it.

      Look at the “very demure, very mindful” woman, Jools Lebron. Someone else (Jefferson Bates) file to trademark the saying because the original creator didn’t think to until after it was viral. Because the laws are ultimately about proving who was the creator, and not who filed first in the USA, it’s likely that Jools will get ownership, eventually.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      That’s how it should work, yes, if Nintendo can demonstrate prior art. That’s the first-to-invent system.

      The US did change to first-to-file some years ago, but from the articles like this coming out, it sounds like they’re still granting patents to the first inventor.