White House responds to Patent Petition

What an incredible cop out. Basically this is an entire page of saying nothing. Nothing at all. He's not saying they are going to do something about the patent problem. He's not saying they aren't. He is just trying to inspire you without committing to anything...at all.

TL;DR - We heard you, we just didn't listen. We aren't changing anything. In case you didn't know, though, President Obama is awesome.

This is the third or fourth petition with a massive, lengthy non-answer I've seen pop up on the site. I'm generally an Obama fan, but this is just unacceptable.<p>Looks like it's time for a "Answer petitions with something meaningful" petition.

Check out the twitter account of the guy that wrote the statement:<p><a href="http://twitter.com/qpalfrey" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/qpalfrey</a><p>You can tell it's really his by who he's following (The US Gov CTO, The Massachusetts AGO).<p>Incredible.<p>EDIT: Well, he appears to have woken up and deleted them, but his tweet stream was filled with weight loss and "make money from home" spam.

so, this is basically a "no" that funnels into talking points without actually saying "no". just like every other response to every other petition on that site that i've participated in.

My first thought was "well Asia and India will certainly be pleased". But that's not true. They don't care about our "intellectual property" at all. They'll just make. We just won't.

From what I've read in the petition responses, it seems to me the whole system is designed to spread information about what Obama has already done or positions he's already taken to a targeted group of people.

These "petitions" are only there to find out what a small portion of the electorate want to hear during the election season.<p>As mentioned elsewhere in these White House petition threads, clicking a button on a web form does not (yet) do anything to the political process.

Reasonable response, especially given the current legislative and judicial situation. USPTO doesn't have the authority to unilaterally cease issuing entire classes of patents when Congress and the courts have, so far, directed otherwise; what they can do, however, is seek to improve patent quality &#38; decrease vague patents. I'm not sure how successful they will be, especially given funding issues, but this stance seems to be about as far as they can go at present. We need change to come from elsewhere, including the law schools (so lawyers get disabused of this notion that software + computer results in a new machine).

There was a HNer who was looking into translating code into formulas. It's theoretically possible, and has a great outcome: Because mathematical formula aren't patentable. Does anyone know where that guy went?

I don't think it's a cop-out. It just explains (probably correctly) that a petition is not a good medium for expressing the problem and talking about possible solutions. There is a link <a href="http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation" rel="nofollow">http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation</a> to the place where this conversation is already underway, and which you are welcome to join in.

These petitions are like filing bugs against a software team that just doesn't have any interest in fixing the system.

Can anyone copy-paste it here? It doesn't load for some reason.<p>EDIT: It seems there's a non-JS version which works: <a href="https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/promoting-innovation-and-competitive-markets-through-quality-patents" rel="nofollow">https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/promoting...</a>

lobbyists win again...<p>If only a group of wealthy individuals who were interested in improving our political process and decision making could form their own lobbying group...against lobbying!

I knew what the first two paragraphs of this response before I even clicked on the link. Whoever wrote it is an uncreative shill, at best. The institution of governing is old, crusty, and broken - and in serious need of disruption.<p>As we see around here, the best way to change the world is to build something that changes the world, not use government to use its citizens to change society at the point of a gun.<p>If you want to fix the patent system, build something that fixes the patent system.

am i the only one that thinks its funny the white house office of science &#38; technology doesn't have html entities under control yet?<p>Quentin Palfrey is Senior Advisor to CTO for Jobs and Competitiveness at the White House Office of Science amp; Technology Policy

I know it is easier to click a button on a web page than to make a phone call, but perhaps you should call your representative if this issue matters to you.

These petitions are nothing more than a distraction to keep people busy. The president will not do anything about them regardless of how many signatures it gets. This is just the latest one to have shown the white house an issue Americans clearly care about, only to receive a big fat meh in response.

Start another one.

Is there anything in We the People or Data.gov that could be infringing? Maybe they'd take it more seriously if they had first hand experience with a patent suit...

If we required patents to be commercially exploited for a period of at least 5 years and required people/companies to renew them every year for a fee with an included statement that they were or were not using them commercially, I think it would go a long way towards eliminating a lot of ridiculous patents.<p>Plus it would give the USPTO plenty of money to actually approve patents in a timely manner.

<a href="https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN" rel="nofollow">https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...</a>

To summarise: fuck you very much

"Fuck you, pay me." -- Henry Hill, or... the US Senate

As an entrepreneur, I'd like to see patents abolished. Totally.<p>The cost of the patent system is obvious. The benefits are not.

This sounds like a wordy way of saying "Piss Off".

By the way, they didn't technically had to even respond to the petition since the threshold needed of 25,000 signatures within one month was not crossed [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions" rel="nofollow">https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions</a>