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Steal This Idea
Most of the themes and arguments in Steal This Idea will be familiar to anyone who's read a Slashdot thread on patents. Michael Perelman is an economics professor at California State University. In Steal This Idea, he takes the position that patents (and trademarks, to a lesser extent) hurt science and the economy more than they help. He makes a pretty convincing case.
Roughly half the book is devoted to the negative effects of patents on scientific research. Perelman claims that tying research to intellectual property skews the balance of study away from basic research on fundamental problems, and toward short-term research geared toward improving existing products. Several real-world examples are given--many of the most potent come from the world of biological and pharmaceutical research:
Two decades ago, Philip Needleman, then a researcher at Washington University, in St. Louis, and his co-workers postulated the existence of two cyclooxygenase enzymes, COX-1 and COX-2. By 1990, Dr. Needleman, then chief scientific officer at Pharmacia, had guessed that the COX-2 enzyme plays a critical role in inflammation. By 1992, three other groups, including one at Rochester, had confirmed the existence of the enzymes by describing the genes that control their production. Although Rochester won the patent, the competing teams at UCLA and Brigham Young University claim that their work was fundamental.
Whether UCLA, Brigham Young, or Rochester deserved the patent is beside the point. More important is the idea that the granting of a patent on a bodily substance permits the owner to demand royalties from any company that produces a medicine that targets the substance.
Perelman gives historical evidence of IP hampering the development of new technology. His best example is the thicket of radio patents that entangled the baby radio industry, until the U.S. government voided many of them in the interest of accelerating radio technology during WWII.
Finally, Steal this Idea makes the case that scientific progress in the last half of the twentieth century owes a greater debt to basic research from academic and publicly-funded scientists and researchers than to corporate research. The concern is based on the large amount of time (decades, rather than years) needed for basic scientific discoveries to become marketable products is largely ignored by corporate research, which is focused on quarterly results.
It's curious that the internet--maybe the most obvious example of this, is barely mentioned. After all, business research has failed miserably at defining network protocols that match the resilience and utility of the network designed by publicly-funded scientists in the 60s. This may be because Perelman is less interested in obvious examples than lesser known ones, of which there are several in the book.
The second half of the book argues against patents (and Intellectual property in general) in terms of economic theory. Economics is Perelman's area of expertise, but it is not mine. I had to read most of these chapters twice before I understood them. They're interesting stuff, though. Perelman illustrates various ways economists attempt to shoehorn non-tangible goods (information) into economic models based on "lumpy objects." He illustrates the flaws in several of these models, and how these flaws translate into inefficiencies in actual markets.
Good: The book isn't just a rant, although it sometimes reads like one. Perelman is firmly biased against IP, and he sometimes uses a few paragraphs to rail against corporations in general. But the book is logically laid out, and presents evidence in well-defined pieces, always clear about what each example is meant to illustrate.
The examples. Those mentioned above are just a few of the many real-life events noted in Steal this Idea. They comprise the bulk of Perelman's case against patent IP. It's always tough to build an argument on anecdotal evidence, but in this case, there's a great deal of evidence.
The scope. I had doubts that a 211-page book could do justice to the issues with every type of intellectual property. Fortunately, Perelman doesn't attempt to cover copyrights, and barely touches trademarks. The overarching theme of the book is that intellectual property (mainly patents) in the hands of corporations works against the original goals of its creators--to encourage innovation and help the economy. The book does a solid job of supporting this claim.
Bad: IP is supposed to be a "limited" monopoly. Patents are, arguably, the most "limited" of the three types of IP in the US (copyrights, patents and trademarks). Perelman could have acknowledged this, and given concrete examples of why the limits aren't enough to balance the monopoly power. He doesn't explicitly do so.
Copyright is nowhere to be found. That's not all bad, since any book would be hard-pressed to do a better job of handling copyright issues than Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright . Still, Steal this Idea might have included a few more references to copyright-specific cases or works, if only to encourage further reading (patent & trademark examples include many references).
Perelman gives some illustrative figures about why the patent mess is so bad, and why the USPTO is unable to control it. But there's not much meat there. Hopefully, someone will take a more in-depth look at the USPTO itself, and how it operates.
Conclusion: Steal this Idea has a great deal of information, packed into a fairly short book. It's a good companion to Digital Copyright, and well worth reading for anyone interested in how IP works (or doesn't work).
You can purchase Steal This Idea from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This book does the exact same thing all the slashdot posts do, nothing.
Until our goverment is more worried about pissing off the constituents instead of the "sponsors" we'll get a government run by the corporations.
Money talks, bullshit walks. Welcome to the U$A.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
but pay for the book, godammit!
lysergically yours
I believe that means its a subscriber-only pre-release....why we non-subscribers are seeing it is anyones guess.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Just like anything else..... all IP isn't necessarily bad. There's a heavy anti-IP slant on Slashdot, and that's a shame.
What's wrong with being able to make a few bucks off of something unique, new and original of yours?
Just like anything else, *abuse* of the system is the problem. How do we sort the wheat from the chaff?
I'm not entirely sure. I think part of the problem lies in the USPTO. They probably need to have some subject-matter experts on hand who can check all the patent applications thoroughly.
Part of the problem is that there are *SO* many applications, that the USPTO can't handle it.
Any suggestions on how to improve?
Wow! Now if only the U.S. government would do the same thing with computer patents, things would be grea ...Oh, wait. I forgot that the U.S. government is now formally a subdivision of Microsoft/AOL/TW/Fox/MPAA/RIAA. Oh well. Nice while it lasted.
An older reference to patents in general can be found at Don Lancaster's site Tinaja.com. There's a pdf of the original paper, and some e-book links. Don's been an active author in the technology world for several decades. His site has some other amusing opinion pieces as well. Enjoy!
Do patents slow down scientific growth? Sure, if you have to go through the patent owner to do something, it creates a bottle neck, and increases expenses. But you also have to understand, patents motivate people. It encourages them to invent, and discover, because they know if they find something knew, or create something, they can patent it and make money from it. If inventors couldn't make money off their inventions, there would be alot less of them.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
I think it's ironic that the Hoffman book is found online in it's entirety after being brought to mind by a book about copyright protection and IP law. The universe has a strange sense of humor/justice...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Although Rochester won the patent, the competing teams at UCLA and Brigham Young University claim that their work was fundamental.
I don't believe the patent was on the COX-2 enzyme itself, only it's application for medicines to reduce inflamation. If someone found a different use for the enzyme, I don't think the patent would cover it.
Who cares if it was fundemental. They researched it, found it, and claimed "FIRST POST!^H^H^H^H^HPATENT!" It's their right to get a patent for their work. Yes, it would be great if other drug companies could compete and make said drug for cheaper. However, you get into the "chicken and egg" problem of drug companies not doing research because it's not profitable. Besides, the author states that "scientific progress in the last half of the twentieth century owes a greater debt to basic research from academic and publicly-funded scientists and researchers than to corporate research." So why didn't they find it first? Prior art would have killed the patent. The truth is that corporate research provides an important contribution. If it didn't, this wouldn't be an issue.
However, when searching for the mythical Novell Unix patent a the patent office I was really struck by how bad every software patent was.
For example, when searching for patents assigned to Novell (search criteria AN/Novell), the very first patent returned is number 6,567,873, which is a patent having to do with spinlocks in an SMP kernel. Basically, the patent covers the idea of exponential backoff for a contented resource. This is something which ethernet has done for 30 years, and I'm sure there's even further prior art.
Another Novell patent involves resizing FAT file partitions on the fly, and involves no real insight at all.
But it's not these two patents. Almost every single patent is either just this obvious, or just this derivative of prior work. Check it out yourself -- pretty much every computer program ever written must violate hundreds of patents.
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US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
steal this comment! (Score:2)
by sweeney37 (325921) * on 12:03 PM June 5th, 2003 (#6124520)
geez, what's with all the theft in book reviews as of recent?
Mike
Theft is rampant in these parts.
My journal has hot
a slightly offtopic comment. patents can be abused by drug companies. when a patent for a drug is about to expire the company will release a similar drug and patent it to stop the generic companies from being able to profit. examples would be the weekly prozac and clariton-d. i am sure there are many more. i watched a dateline special on it once.
Have to disagree there. At least I can't violate copyright without actually copying someone else's work. Patents can deny me the right to my own, independently developed ideas. They don't last as long, but they're much more powerful.
This review really made me want to read this book. I think the centeral problem with Intellectual Property is the whole notion of defining a right as a property. The legal system should go back to treating patents, trademarks and copyrights as temporary rights to exclusive use, rather than the newer notion of equating them with physical property.
His best example is the thicket of radio patents that entangled the baby radio industry
Baby radios are a fucking stupid idea. I'd rather listen to country and western, even.
Ah, but how much of that progress occurred because of the patent system, and how much in spite of said system?
and I'm also an Economics major. The economics is really mostly dead-on, except that the author seems to imply that research is of more worth than profit. Which is of course true, but not in a free-market system--or anything related to it. If anybody's interested on how you and I get screwed over, though, go read some Noam Chomsky. All the government thinktanks develop cancer drugs, malaria drugs, whatever, and once they're perfected, they're sold for pennies to corporations who then sell them for $102/pill. Really, the only way to salvage this is to either have the government manufacture drugs (but socialism is just one step from COMMUNISM BOO HISS) or impose rules on drug makers (which again is regulation--companies hate this.) The people need to realize that health care is a right, not a privilege. And that's why I scoff when Bush declares himself a compassionate conservative and then cuts welfare programs, or cuts his oil buddies' tax rates. Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Green Party, and I think that we should have a maximum income... better to screw those that live well than those that are too busy being hungry to sit around with bags of money and diamond back scratchers.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
His name is Lemelson, and he has licenses of over $1 Billion. There are various places to find information on him, such as the Lemelson Foundation and The Lemelson Center.
Kind of odd to see him being hailed as a hero on /., considering his heirs are suing anyone they can think of based on very loosely related technologies. I would think /. would villify him. He is many times worse than Amazon, in some respects. See Lemelson Patents Online, a reference for those being sued by Lemelson, as well as Lemelsoninfo.com. There is also a long article on The Lemelson Situation.
He is quite infamous for his use of submarine patents--he filed his first applications in the 50s, and kept filing continuations on them, getting some patents issued in the 90s, but with priority from an application in the 50s. You can see a short PDF article on the courts striking down the practice of submarine patents.
A tangible object only becomes property when rights attach to that object. The core property right is the right to exclude others from using the subject property. To use another real estate example, think of the law of trespass. Trespass laws prevent others from using real estate.
Take this now to the next level - intellectual property. Because IP is based on an intangible ("an idea" as the author of this book has called it), the property is defined by the bounds of the rights in the intangible. The right to exclude is inextricably bound with the intangible and becomes part of the definition of the right. Therefore, the right is coextensive with the property because it IS the property.
To go back to the real estate example, the right to exclude is coextensive with the physical boundary of the land in question. That is why estates in land and the land itself are two very different things. The land itself is nothing. The estate in the land (that is, the rights attached to the parcel) is the property.
Most people (even most lawyers) never make this distinction when it comes to patents. You will sometimes hear talk about the "patent monopoly," but this term has been rejected by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the federal appeals court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases in the United States). The Court has made clear that patents define the metes and bounds of a piece of property and do not grant monopolies. There are sound reasons for this distinction that I hope you will forgive me for not discussing here. it is enough for this post that the distinction exists.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Folks,
.... All patent offices around the world need to shut down for a few (maybe 10) years. After a decade let the international court decide (and streamline) patent laws. I always chuckled at (the stupidity) a company owning the human gnome [definitely global community assets/property].
...).
... or developed supporting whatever. It appears more like the first to take all the credit with believable BS-smoke.
How can one company/person/university/... take the credit for creating anything that is unique, novel, and useful today with global communications and travel, internet seminars/conferences and universities,
I am not sure, but after many years of reading and experience, it appears that patents/USPTO are now a global government supported Welfare Institution for whoever claims all the credit first (patent variations patents, human/natural and mutations organic patents, obvious and stupid patents,
It is no longer who really did make
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Are you implying that amazon and Microsoft have not yet patented the idea of collecting ideas together in the form of chemical marks on bound sheets of processed trees?
:)
They both have patents pending on this. Since neither of them have found any prior art, the PTO will probably grant one of them
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
The few examples that are mentioned in the book are what's wrong with patents. Patents that are too broad. Patents that cover things that happen in nature. Patents awarded without researching prior contributions.
What is missing are patents cases show their real purpose to help the little guy against bigger bullies. For example, the intermittent windshield case against Ford. Stac Technologies vs. Microsoft.
Really, he should advocate reform so that the abuses he exampled are curbed.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
He independently created the song "My Sweet Lord", but the authors of the song "He's So Fine" sued and prevailed, saying Harrison copied the song.
That is not my reading of the document you linked to:
"With all the evidence pointing out the similarities between the two songs, the judge said it was "perfectly obvious . . . the two songs are virtually identical". The judge was convinced that neither Harrison nor Preston consciously set out to appropriate the melody of HSF for their own use, but such was not a defense."
"Harrison conceded that he had heard HSF prior to writing MSL, and therefore, his subconscious knew the combination of sounds he put to the words of MSL would work, because they had already done so. Terming what occurred as subconscious plagiarism, the judge found that the case should be re-set for a trial on the issue of damages."
According to this finding and admission, the work was not independently developed, but was copied from the original, even if subconsciously.
After getting tossed out of a job a few years back, I toyed with the idea of becoming a patent agent. The logic being that I already had a strong engineering background, it would make a good part time job that could turn into a full time one and vise versa, and finally it would be a great differentiator on my resume.
In Canada, you do not have to go to law school to become a patent agent. You simply work as a trainee at a firm for at least one year then write the appropriate exams.
After going through a series of interviews with various law firms. The following attitude became disturbingly clear:
The agents and lawyers couldn't give a damn about the validity of the patent. They will happily write up a patent application for anything - even things that can't be patented under Canadian law (eg. medical procedures). Why do they do this? Money.
Writing applications results in billable hours, fighting with the patent office to get it issued results in billable hours and litigating crappy patents in bogus disputes results in even more billable hours.
In the context of running a law firm, this is a perfect strategy. In the larger context of "what's right", it's pretty shady in my opinion.
If there's going to be reform, it's got to either start with the Patent Office or the inventors themselves.
Money is Freedom.
So, let's print more money!!!
Seriously, I understand what you're saying, and I agree that there is an *almost* undeniable correlation between money and freedom. I too believe that personal wealth very much affects personal freedom, and I believe in creating wealth.
I also understand that nazi pro-consumer law hurts free enterprise when it restricts free trade, but I'm *ALSO* very familiar with pro-corporate laws/intitutions that do just as much if not more to restrict trade.
Examples of Anti-Consumer Laws/Institutions that Restrict Trade
* FCC Regulation of TV/Radio which favors long-range/high-ratings broadcasting with expensive licenses.
* Local/County/State/FCC Regulation of local telecommunications giving one company exclusive access to right-of-ways and infrastructure built with public money.
* The US Patent Office - Costing up to $500,000 in legal fees to disqualify a patent, this institution (with the courts help) restricts the free trade and innovation of both obvious and nonobvious technology by giving every asshole the opportunity to "call dibs" for it's exclusive use while bearing very little risk to both the patent office and the filer if the patent was fucking obvious and/or shortly inevitable.
If you want to keep believing that we're #1 because purely because we're a capitalist then you need to learn a lot about "other factors".
Other Factors:
* Trade Negotion Leverage
* Natural Resources
* Corruption (Equal Justice under Law)
* Workforce Skills
* Infrastructure
That's just to name a few...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
It's ironic, but the Amazon one-click purchase patent is a bad example of a "bad" patent. It's actually quite a good patent.
No site had, and no programmer before or since would ever feel comfortable letting someone buy something without a second click for a confirmation. This is well documented, and any programmer of any age would tell you this. It was a true innovation in thought to both the online community and the programming community.
A better example would be something that was an imminently obvious next step, like rendering "frames" in 3D to provide animation. Whatever happened to that guy and his patent and his lawsuit against the big 3D card companies?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
I wasn't disputing that patents don't have merit.
Since something like the 14th or 15th century patents have been around. Talking about the patent system like it's a broad affront to free trade looks a lot like biting the hand that fed you.
What I am disputing is your simple minded argument. Oh, and patents go far back as the 12th century in Italy.
I'm not going to debate whether patents are good or bad, because this is a stupid debate. I understand that the patent system has given the right people the right amount of incentive to develop technology to accellerate us into the future.
Edison is a perfect example. Would he have really been so persistant if he knew he wouldn't be rewarded? Probably not.
His invention was TRUELY novel, one of a kind and would be the catalyst for an explosion of technology.
Unfortunately, the world isn't full of Edisons. Most people's ideas are stupid, obvious or pointless. We want to AVOID rewarding stupid and obvious ideas and some how reward the novel ones, especially when they make it harder for smart people to innovate.
All this is supposed to be balanced out with:
* Intelligent Patent Clerks
* A backup system to nullify obvious/imminent patents when the Patent Clerk fails to indentify obvious/imminent patents. (Let alone prior art)
* Adjustable expiration times for classes of technology so as to balance incentive so it does not obstruct innovation.
* Common Sense
Instead we have a system run overrun by lawyers who have an incentive to file as many frivilous patents and sue as many people who violate these privilous patents.
* The Little Guys gets Screwed
* The Corporations get Screwed
* Only The Lawyers Win
Do you get it now?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
mhack
Building a better ribosome since 1997