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More Calls for Patent Reform
ibi writes "On the heels of the PriceWaterHouseCoopers report about the threat of SoftPats to innovation, comes a book by a Harvard B School and Brandeis economics professor about how broken the patent system is in general. In short their book argues that the entire system is a (stunned silence) scam. (They actually call it 'a creator of litigation and uncertainty that threatens the innovation process itself' instead but that's cause you don't get tenure for using words like 'scam'.) Interesting to see that its gotten so bad that a professor of Investment Banking at Harvard even thinks something oughta be done."
People like this are exactly who need to get involved for things to take a positive turn. Technical folks can bitch and moan all we want, but until the non-techincal start to understand, no, care about, the implications, things just plain won't change.
This comes across as more of a litigation problem, not really a patent problem. If I invent something, I don't think it's out of like for me to expect to be compensated for it. The problem is, there are too many damn lawyers. We are a litigious society, and that's really the root of the problem here. Why else would there be a warning on the Windex bottle warning me not to spray it in my eyes?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
This may be obvious, but it seems Linux provides the best case study for considering the argument that patents are required for innovation.
Split into itty bitty pieces as in shares of stock. Not about closing down losing companies and carving them up for liquidation purposes.
Two different things completely.
And Wall Street is much more interesting than OPM for the same topic.
I don't follow - wouldn't a professor of investment banking at harvard be among the first people to realize that something oughta be done?
Schools have to tear down playgrounds because of fears of lawsuits. My kids can't go on field trips without a 4 page medical release. My kids can't attend GYM CLASS without a waiver where we acknowledge that gym includes strenous physical activity.
OB GYNs can't sneeze without ending up in court. People injured in car accidents get millions in settlements.
Coffee cups have "Attention: Hot" printed down the sides of them. Radio ads include a "high speed small print" ramble at the end of them. There is an asterix and small print on everything around me. Half the price of football helmets is to pay for the companies lawsuits and insurance.
The patent system is just another example. The copyright system is just another example.
As a society we need a rework.
the summary. I read the article(admittedly I haven't read the book), but the following statement seems to miss the point entirely: In short their book argues that the entire system is a (stunned silence) scam.. Um, no it doesn't. What the NYT article states is that the authors see a lot of the changes made to patent law and how the patent office is funded since the 80's has only rewarded trial lawyers. /., I'm expecting too much I guess.
They don't say that patents should be done away with entirely. They recommend some serious reforms to the system such as a much stricter patent review process where 3rd parties are allowed to have input. They also say that most businesses are more worried about tax reform than they are about patent damage. These are good ideas, and a start to reform.
Gah, I really, REALLY wish people would stop putting bias into their summaries, but this is
Monstar L
I do not understand how patents can be bad for some technical fields and good for others. They work just fine for machines and medicines then why not for software? In fact, medical research thrives on patent protection. We have no problem with patented golf club and toys, then what is the problem with software? Perhaps, the nature of software is unique and needs different kind of system. While OSS looks a fine idea today and the community momentum is great, there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
There exists a point where economic interests, given a political system which can be bribed, become so powerful that they effectively have total control of the system. As far as the downward spiral of individual liberty at the expense of corporate profit, this is the Point of No Return. Yes, on the books they don't have the power, but practical realities and what the books say are often very different things.
Realistically, the power of the people to speak louder than money is only felt if a) said people are interested in exercising that power at the expense of personal convenience and b) they are willing to think for themselves. This seldom happens, and only when things get Really Bad. I'm not talking about IP laws, I'm talking about not being able to get the basics of life. Abstract economics doesn't get people excited, because its not important enough. Tomorrow's meal or the kid's latest cold is what's important for most people.
As long as powerful economic interests are able to keep most of the people relatively comfortable, they will never have to deal with popular uprising about MP3 downloading or stupid patents. People ignore these things unless it impacts them personally, and it seldom does enough to hurt.
Beyond the Point of No Return, corporate power is able to use the statistics of democracy to run the country. Barring the crumbling of their power due to total economic collapse, they control the media and can use it to influence and placate people as they see fit.
So brace yourself geeks, because we don't have a Voice. We are without economic or political power, and we are so small a minority in the democratic whole we can be ignored no matter how loud we yell. Because most people don't care about what we care about. In a two party system, massive numbers and middle of the road are the order. We are neither.
Which doesn't mean we should just go gentle into that good night, but bear in mind the patent system being profitable to the people abusing it is more politically important than the little (relatively quiet) guy being squashed. If we fight, we need to fight smart and not charge at the problem head on. Because we might as well be a flea going head to head with a rhino.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
1) These high profile people will convince congress that the system needs change.
2) Business interests will direct the changes.
3) The system will be worse than today.
Profesors of Investment Banking have opinions just like the rest of us. One of the fircest opponents to soft patents that I know is a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property. Interesting? Yes, but not surprising.
The thing is, having an strong opinion and announcing it loudly causes publicity. Both for the opinion itself, and fhr the one announcing it. Publicity for the one announcing it makes their other opinions noticed too, as well as their ideas, services and books.
I'm not saying that they've got the opinion because it's a means to get the public's attention, but it certainly doesn't hurt their exposure.
That much said, I applaud their stance. The patent system is totally broken and needs to be either thrown out completely or severely reworked.
If it were such that patents could only cover a specific implementation of a concept and not simply the concept itself that there would be a lot less impetus to change the system. As it stands now, anyone with a couple bucks can come up with some broad, sweeping general concept and get a patent on it and then pwn anyone who comes along with an implementation of that idea.
It happened with the BT hyperlink problem. It is happening again with the Amazon 1-click patent. Even the almighty Microsoft is not immune to this kind of thing as Eolas and their lawyers showed us with their "plug-in" patent.
If a company wants to apply for and get a boatload of patents covering specific implementations of a concept, more power to them. But screw them if they think that something as broad as "Interaction with user through visual experience" is going to fly.
The current patent system allows the holder of the patent to have a monopoly on the supply of its holdings for a period of roughly 24 years, with the ability to renew. After that the patent expires, and the information covered by the patent becomes, more or less, open source. Unfortunatly, a company can hold a monopoly on a very vauge idea, stifiling development in a field, and for roughly fifty years. This is just unacceptable.
Should the system of patents be obliterated? No. Without a patent system, industry has no point to develop a product. Now true with our system of consumerism there is brand name importance, and a loyalty to those that produce a superior product; many executives feel that innovation without a garantee of being the only suplier of a nich market is unacceptable.
What could be a simple solution?> Limit the length of a patent to seven years, with eligibility to renew for another seven if a product is developed.
Why seven years? For most products, it takes seven years for the idea of the product, or a compound for medical research, to be aproved to reach the market. With this system a company cannot hold a patent of a vauge idea for decades, hoping for someone to develop a patent in the field of the patent, and deman royalties. It would also prevent a company hindering the development of a field that would render their product obsolete.
This would give the drug companies an incentive to keep developing new products, quickly, and for other companies to patent products that they have already developed. This would also stop companies like Amazon and Microsoft from patent-whoring. Its pretty win-win, and allows more technology to eventually reach an open community, where others can innovate on the ideas, improve the product, and compete with their "better" products.
And they say Leninism is dead.../i?
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
I didn't see any recommendation for shorter terms for exclusive monopoly rights that I think would help cure this problem on many fronts.
The 17 year term might have been justifiable in the 18th century when trading ships took many weeks to cross the Atlantic, but now, overall progress would be improved if the terms were reduced to something more like 2 years.
And, while we're at IP reform, copyrights should be cut down to a shorter period as well. This 75 year mouse extension is ridiculous, especially when Disney mines fairy tales in the public domain (Snow White, Cinderella, etc.) for their cartoon movie ideas.
But, once the artificial market is created, the vested interests (owners of IP, litigators of IP) don't want to see it go away.
So just reduce terms of exclusivity gradually, a year at a time, until things become sane again.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Investment bankers typically help perform valuations on private companies wishing to go public. They underwrite the company and sell shares back to the owners of the company. Then with the remaining shares, the company is taken public on one of the many stock exchanges.
What you are talking about are fund managers and loan officers. They are the ones who work at the bank and invest the bank's money. Investment bankers, for the most part, work at brokerage houses and do work far removed from what their title would suggest.
Major open source groups should patent everything they can get their hands on and then when Microsoft goes postal, lock down all of those patents. Basically it should be a simple game of "if we can't do what we want, then no American company will be allowed to make software products without our permission."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This is not a one way trip. We are not "doomed" or "fucked." We overcame monarchy. We overcame slavery. We have dismantled patriarchal sexual customs that have 40,000 years of tenure. The progress of our civilization is highly dynamic and we are sitting on a 100 year winning streak.
This did not happen just by sleepy proletarian mobs being occasionally jolted awake by famines and wars. Our progress is the result of small groups of dedicated, intelligent individuals who overcame their own cynicism and defeatism and got their hands dirty. These are not people richer or more powerful or luckier than you that you imagine really take care of everything. This is you. Right here, right now, posting on this stupid website.
Frankly the biggest enemy you have to face after ignorance is helplessness. You are not helpless. Reading recent history is often the best cure for that feeling, and I urge you to read it.
Unhealthy intellectual property policy affects our entire society, through its economy and its quality of intellectual and artistic life. Our patent regime is especially pernicious; software patents in particular are obviously, prima facie unjustifiable.
Oh, we have hot button poltics, and bread and circuses like always. But never forget that money is what really moves politics in this country. And software patents are very, very bad for business, at all levels.
Everyone wants to make money, to push growth. The problem is the prisoner's dillemma; software patents are bad if everyone has them, but they're theoretically good for me (if I'm one giant company). All that has to happen is lining the natural opponents up and letting them work. It will take time; the community needs to develop the conventional wisdom that with software patents everybody loses.
Just be smart, and be willing to work. Once tension builds, it often takes a dramatic event to tip the balance. Say, a bunch of tiny upstarts suing Microsoft for billions over patents and any of them winning?
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Not only does USPTO not receive any tax money, since 1992 much of the money collected in fees by USPTO has not been available to it. From fiscal 1992 through fiscal 2001, more than $675 million has been diverted. Because of the economic damage cause by invalid patents, this is no way to save money. USPTO's ability to conduct meaningful examinations is already compromised. Last year, USPTO Director Q. Todd Dickinson warned of an imminent "reduction in patent quality" resulting from yet another inadequate budget.
Inadequate USPTO budgets benefit only one group of people -- those who get invalid patents. Everyone else suffers. Fund USPTO so that it can afford to attract and retain highly skilled examiners, as well as maintain a world-class library of international patents, journals, catalogs, and other information. A patent office without full funding is the economic equivalent of a fully loaded B-52 bomber with no maps, no compass, and an untrained navigator.
2. Stop and reverse patentability creep
Would the economy be better off if Bruce Springsteen were allowed to patent rhyming "back" and "Cadillac" -- and sue any other songwriter who did so, even if the new song was nothing like "Pink Cadillac?" Would the economy be better off if the Green Bay Packers were allowed to patent the best defense against a particular play, and sue any team that used that defense against them?
Would the economy be better off if a high-priced defense lawyer were able to patent the use of a legal argument, and sue any other defense lawyer who used it on behalf of his client?
Clearly, the answer to all three questions is no. We're all better off when we can hear new songs, watch good football games, and get a fair trial without getting several patent licenses a day. Unfortunately, several court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s have resulted in the patentabilty of mathematical algorithms and of business methods, which is for programmers just as ludicrous as the above three examples.
Software and business methods patents are examples of "patentabilty creep" in action. Federal judges, legislating from the bench, are expanding the scope of patentable content to not only overwhelm USPTO, but also to do grievous economic harm.
3. Fix USPTO's incentive system to reward quality, not quantity
The Department of Commerce should populate USPTO's advisory committee with members from outside the patent bar, with a view to helping USPTO work toward the economic health of the nation as a whole and not for any special interest group. Employee incentive programs within USPTO should be tied to patent quality, not quantity.
There is nothing right with software patents.
Software patents do not promote science and the useful arts.
Software patents have not caused an increase in the amount of software being written.
Software patents have harmed some software developers by forcing them into costly litigation.
Software patents have a chilling effect on developement. Knowing that a piece of software you are writting might be patented makes it less likely that you will work on it.
What good thing has happend as a result of software patents?
Software patents should not be allowed to start, and in countries where they've already started, they should be abolished.
-- Should you question authority?
There are some cases in which being able to patent something is the only way a company will invest the time or resources to develop. Take as an example Esperion Pharmaceuticals, who developed a drug that will save me from all the cheeseburgers I've been eating.
Scientists have known for years that merely injecting someone with "good" cholesterol could help ease congestive heart failure, but because it's something we all produce anyway, it couldn't be patented and nobody was willing to spend the money to manufacture a low-margin commodity.
Somebody noticed, though, that residents of a small town in Italy died with baby-smooth arteries and almost never had heart attacks. A researcher found that they produced a mutant form of cholesterol that functioned like "drano for the arteries." Because it was a mutated form, it was patentable, and the researcher sold out to Esperion, which Pfizer bought within months for more than a billion dollars.
I think people on here, understandably, are coming at this from a software background. There is really no other industry, though, where innovation comes as cheaply and easily. MS et al. have definitely abused the system, but it might be a better idea to militate for software-specific patent reform than for patent reform more generally, as 20 years is not a lot of time in some industries (the airline industry comes to mind, where it takes more than a decade to produce a new passenger jet) to recover the costs of innovation. Another benefit is that the longer the patent lifespan, the longer the period a company has to amortize its R&D costs, and the less they have to charge up-front.
Always a godfather; never a god. -Gore Vidal
Everything can, in theory, be reverse engineered. However, some things are easier to invent the way the original inventor did than to reverse engineer.
There are some inventions which are just totally mysterious to the user. Trying to figure out how a computer chip works by examining it is generally impractical. It is much easier to just make a different one which behaves the same in the circumstances of interest.
There are some inventions which could be figured out with a bit of examination. The workings of an adjustable chair, for example, wouldn't be too hard to replicate.
There are some inventions which are completely obvious once someone's thought of them, but where it was tricky to identify details of the problem they solve. For example, I have a can openner which is substantially better than other can openners because the handles are thick enough to spread out the force on the hands. It's completely obvious that it's good and why it's good, but it took 40 years for someone to actually make such a can openner.
This last class makes the "obvious" test very difficult, because many things are obvious in hindsight that were not obvious when they were invented, as demonstrated by the fact that the technology existed to implement them for a long time without anyone doing so. In fact, the hallmark of a good design is that it is immediately obvious to anyone who sees it, even though it would be unintuitive until that point.
Now, I grant that not everone will agree that all of the above is patentable. On the other hand, the current bar for US software patents appears to be the 'one click' patent.
Most of the above focus on transpency of clever behaviour - as befits an OS. Most of Linux is not particularly surprising, but the above are some of the more unusual features, or unsual apsects thereof.
Originally patents were intend for when Joe Blow came into the patent office, put his gizmo on the counter and said he wanted to patent it. Then, that became impractical, so they started allowing mere design of the gizmo to suffice. Then, that design become generalized to the point of simple theory rather than specific implementation. And now, it's started into the area of allowing patents on algorithms, namely Computer Programs, which however complex are still algorithms and procedures.
Another problem is the simple length of the patents. Like copyrights, patents have increased in duration since their original inception, while the afore mentioned broadening of patent scope was occurring. So, now we have excessively long durations on stuff that was never intended to be patented at all. This is again particularly evident in the area of software which operates in terms of years, not decades, and giving decades of exclusive access to a broadly stated algorithm is very stifling to development.
Lastly we have the issue of how patents are actually used. Once upon a time you were expected to actually put some effort into producing whatever it was you patented. Now, this was never enforced, but now that loophole is heavily exploited in this broadened patent system. Companies sit on patents for the sole purpose of sueing other companies. Others exclude people from making use of the very thing that is patented to stifle competition. Back to software again, it becomes difficult to use an invention to proceed to the next level because now instead of simply going to your local hardware store and buying those fancy new screws you need to put your machine together, to put your new program together you have to hunt through a mess of patents, hunt down the current patent holder, hope they are willing to license out their tech to you, and finally be able to pay whatever fee they may ask, all of which is a legal nightmare requiring you to hire yourself a well versed lawyer who probably also will cost you a pretty penny.
Last, as already mentioned, is the simple problem of inspecting these applications. The Patent office is so overburdened that they have essentially taken the position that pretty much anything will be given a patent, and the courts can figure it out later. However, that's no good. This badly tilts things in favor of large companies able to manage court and lawyer fees. As well, the moment a patent is given, however, frivolous, even the courts give it some respect, even if it is undeserved.
Again, I don't think the central idea of patents is bad, it has just been stretched and twisted WAY beyond it's functional limitations.
The constitution never implied patents (or copyrights) were a property right any more than slaves on the plantation were. This property propaganda is a bunch of crap made up by lawyers and the RIAA, and has absolutely no solid foundation in common law or constitutional law at all.
In fact the constitution clearly states that copyrights and patents are a government mandated monopoly that is to be short term - genuine rights don't have an expiration date.
Have software patents. However, make them good for only 5 years from the date of filing and on a first come first serve basis.
Entire fields of technology come and go in 5 years time, so that seems like more than enough time to "profit" from a patent. Also, it reduces the incentive for filing patents for "ideas" that allow a lock on said "idea" with no intent of using said idea. If the "idea" is suitably ahead of its time, well, then you could attempt to hold off on filing it...then again, mere ideas aren't invention. (See flight as one idea that was around for ages, but the actual invention didn't occur until 1908, I believe it was)
Additionally, the shorter time span would prompt immediate use of said patent, or it would be no longer useful to the patentee. Bad patents such as the infamous "one click" patent would go out the window in a reasonably short period of time.
I'm willing to bet the simplicity of such a solution is also the reason it would never be adopted, as companies wouldn't be able to profit from the current system (like SCO's attempts, for one)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
That only applies to *existing* patents. The system can always be changed as regards new patents. Also, it's worth noting that patent abuses are in fact patent abuses. If the patent is not legal in the first place, then nothing is taken away.
Copyright is different in that the primary concern is the lengthy term of the copyright. It may in fact be very difficult to shorten that term and it would take over a century to let the existing copyrights run out. Existing patents would be gone within twenty years.