Slashdot Mirror
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."
Wealth creation and true creation are two completely separate things. Creators, in the inventor sense, need to protect themselves from others who would take their ideas without recompensating the creators for the time and effort involved in the invention process.
Investment bankers know how to carve up a company into itty-bitty pieces, charge a fee for that, then move on to dooming the next bright-eyed startup company with two contracts to rub together.
So you are getting the opinion of a destroyer of wealth on how and why to dismantle the mechanism of protecting creators of wealth.
I understand we all hate patents and don't believe in IP, but this is just about the worst you can do in getting a spokesman.
Dancin Santa
There is nothing wrong with software patents, except that when the average product lifecycle is three years the patents are too long for software. I think everyone could be kept happy by limiting patents on software to some shorter term (say 5 years) ... The inventor gets a licensed monopoly for the life of the product - then it becomes public property. This seems to be the easiest way to address the patent imbalance without the costly process of changing the mechanism...
Before your panties get in a twist, I'm just playing devil's advocate. I think ownership needs to be redefined in both the copyright and patent space. I just see patent reform as an uphill battle because of the simple to understand arguments against it.
overall progress would be improved if the terms were reduced to something more like 2 years.
2 year patents for pharmaceuticals would make it useless to develop new medicines, due to the extensive testing required by the FDA prior to marketing. This is why most drugs are only on the market a few years before the patent expires, allowing generics to be developed.
The proper amount of time is very dependent upon the nature of the patent an the industry it is involved with.
What?
One way to make a significant improvement to the system would be to reverse the way vagueness is handled. At the moment it seems that ideas described in vague and general language are considered to be covered by the patent, and the idea is considered new enough if it is not a blatant direct copy of something that has already been described (which is usually interpreted to mean patented).
If the assumptions were reversed, the vague and general patents that are close to things that have already been done should be eliminated. It seems to me that those are the ones doing the most harm, so this would be a big step in the right direction. If there was a penalty (no protection) for any part of the idea hidden in obscure language, it would make the whole process much easier to use, and harder to abuse. Clear and simple descriptions would be much easier to relate to existing ideas, so you would need real novelty in the idea rather than a novel way to create a convoluted description of the idea.
Last night I attended a talk by Richard Stallman entitled The Danger of Software Patents in Luxembourg. He made a convincing case as to how the patent system when applied to software ideas was poorly executed (a legal mess, scope defined too widely, etc.) He concluded that the patents system on software ideas stifled innovation and hurt Joe Developer while making "the Mega-corporations" (his word) richer. (I won't list his arguments because I'm sure you're all familar with them.)
I accept that the patents system as it stands is far from optimal, or even fair. But could someone please clarify this for me: how could it be an alternative to abolish patents on software ideas altogether when this would remove the financial incentive for someone to protect their software invention? We'd all like to live in a world where financial gain meant less than it does, but is it really a realistic option? What IS the alternative without making the patent system even more cryptic and complex? What am I missing here?
---- scrm
The US has to be careful with patent reform, perhaps because of the lesser used part of the 5th amendment. Ie.
... [No person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
For the same reason that copyright reform may be difficult to bring about, as postulated by Mr. Lessig, Mr. Knopf, and others, it would literally cost the government a fortune to deprive owners of patents their due value, for a public purpose, as the 5th amendment guarantees them just compensation.
The lackadaisical politics is in essence digging its own grave, ensuring the continuation of a terrible intellectual property system, as the government will be unable to afford to compensate the existing privileged in the name reform for the public good.