Talk:Patent

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2005 January 2006 - June 2006 July 2006 - September 2008

EnglishLogicKernel

The web site page I added describes a FREE claim chart generator. There is no fee, cost, charge or other exchange of value for use of the claim chart generator. If this is still unacceptable, please explain to me what has to be done to make it acceptable by emailing me at rich@englishlogickernel.com - thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by EnglishLogicKernel (talk • contribs) 22:26, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

A link intended primarily to promote a website is not acceptable. I do not see any possible way this link could find a place here since it provides no useful encyclopedic information on the topic of patents. GDallimore (Talk) 22:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi EnglishLogicKernel, thanks for your message. I concur with GDallimore, the insertion of the link does not seem acceptable. Please take the time to read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming. Thanks. --Edcolins (talk) 10:57, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Formulation

- The expression "... used in countries such as the United States to ..." is not clear and precise enough. In such statements, one has to either give a category/feature that characterizes the class referred to, and supply example(s), for example "in FEDERAL countries such as the United ...", or give enough examples s.t. the reader can understand what category it is about, e.g. "in countries such as the United States, Germany, Austria, Spain". If the mentioned entities (the United States in our case) do not fit in any particular category, the formulation should simply use an enumeration: In the United States, ..., the additional qualification utility patents is used ..." My examples where just given to make it clear what i mean. Somebody with enough knowledge in Patents, please correct the formulation, with one that transmits the correct information. Thanks! SiSoie (talk) 21:17, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Good point, thanks. I have changed the wording to simply "in the United States". Are there actually other countries using the expression "utility patent"? --Edcolins (talk) 19:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

dead link

To whom it may concern, Hello the second link (British Library) is dead...It gives 404 not found error. http://www.bl.uk/collections/patents/polinks.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.177.153.207 (talk) 15:21, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. I have removed the link. --Edcolins (talk) 16:29, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Extension of Patents.

Some patentholders are unlucky if their patent cannot be exploited before expiry due to depression or war. This happened to early television patents.

On the other hand, Boulton and Watt arranged, in 1775, an act of parliament extending the term of Watt's 1769 steam engine patent to 1799.

Tabletop (talk) 00:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Order of sections

Please discuss any reorganization of the article's structure on the talk page first. The order of sections in this stable version [1] appears IMHO to fit with the average reader's needs, i.e. first understanding what is a patent and its effects, then understanding the governing laws, the economic rationale and finally the history. And please also add edit summaries. Thank you. --Edcolins (talk) 07:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Free encyclopedic public domain source (CRS report)

I'm adding Congress's CRS reports to their relevant talk pages, since they're so thorough and you can just copy-and-cite the content ... here's yours:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS:_An_Examination_of_the_Issues_Surrounding_Biotechnology_Patenting_and_its_Effect_Upon_Entrepreneurial_Companies%2C_August_31%2C_2000

PS with this content, we should be able to create a dedicated page for "biotech patents", which would be coool

PPS one more http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS:_Stem_Cell_Research_and_Patents:_An_Introduction_to_the_Issues%2C_September_10%2C_2001

PPS actually there are dozens of free research reports on "patents" at the CRS page, I'd like to invite someone to please extract the hyperlinks and put them on this discussion page. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS_reports_by_date

Thanks for the tip-off. GDallimore (Talk) 08:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• PS : see my contribs page for a list of pages I've added CRS reports to Agradman ^talk/_contribs 08:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I have just added links in biological patent, business method patent, Bayh-Dole Act, chemical patent, Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act, Doctrine of equivalents, Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., plant breeders' rights and United States Patent and Trademark Office, for now. Thanks. --Edcolins (talk) 20:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that's awesome. Could I ask another favor -- we just created a template to serve this purpose (I'm pretty proud) and now I'm going through about 100 pages to transfer my links into it. Would you mind implementing the template for the pages you just referenced. Here's an example of the template ({{refideas}}) for this page. It's got some nuanced documentation (multiple sources, public vs. nonpublic domain)

Ok, I'll try to do that also. --Edcolins (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

London Agreement

The article states that until 2008 European patents costed on average 32,000 euros. How much they cost now? Ben ^T/_C 16:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Patents becoming secretized

Sometimes the government, e.g. the military, will intervene in a patent application process and secretize the patent, probably for reasons of national interest. I am watching an interview (time 25:30) with famous patent officer Tom Valone[2] where he states that in the U.S. 4,000 patents have suffered this. Do we have some information on this in any of the patent-related articles? __meco (talk) 11:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

A general article on this topic would be quite interesting (suggested title: Secretization of patent applications? any better idea?). The practice is not new, see for instance: "Agreement for the mutual safeguarding of secrecy of inventions relating to defence and for which applications for patents have been made" (1960). --Edcolins (talk) 21:30, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm in the process of completing a book on Soviet and Russian secret patents. I also refer to US and British patent secrecy. I have little information on other countries' practices. Some Wiki articles refer to secret French patents, but evidently the law and procedures are secret. Same for Germany. Later, when I have more time, I could take a stab at a section on this topic.--JMartens (talk) 05:52, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

History Section

It seems to me that the history section for this page should immediately proceed the etymology. It seems inappropriately placed at the end of the article. Comments? Wiki emma johnson (talk) 05:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree, I think it belongs closer to the etymology section. It also seems a relatively glaring omission that the fact that British patents at least were originally granted either for invention or importation, to encourage entrepenuers to bring back new inventions from the continent.VeryRusty (talk) 12:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Very Rusty, Thank you for commenting! With regards to your observation, are you suggesting that the original purpose of British patents be added to the History section? With references, I think it would be very appropriate to include within this article. Wiki emma johnson (talk) 00:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be added in this article. I think it is already in the history article. I think it makes an interesting counterpoint to peoples perception of patents VeryRusty (talk) 07:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Costs associated with patents

I came to read this page because I'd come across a discussion as to what sort of ideas should or shouldn't be granted a patent. Given that people have always expressed discontent when there are legal restrictions on using ideas, and given that more than one English-speaking country is considering changes to what things should be patentable, I would guess that other people would come to this page for similar reasons too. I see that the page lists the benefits of granting a patent, but doesn't have much information on the corresponding costs to society.

As a starting point, I thought I'd look up what the legal costs associated with patents are. It is, however, just a brief note, and not very thoroughly researched (as my wife was hurrying me to leave the computer): I used a google search for ‘"legal costs" patents’, and consulted just the first relevant-looking entry, namely the Bessen & Meurer book I cited. Edcolins has since marked that citation as ‘vague’; is that because I gave a chapter rather than a page number, or is it marked vague because it's unclear what information that work supplies? The reason for giving a chapter is that the chapter title is ‘The Costs of Disputes’, and gives various other costs associated with patent disputes, which are also relevant to this section.

I agree that the AIPLA reference is vague both in where the information comes from and what costs are represented. For discussion purposes, I transcribe here the relevant section that gives more detail about the costs and how the figures were obtained. Obviously be careful to avoid infringing copyright (expressive/creative elements as distinct from facts) if copying any of this to the main page, though I believe my transcribing it here counts as fair dealing / fair use.

Legal Costs

As a starting point, we present estimates of direct legal costs of patent litigation. We obtain these estimates from two sources. First, the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) conducts a survey of its patent lawyer members. Second, in some cases, at the conclusion of a lawsuit, a judge might order one side to pay the other side's legal fees. From court documents we obtained these figures for eighty-nine patent lawsuits. [Note that no indication is given of how these 89 were selected, so I don't know what sort of biases may be present. -- pjrm] Table 6.1 shows mean values in millions of 1992 [U.S.] dollars. The survey data does not distinguish between costs to the patentee-litigant and the alleged infringer, but the fee-shifting data does, and it indicates costs are high for both parties.

[A paragraph giving some information on what factors influence the costs: whether it goes to court, how long in court, etc. “In extreme cases, legal costs can mount to tens of millions (for example, in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Rhone-Poulenc Rorer ... was awarded over $25 million in attorneys' fees...”]

Table 6.1. Estimated Legal Costs of Patent Lawsuits, from Survey of Patent Lawyers

a. Estimated legal costs from survey of patent lawyers

	Cost through Discovery (millions, $U.S. 1992)	Cost through Trial (millions, $U.S. 1992)
Amount at Stake
Less than $1 million	$0.35	$0.61
$1–$25 million	$1.20	$2.10
More than $25 million	$2.59	$4.14

b. Mean legal costs from cases where fees were shifted

	Summary Judgment (millions, $U.S. 1992)	Trial (millions, $U.S. 1992)
Patentee	$1.10	$1.20
Alleged infringer	$0.66	$2.85

Sources: AIPLA (2005); Bessen and Meurer (2006) [Note that this latter is (apparently) a self-citation, though I don't have access to the bibliography section. -- pjrm]

Business Costs

... [Names some costs, and tentatively tries to quantify them.]

(Note that these are in 1992 dollars, so multiply by about two as a first approximation for current numbers.)

Given the title of the book, it would be good to check with another source; though it is in line with what I've heard from other sources, and matches the (unsourced) claims in the Patent infringement page (“A typical patent infringement case in the US costs 1 – 3 million dollars in legal fees for each side.”).

In the main article, I've summarized all of the above in the single phrase “on average in the order of a million [US] dollars”: I believe that such an approximation is good enough for at least the purposes I had in mind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjrm (talk • contribs) 02:26, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Balance

@ User:GDallimore Probably you should read SCP/14/7 and you find that Brazil criticises that patents are out of balance.

Page 4 #6: “The focus of the current IP system, however, heavily lies on ensuring rights to the IP title holders. Their claims are, undoubtedly legitimate, but certainly incomplete from the perspective of the public policy.”

Page 4 #7: “Director-General Francis Gurry ... has asked “What does a Member State get out of being part of this Organization?”. The question remains unanswered unless changes occur. A judicious balance of rights and obligations would be a good start in that direction, so as to help society as a whole to understand, accept and thus fully support an improved IP system; and exceptions and limitations to patent rights are fundamental elements to reach this equilibrium.”

Page 4 #8: “The naïve assumption that providing IP title holders with stronger rights will, by itself, foster innovation or attract investments is no longer acceptable. The open and global economy has rejected this assumption and severely hit the very essence of the patent system, whereby a country would confer an artificial and temporary “monopoly” for the inventor in exchange of having the invention revealed allegedly benefiting the society. No such thing is currently taking place, with a few countries excepted.”

Page 4 #9: “the key issue is about revising old assumptions and starting to recover the essentials of the patent system.”

Page 6 #20: “We are now facing a moral deadlock. Developed countries seem to be the only ones capable of reaping any advantage from the system, as very little guidance is provided in order to satisfy the objectives of the TRIPS Agreement, whereby “the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights should contribute to the promotion of technological innovation and to the transfer and dissemination of technology, to the mutual advantage of producers and users of technological knowledge and in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare, and to a balance of rights and obligations”.”

Which one shall we take as critisism and where shall we put the “common sense statement”?

--Swen (talk) 08:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You didn't add any of that to the article. GDallimore (Talk) 12:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

GDallimore removed subject matter added to the section headed 'criticism' on the ground that "This is not a criticism but a common sense statement that the patent system must be balanced" (quoting edit summary). That seems a poor ground for removal of subject-matter. Firstly, 'criticism' as a category is clearly broader than 'negative criticism'. The removed statement was clearly criticism in the broader sense, whether or not a negative criticism was diplomatically implied. Secondly, the sources show that critical evaluation has been a constant accompaniment of the patent system and patent practice, ever since the start of the modern continuous legal tradition. Significant evaluative statements by participants in current international developments clearly deserve to be represented, subject to WP:NPOV, WP:N and WP:WEIGHT. I would accordingly support Swen's viewpoint that the material desrves inclusion. Terry0051 (talk) 00:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I still stand by my deletion 100%. The addition was full of words signifying nothing and added nothing to the article, either criticism positive or negative. The latest addition is significantly better because it at least gets the point across. GDallimore (Talk) 10:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Just for completeness the deleted paragraph:

Brazil proposed 2010 
in the WIPO standing committee on the law of patents: 
 “The patent system must strive for the equilibrium of rights among its users, 
  which should, accordingly, not only comprise IP title holders, but also the society as a whole, 
  so that the welfare of the society as a whole prevails. 
  They all constitute legitimate “clients” of the system.”

--Swen (talk) 12:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Patents don't work as well as commons - study

Perhaps this study should be mentioned in the article [3] -- M2Ys4U ^(talk) 14:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Octrooibureau Vriesendorp & Gaade B.V.

The article Octrooibureau Vriesendorp & Gaade B.V. (a Dutch patent attorney agency) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Octrooibureau Vriesendorp & Gaade B.V. Thank you. --Edcolins (talk) 12:41, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Policy for linking to patent pages in External Links

I've been in discussions with Chaser (talk · contribs) about the best policy for linking to patent reference pages. I've been using IP.com lately and I recommend it (it's free, of course, or I wouldn't even mention it, with very powerful search syntax) -- I've linked to some of their patent pages using both Reference citations and, when there has been no exact match for a citation, in External Links, but some of those External Links have been deleted by other editors. Chaser suggested I post here to get feedback on this issue. My (revised) thought is that appropriateness should be determined on a case-by-case basis, so perhaps the proposed External Link should first be added to the Talk page for a given article to get clearance from other editors before adding it as an external link. Any thoughts? —Snarkosis (talk) 00:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I cannot think of a single circumstance where a link to this site would serve a useful purpose. The links you appear to be adding are merely search result pages for patents related to the topic in question. Completely and utterly useless. Add to that the fact that the site is a commercial one which large amounts of advertising when there are plenty of non-commercial and advert-free sites to which similar links could be made (in the unlikely event that they were deemed useful) and I can't see there is much to discuss. Please provide an example of a useful link and explain why it would be useful. Then explain why espacenet, the USPTO website or google patents as free resources are deficient.

I see the site does include some non-patent resources (eg IBM disclosures). But, again, I fail to see why the original published source is deficient and why the commercial link is necessary. GDallimore (Talk) 00:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Snarkosis, I see no reason to use ip.com links and I have already said this to you on your talk page. As well, the standard external links warning you received on your talk page has links to our relevant policies and guidelines. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the usefulness of the search query links, I consider it potentially quite useful when it is a highly focused search query that matches closely to, say, a specific technology that is the subject of a given Wikipedia article. Why wouldn't corresponding relevant patents be useful "additional information" for a given topic? I'm not saying in every case, but certainly in some cases, and therefore not "completely and utterly useless". That's my considered opinion anyway, but if the consensus is that it's always useless, then so be it, I won't bother with such links.

I concede your point about the ads, and perhaps my preference has been based too much on the layout and usability advantage that I think the IP.com pages have. In other words, I think the process of using IP.com is better than the process of using USPTO or espacenet, with better search and more features, but perhaps just looking directly at a single static page others might prefer a different site's patent dislpay. Personally, I think IP.com's layout and usability is superior, as can be seen in these 3 versions of the same patent page, from each service:

• IP.com
• USPTO
• espacenet

Again, this is my opinion, and I'll go along with the consensus on this -- if all patent links must be to USPTO or espacenet, even though currently editors post links to dozens of different patent sources, I can live with that, though I'll likely post fewer patents, as I prefer to use IP.com from a process point of view. Not a big deal. —Snarkosis (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We sometimes use Template:Caselaw source for Supreme Court cases (example). I'm not sure we're there yet for patents, however.--Chaser (talk) 02:42, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Patenting when you're poor, or can't do it yourself?

Is it true that patenting is only useful when the patent holder has the financial capability to able to pay for defending their patent in court? Without the financial backing to support an infringement case, it appears that a patent holder's rights apparently can be violated at will by others without regard.

I have several ideas that are probably unique and patentable, but I personally am not a wealthy person. I personally don't have the technical skill or facilities to fully develop these into actual products or services, nor am I involved with companies that could carry them out to completion. As such I feel that I likely can not benefit financially from these ideas even if I did get a patent on them.

If these ideas can benefit the common good, then apparently open discussion and publishing without patenting them would ensure that multiple others will be able to develop the concepts, and yet none will be able to claim it as their own to the exclusion of others (or me), since my publishing will be available on the Internet and elsewhere as "prior art".

DMahalko (talk) 03:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is not an appropriate place to ask for advice. Try your local patent office or a patent attorney. It also sounds like you need business advice. GDallimore (Talk) 09:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not advice but rather legitimate questions where the answers could be added here or in other articles. The first paragraph alone is worth covering in the article in terms of costs to patent and costs to defend vs ability to defend. And anyway here is a partial answer for the second half of my question, for anyone else who wants to know:

"Publishing a detailed description of a new invention without patenting it, so as to prevent others from being able to patent it, is called a Defensive publication."

DMahalko (talk) 10:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

.... added a reference to defensive publication in the article introduction, since it is not present anywhere else. DMahalko (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Remember, wikipedia is not a how-to guide. For the rest, the costs section could always do with expanding if you can find the sources. GDallimore (Talk) 11:09, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Discussing alternatives in a three line summary paragraph is not "writing a how-to guide". No step-by-step instructions are being provided. The section I added is relevant to the article introduction to briefly contrast an alternative to patenting, without going into further detail. Your removal appears to be out of spite or WP:OWN rather than trying to improve the article. DMahalko (talk) 19:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Stop attacking me and whining about something I didn't do. I didn't revert your edit, I moved it to the body of the article since it did not belong in the lead. The lead summarises the article. There is nothing in the article about defensive publications, so there should be nothing in the lead. If you can write a properly referenced section about defensive publications and their relationship with patents (as I started in an effort to improve the article) then something can go in the lead.

The "how-to" mention was to everything else that you've said so far in this section. If you had added a how-to guide to the article based on your questions about "how do I get a patent when I have no money", I would have removed it entirely, not moved it to a more relevant place in the article. GDallimore (Talk) 22:29, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Taking an explanatory paragraph and reducing it to a single wikilink without explanation is basically an edit revert. I have re-inserted and expand the paragraph in your new Alternatives section.

The paragraphs do not require citations because the wikilinks to the articles themselves provide the citations in the other article.

This question is not a how-to and is a valid issue to discuss in the article:

Is it true that patenting is only useful when the patent holder has the financial capability to able to pay for defending their patent in court? Without the financial backing to support an infringement case, it appears that a patent holder's rights apparently can be violated at will by others without regard.

DMahalko (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Criticism

A couple of recent edits (sorry, but linking is not my strong point) have removed a couple of sections from criticism, namely the difficulty of fully searching prior art, and the humanitarian aspects of drug patents. The section on patent trolls has also changed. I would like to see the humanitarian aspects reinstated or incorporated into the existing paragraph that touches on it.

I would like to see the section on patent trolls expanded, and to cover the concept of the defensive patent, and fundamental technology patents, and the level of risk these pose on new entrants, particular in the tech sector. Any thoughts VeryRusty (talk) 12:32, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I would say that this article is perhaps no the best place for some of those things. Expansions can be made at patent troll and pharmaceutical patent, and then this article rewritten to very briefly summarise some key points. Not sure what to say about the difficulty of prior art searching, but it's true that taking a 1938 quote to support the criticism that patents are granted on known inventions is a bit misleading. GDallimore (Talk) 13:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations. I have added a few words on the common complaint that bad patents slip through the system, which should already be a slight improvement. We could also add, here or in the article prior art, a few words about the difficulty of fully searching prior art, or maybe the impossibility to do so, if there are any references for that (I haven't searched for that yet). --Edcolins (talk) 18:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

With a separate article on Criticism of patents, I feel that Patent should have only a brief summary of criticisms (humanitarian aspects can be mentioned, but elaborating on it IMHO belongs to Criticism of patents - which aim is exactly to avoid having Patent too long). Also - most of the stuff which I've recently removed, was WP:OR or WP:SYN; all material on Wikipedia should be properly sourced (we're not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS). In general, I'm going to move some of the stuff from Criticism section into Criticism of patents, leaving here only brief summaries. Ipsign (talk) 05:49, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Patent Motivation

The following is a proposed addition to the article summary. It has been criticized for failing to summarize content in the body of the article and for not having references.

The protection of intellectual property provided by patents is motivated by the goal of preventing the financial loss that the information owner would suffer from the free use of the information. It thus bestows a temporary monopoly on the sales or licensing of any product or service that uses the information protected by the patent. The sales of the product or service are temporarily shielded from competition in the setting of sales or license prices, giving the owner and any licensees more market power^{[citation needed]} than they could have if the information were freely copied. The loss that patents try to prevent would come from either unrealized sales or unrealized profitability of completed sales. This would hamper the recouping of the cost (if any) of developing the information (for example, research and development costs); as well as the due reward for innovation that any profitability beyond mere expense recouping would provide.

A patent infringer can violate a patent even if he does not profit from the activity.^{[citation needed]} The key idea is not whether he profited by his activity, but rather whether his activity prevents, or could prevent, the realization of sales or licensing revenue by the patent holder (information owner). Thus someone who only copies and shares information can be a patent infringer (by helping others to avoid paying for the use of the information), and someone who uses the information without selling the resultant product can be a patent infringer (by making the product for his own use and thus avoiding buying the product from the patent holder or licensee).

The effectiveness of patents in achieving their goal (the prevention of financial loss) is only as good as the effectiveness of the rule of law, law enforcement, and treaty enforcement.^{[citation needed]} In order for a patent to work, information about the copying and use of information (in other words, metainformation) must be discoverable, actionable, sought, found, and acted upon. The difficulty that often is inherent in getting and proving (meta)information sometimes makes patent enforcement a vexing process, whereas in other cases it may be easy.^{[citation needed]} The ease of hiding a black market from law enforcement determines the difficulty of patent enforcement, and vice versa.^{[citation needed]}

Please provide supporting references and discuss where to best place the content.--Nowa (talk) 09:57, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I was the one who added the material. I'm not "married to it", but neither do I think it's as dubious as GDallimore marked it up to be. I simply think that the patent article should explain plainly *why* people want exclusive rights. They do it so that they can *profit* from the patented idea.[not_dubious] It grants them a temporary (i.e., limited) monopoly,[not_dubious] which shields them from competition[not_dubious] long enough to charge a premium price[not_dubious] for the use of their idea.[not_dubious] Obviously I am not about to argue with a patent attorney about patents—I could never win the argument because IANAL. But the ideas that I just stated are not mysterious, novel, dubious, or questionable—they're the simple motivation why patents even *exist*. Otherwise, everyone would readily release every idea into the public domain. I agree that the article *body* needs to include all relevant info, and the lede is only supposed to summarize the body. To tell the truth it won't make my triage list to work this content thoroughly into the article with cited refs. But for anyone who *does* work substantially on this article, I suggest that it address these points directly. BTW, GDallimore, I'm not sure if your capping of LEAD included any implicit spelling rebuke, but "lede" is an accepted variant spelling among people who don't like the Pb/lede homography. I wasn't using it out of ignorance (mentioning this here in case you thought it was wrong—not sure if you did). And to anyone else who cares about this article, please look at some of the things that GDallimore tagged as dubious and ask yourself whether they're truly dubious. I am not the one who will take the time to counterargue on this topic, but perhaps *someone* should. Or, if not, then take the time to explain here at Talk why X, Y, and Z are in fact dubious, contrary to what I (IANAL) think. Thanks. — ¾-10 22:58, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

PS: In fairness I look back and see that not all of your tags were "dubious" tags—some were "cn" and "clarify" tags. But I still question your tagging because you're claiming that citations are needed for concepts that are plainly true and obvious to anyone who thinks critically about why patents even exist, or how they are enforced. So it's a bit disingenuous of you to plaster the paragraph full of "cn" tags (which, let's face it, makes most readers think the info is wrong (as opposed to true-but-uncited). Maybe you're making the point that if I want the info to stay, then I am the one who has to bother to do the work of digging up citations for it. That's true, but my point is that some of those concepts are so basic that this article is incomplete without mentioning them. Yes, it's true, I have no time to stick around here at this article and do the citation development. But that doesn't mean that the info is wrong or should be deleted or plastered with a "cn" tag on every line. Know what I'm saying? No hard feelings, just expressing what I see as the rest of the story here. Sorry I lack time to stay, cite, learn, revise where I'm off base, defend where I'm right, and so on, in the case of this article. Would love to if not pressed by time opportunity cost. — ¾-10 23:09, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

¾-10 I think you will find that addressing the citation needed tags first will be effective at resolving many of the the clarification and dubious tags. As an encyclopedia, our mission to to summarize what other authoritative sources have presented.--Nowa (talk) 23:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I will give two examples of where my tags are wholly appropriate. 1. The goal of patents under US law (just as an example) is to promote the development of useful arts. Patents may have other effects than this, but your stated goal for patents requires an excellent citation at minimum and is highly dubious in my eyes. 2. The free use of the words "information" and "metainformation" are so vague as to be useless and meaningless and have no basis in patent law that I am aware of so are also definitely in need of a citation and are highly dubious without it. GDallimore (Talk) 23:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

The "why" is "to promote the development of useful arts". The "how" of promoting the development of useful arts is ... by letting the inventors make money from their inventions. Only a lawyer could find that connection highly dubious. ;-) — ¾-10 17:36, 1 October 2011 (UTC)