Defend Innovation is a
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
reform project started by
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
(EFF) in June 2012. The project initially proposed seven changes to United States's patent system, including shortening the term for
software patent
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm.
Background
A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, u ...
s, requirement to provide the running software code along with patent application, and avoidance of liability of an infringer who independently arrives at the patented invention.
Results
Since June 2012, the project collected information about the patent system from lawyers, software engineers, court cases, and other sources. The information collected was combined with EFF's own expertise and compiled in a whitepaper named ''How to Fix Our Broken Patent System'', which details the issues surrounding the patent system and proposes solutions that can be implemented by the Congress, Patent Office, and also the software companies.
The whitepaper is available at the Defend Innovation website.
See also
*
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
*
Patent troll
In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or ...
*
Software patent debate
The software patent debate is the argument about the extent to which, as a matter of public policy, it should be possible to patent software and computer-implemented inventions. Policy debate on software patents has been active for years. The op ...
References
External links
*
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Politics and technology
Intellectual property law
Patent law
{{activism-stub