Steal This Idea

daltonlp writes "Many stories under the "patents" topic on Slashdot are about objectionable patents (Amazon's one-click purchase patent, for instance). These stories typically draw comments full of righteous indignation and jeers about the incompetence of the US patent & trademark office. Don't you wish you could package that sentiment in a handy, bound volume? Maybe with a few more hard facts than you're likely to find on /. ? Well, now you can." Read on for the rest of Dalton's review of Michael Perelman's Steal This Idea. It's not a new book, but it seems more relevant every day. Steal this Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity author Michael Perelman pages 272 publisher Palgrave Macmillan (April 2002) rating Worth Reading reviewer Lloyd Dalton ISBN 0312294085 summary A hard-hitting look at the state of the U.S. patent & trademark system.

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.

Comments

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Steal nothing.

[BoomerSooner]

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.

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steal the idea

[Transient0]

but pay for the book, godammit!

Like anything else ...

[nbvb]

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?

Re:Like anything else ...

[TheRaven64]

Part of the problem is that there are *SO* many applications, that the USPTO can't handle it.
Any suggestions on how to improve?

Well, if the problem is too many original ideas, then the simple solution would be to introduce into the general populous:

• A diet of pre-processed food low in the proteins essential for brain development.
• Passive entertainment with a low intellectual content, starving their brains of stimulus.

Another good idea would be to encourage the nation's youth to use an abbreviated form of the language with a weaker grammatical structure and a lower information-carrying capacity. This will cause their brain cells to organise into patterns less capable of originality and logical thought.

Oh, wait. We've already tried that, haven't we?

Re:Like anything else ...

[timjdot]

USPTO has experts. Most patents are not "new and unique" they are just modifications and mostly that any competent engineer could create without any special insight. Visit the USPTO and take a read. My wife's cousin worked at the USPTO in the 90's and the problem then was the Japanese would read each patent and file 11 patents covering each possible revision to the original patent in order to block improvement!
Patent is big business. Takes a regular person $6k or so to get one. Takes 3 years AFTER the filing last I checked. Used to be 2 years 4 years ago. At this rate before long, patents will expire before granted.
Only big business can defend a patent - look at lemon or whatever his name was who is #2 most prolific patenter ever and invented lots of the automated manufacturing but was not paid by the major automakers until he was like 65. Patents do not result in knowledge sharing etc.
I think everyone knows these things. Too many systems of our government made sense at the beginning of the industrial age but were never deprecated.
Clearly this is why one-world government is bad. The nation that structures around advancing knowledge rather than lawsuits about it will surpass the U$A. We need more competition in governments rather than more unification.
Would you vote for a candidate who sought to fix the patent technology roadblock? I would.
Tim

Re:Like anything else ...

[sco08y]

Just like anything else, *abuse* of the system is the problem. How do we sort the wheat from the chaff?

Nope. Abuse of the system is the *syptom*. The problem is that it's a system that lends itself to abuse, as currently designed.

Part of the problem is that there are *SO* many applications, that the USPTO can't handle it.

Decentralize it? Does there really need to be a single PTO for the entire country? The Constitution doesn't mandate that, it simply provides Congress the authority to set it up.

International patents work pretty well... if the 50 states could each decide how they wanted to process patent applications, they could try different things. Hopefully you'd get some real innovation in dealing with the problem.

(And you could decentralize it even further, I'm sure, with some imagination...)

Re:Like anything else ...

[caesar-auf-nihil]

Well, you're right that certainly there is nothing wrong with an actual inventor protecting his invention and getting paid for it. The original patent system was designed to get inventors to get paid for their work so that they shared it with others via the patent. Back when patents were first granted and created, usually what would happen was that the new invention was kept under wraps and not shared with the greater scientific community, thus slowing down progress. So patents were created as an incentive to share that information.

Now let's fast forward to today. In major corporations (I work in one), I'm paid to work on scientific research. ALL of my inventions are property not of me, but of the company. My new innovations are patented by the company, and they own it, not me. Okay - so my "benefit" for providing patents to the company is my pay which compensates me for my innovation and advancement to science. No problem there. The problem is how those patents are then used. Since my ideas are the property of the company, I have no control over them once they're owned by the company. So what you see today are patents being used not to protect a new innovation, but to prevent others from using that new innovation. This is the key point. Patents are granted to companies who have no intention of making the innovation a reality to benefit mankind, but rather, something to use in competition with other companies to prevent the other company from gaining an edge over them.

See the difference between how patents used to be and how they're used now? You are also right that the USPTO is part of the problem, granting patents for things that should not be granted. My personal favorite is one where a company claimed a small amount of an inorganic chemical provided a benefit in a plastic, and the inorganic chemical could be made of anything in the periodic table of the elements. Utter bullshit. The point of the whole matter is that the patent system is broken in how it is used, and how patents are created - but the abuse of how patents are used is THE major problem here.

Re:Like anything else ...

[Suidae]

n abbreviated form of the language with a weaker grammatical structure and a lower information-carrying capacity.

Interesting. While I'm not dealing with any teenagers at the moment, so I don't know what slang they are developing, I'm not so sure the dialects I've come across have any less information carrying capacity than the subset of standard spoken english that they would use if they didn't have their slang.

I think that it might be less that the developed dialect not having the capacity and more that the typical set of ideas in the sub-culture is limited. That is to say, they ain't got nuttin to talk about, so 'day ain't needin' all 'dem big words.

the thicket of radio patents ...

[burgburgburg]

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

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.

The case against patents

[brentlaminack]

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!

They help, and they hurt.

[PS-SCUD]

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.

Re:They help, and they hurt.

[gr8_phk]

But you also have to understand, patents motivate people. As an avid tinkerer, I have several patentable ideas. I just can't afford to do it. Patents motivate corporations far more than they motivate people due to the cost. Could my ideas result in enough profit to warrent the cost? Yes. Would it actually happen? There's only one way to find out. The little guy has a serious risk/reward problem here.

Stolen things...

[BrynM]

The name, of course, brought to mind the classic Abbie Hoffman book "Steal This Book". Since I hadn't read the copy I stole from my Dad years ago (which he stole from an early Tower store) in a very long time, I popped "Steal This Book" into Google and was pleased to find several links to the ENTIRE BOOK!

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...

Clarification on the enzyme issue.

[gpinzone]

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.

Re:Clarification on the enzyme issue.

[Frater 219]

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.

And here we have an elegant example of the logical fallacy known as "begging the question"; that is, assuming for your argument the very conclusion which is under contention: whether or not there is, or should be, a right to exclude others from a discovery in fundamental science, simply because one manages to file it first.

(It is the claim of the U.S. Constitution, for instance, that patent and copyright are not natural rights akin to life, liberty, and property: they are, rather, privileges created by Congress for a purpose. They rest on a consequentialist ethical system rather than a natural-law one: specifically, they exist to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts. If they fail to meet that purpose, then they fail to be justified.)

There has been no evidence cited that the consequentialist argument defends the extremity of patent (and copyright) that is presently enforced. Pursuers of greater copyright restrictions, and pursuers of vague and obvious patents, both assert that artists and researchers would have greater incentive to create and discover, if their works received greater monopoly protection.

However, this is a bare assertion without any evidence for it; a statement of faith and not of reason. It should not motivate the restriction of the public by further onerous laws. In the absence of evidence for the claim that a restrictive law would further the public good, a free nation should err on the side of preserving liberty and not on the side of extending further monopolies for the already-privileged.

Not the usual anti-patent rant

[GGardner]

We've all seen and mocked stupid patents, like the patent on swinging sideways on a playground swing. However, I don't think pointing out random bad patents is a useful way to critique the current US patent system. We all know there are a huge number of patents, and with any huge collection, there are outliers.

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.

Re:Not the usual anti-patent rant

[codefool]

There was a time in the early 90's when every corporation went pantent crazy. I worked at the time for [a company that is now HP], and we had to go to Patent School where we were 'taught' how to fill out log books, get them reviewwed and signed, etc. all in the effort to protect the Company's IP. Now, we all kept notebooks like all good scientists, but this was more of a process to make sure that the evidence was there as to exactly when and what was 'invented'.

This behavior was justified by the need to have a sufficient patent portfolio when bartering with other technology companies. Rather than battle out an infringement claim in court, companies would just trade patent rights, like high-tech marbles in the schoolyard.

So I and my team went to work and developed some pretty nifty stuff . I got four software patents out of the deal. Not because I particularly felt the work was patent worthy, but because I got a grand for each one, and a pretty cool plaque in a Handsome Plastic Frame.

Every one of those patents are bogus. I borrowed all the technology - regular expressions, IP-IP protocols, and just plain-ol-object embedding. When I would tell this to the patent lawyers, they said the patent was viable because of the context it was presented in. That is, if the base idea for the patent itself is obvious, it can be argued that its application is not. Ergo, cha-ching!

Re:Not the usual anti-patent rant

[Arandir]

I'm the unfortunate filer of a patent. I did it because I wanted to keep my job secure. I didn't want to at first. The idea was kind of innovative, but no especially so. But then a competing company changed my mind.

My field has only three huge multinational corporations. As I was debating whether or not it would be worth it in the long run to toss my patent application in the shredder, we got hit by a patent by Philips, one of those big three. We had prior art on this patent. We had been doing it for ten years. We had never patented it because it was so bloody obvious, with art prior to ours dating back to the Apple Lisa. I was thinking Philips was going to get a swift kick in the butt by our attorneys. But no, we decided to cross license for it. It turned out that it was cheaper to let them use one of our worthless patents in exchange for their worthless patent instead of spending two hours of court time listening to a judge laugh his head off at the absurdity of the patent.

I came to the realization that patents in the modern world are nothing more than a set trading cards used by corporations. Some of those cards, like a Mickey Mantle, might have some genuine value to them, but most are worthless obviousness.

Patents have become valueless commodities. It doesn't matter about any indivual patent, so long as you have more patents than your competitor.

Re:Red Title

[BrynM]

Here's the Subscription portion of the Slashdot FAQ. It explaines everything (except why everyone can see it today):

http://books.slashdot.org/faq/subscriptions.shtml

patents and pills

[PukkaStoryTeller]

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.

Patent scope

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents are, arguably, the most "limited" of the three types of IP

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.

Property and Rights are Different Things

[serutan]

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.

Re:I dunno

[row314]

Roughly half the book is devoted to the negative effects of patents on scientific research

Kind of hard to justify this sort of claim when you consider how much we have advanced in the last 70-80 years. It might not be a perfect process but it does seem to work.

Ah, but how much of that progress occurred because of the patent system, and how much in spite of said system?

Happen to own a copy of the book...

[thdexter]

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.

How about World Class Trade Negotiation Leverage?

[JohnDenver]

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...

Re:Patents've been around since the dark ages, alm

[JohnDenver]

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?

Let's beat bogus patents with 'Prior Art Registry'

[mhackarbie]

I don't know much about the law, but I have been spending lots of time happily developing molecular modeling software with lots of neat ideas that I hope will never be patented. Can't a lot of these bogus patents be stopped with some kind of 'Prior Art Registry' where people describe useful ideas and have a timestamped record of it which can prevent some bozo from trying to patent it down the line? I did a Google Search and found only the barest references to a 'Gnu Prior Art Registry', but it doesn't seem to exist. Anyone else know more?

mhack