Public Patent Foundation
Encyclopedia
Nonprofit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
that seeks to limit perceived abuse of the United States patent system
United States patent law
United States patent law was established "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" as provided by the United States Constitution. Congress implemented these...
. It was founded in 2003 by Dan Ravicher. , there was growing concern by many technology professionals over the number of patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s granted that are either too trivial to deserve protection, or duplicate existing or expired patents. It usually works by requesting the United States Patent Office to review patents that are suspected of being invalid somehow or another, usually by prior art
Prior art
Prior art , in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality...
.
Actions
Significant cases
- Pfizer Lipitor Patent (see Atorvastatin)
- Microsoft FAT patent (see File Allocation Table)
- Columbia Cotransformation Patent (see Richard AxelRichard AxelRichard Axel is an American neuroscientist whose work on the olfactory system won him and Linda B. Buck, a former post-doctoral scientist in his research group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004....
) - Forgent Networks JPEG Related Patent (see Forgent NetworksForgent NetworksAsure Software is a software company which has licensing as its primary revenue source. Prior to September 13, 2007, the company was known as Forgent Networks. Critics claim Asure profits primarily as a patent troll...
) - Breast Cancer Gene Patents (see BRCA1BRCA1BRCA1 is a human caretaker gene that produces a protein called breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein, responsible for repairing DNA. The first evidence for the existence of the gene was provided by the King laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1990...
)
See also
- Intellectual property organizationIntellectual property organizationIntellectual property organizations are organizations that are focused on copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other intellectual property law concepts....
- List of software patents
- Software patents and free softwareSoftware patents and free softwareOpposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.-Positions from the community:...