Slashdot Mirror
The Economist on Patent Reform
ar1550 writes "The Economist recently posted an opinion piece on the state of patent systems, describing not just the mess that is the USPTO but flaws present in Europe and Asia. From the article, "In 1998 America introduced so-called 'business-method' patents, granting for the first time patent monopolies simply for new ways of doing business, many of which were not so new. This was a mistake." The article also describes the difficulty of obtaining legitimate patents. "
A very excellent and articulate argument, logical and cogent. I hope the right people are listening.
adam b.
The article only presents one side of the picture, albeit, the slashbot side.
But, what about the other side? What was the motivation for allowing business method patents? There must have been some reasoning behind it.
Anyone?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I see this patent buisness model as no different than the other booms (biotech, dot com) that all busted. Plain and simple, the patent business model means making money without any productivity. Instead of Network Solutions, we will have Patent Solutions so you can patent the 100 different ways to breath. There is no way this business model can succeed. Reform is coming sooner or later.
The article is a nice opinion piece. But before all you folks start ranting, please learn what a patent is/isn't and how they work. I predict a huge ammount of nonsense is about to be spewed.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
... but is this enough ? right now patents are nothing but clout of the mighty. anyone small is bought outright! fairplay doesnt stand a chance. so much for the patents protecting the rights !
This will balance out the patent system and make the system fair for all involved. Clearly, such a patent system will benefit the consumer.
A bit of research and theory suggests that, while these patents are a big pain in the US, there might be a case for implementing them in developing countries, in order to reward entrepreneurs who find successful business models and practices. Currently, there are few incentives for discovery of new industries in developing countries, since as soon as they are discovered, everyone rushes in and the original entrepreneur is put out of business.
And rule one of capitalism: without incentives, there's no innovation.
See for example Ricardo Hausmann and Dani Rodrik, "Economic Development as Self-{Discovery"
If we got rid of currency and patents and lawyers, think how happy the world would be.
We could do things for the sheer GOOD of doing them, people would be creative for creativity's sake. Just think Star Trek and don't tell me I'm wrong.
Thanks, commrade!
Give these guys a break ;)
They're just trying to help out the ailing hordes of patent lawyers. I mean if one could no longer patent the very process of 'post-factum patent squatting litigation', what would happen to the poor folks?!
Personally, I have filed a patent for the "process of gaining permission for sexual activity with a previously unknown person through the use of mood-altering and/or intoxicating substances".
Upon the patent being granted I expect to file no less than 10'000 lawsuits/day for patent infringement, mainly around college campuses.
If people took what they needed, didn't take what they didn't need, and simply shared everything, the world would be a better place. But so far this kind of thing hasn't worked out I guess.
Look at how many politicians that are also lawyers.
I think slashdot.org or something else once led me to the USPTO.gov which showed a patent for a comb-over. (The following is meant to be funny.) Imagine if we patented having hair over four feet long. Or if a baseball player patented how to hit a homerun a certain way. Or patent how to say a certain word a certain way. Or patent a political method, like how politicians move their hands during speeches.
IMHO, this editorial piece is a strategic smoke screen to put the emphasis on "patent reform" in front of the growing movements that challenge the scope of patentable subject matter. In the recent Geneva Conference on the Future of WIPO, the USPTO, WIPO and US Trade representative all supported "tuning generic patentability criteria", while critics supported excluding software, information processing, gene sequences and vegetal varieties from patentability. Guess which has more chance to bring the system back to reason ? Guess which is supported by the big patent portfolio holders ?
I will bring your issue up with the United Federation of Planets immediately!
Why in the world did someone with mod points think that this should be modded up? How about mod down for super-ultra-mega redundancy?
And poster, don't just put up simplistic answers that add NOTHING to the thread. We are all a bit older and no wiser for having read your drivel.
patents, when applied for and granted PROPERLY are a good thing. However when they`re just used to cover your bases, so you can wait for some unlucky person to come along and try to do what youve patented, you can slam him with a lawsuit.
i think it was suggested a fair few stories like this back by someone for a use it or lose it style system, although it would create more lawsuits short term. it might just reduce the lawsuits which wait for a company or person to become nice and fat, for skimming.
The best solution would be to have those staff at the US patent office especially, but also other patent offices around the world to have the time, staff, training and ability to scrupulously check every single application.
perhaps barring those who apply for dodgy patents for a year or two? might be a little extreme to do that but its an idea at least.
Star Trek is not drivel.
They don't have patents in Star Trek. They don't have copyright problems.
The only times I saw where a lawyer was absolutely needed in Star Trek was Star Trek IV when Kirk is in trouble for disobeying orders, and Star Trek VI (But remember, these were the Klingons, not part of the UFP, so not really an issue)
Star Trek *IS* the perfect model.
Star Trek is life.
As TFA seems to state, the principal problem in the patenting system is that it is too easy to get a patent granted on what, after a lengthy legal trial will probably turn out not to have been patentable. The difficulty is that patenting stuff is already a bit expensive, putting off people who aren't big corporations. So how can a better vetting system be introduced to force patent offices to look harder at each application for obviousness/prior-artiness?
The article suggests that competitors could perform this task if the application process were made more open. This makes the patent process somewhat similar to obtaining planning permission (putting up notices saying what you plan, and giving people a chance to object in some period of time).
One thing seems certain, that only if more patents are rejected by the patent office, will people file fewer frivolous patents. But as the system stands, the patent office has little incentive - they just want to collect their fee without too much hassle. Only by changing the system so that the patent office suffers each time a patent it granted is later found in court to be dubious, will they be motivated to improve the quality of the vetting procedure.
I'm not the first to propose this idea, but...
Today in the US, patents are submitted to the USPTO, where they are researched and approved or rejected. If approved, they are presumed valid, unless/until someone else challenges it and requests a review.
The USPTO is overwhelmed and in no position to accurately judge the validity of every one of these patents.
So why try? why bother reviewing them upfront? The USPTO could accept all patent applications, catalog them, make them public, but do not endorse them as valid until proven otherwise.
When patent conflicts arise, as they do today, companies can ask the USPTO to rule on the existing patents. At that time, all parties have a chance to supply relevant evidence to the USPTO about the patent's validity or invalidity.
The plus side is that the USPTO stops pretending it can deal with all this work effectively. It only spends effort on patents that companies think are worth fighting over (and before litigation).
The downside is that companies must publicly submit information about their patentable ideas without a guarantee that they will receive a patent. But, that is a healthy incentive to avoid spurious patents, which is missing today.
What do you guys think?
Base your corporation in Delaware, use the patents illegally, and pay yourself huge sums of money. If people get mad they can sue the corporation, but you don't care because you aren't the corporation.
Vote Quimby!
I'm going to patent the business model of treating employees like shit. Then I'll sue every company for patent infringement.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Keep business and software patents, but put the burden on the patent holder to prove it's valid (i.e., useful, novel and not obvious) in any subsequent trial or hearing.
And if the patent holder loses, it has to pay all of the challenger's legal costs.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Typcially, the name "The Economist" is regarded as qualification enough. It made quite a row when they endorsed John Kerry for President, considering their staunchly fiscally conservative point of view.
Sometimes I doubt your committment to SparkleMotion!
And it would be even better if all people contributed equally to society, instead of some choosing to be supported by it. The utopia of socialism ends where human laziness and greed begin.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
One could also argue that there is no need for this type of patent, there have always been innovative accounting methods, financial instruments or services, even without the protection a patent affords. However, teh counter agruments were that due to rising costs, it becomes increasingly harder to create this innovative ideas and processes. Further, one could say that those that create these processes work just as hard as those who create physical technology. Why discriminate solely on the basis of subject matter.
Again, another counter argument can be made. When determining 'the cost' to business, what does cost actually mean. Is it more costly to a single business, when there idea is not patentable? Is it more costly to business as a whole, where they are excluded from using a patented method?
Really, IMHO, there are no definite answers. But I just wanted to inject some of the thoughts which go into this type of patent.
For more info, see: Patent Law and Policy: Cases & Materials, Second Edition by Robert Patrick Merges
I have an idea for a robbery technique. I was thinking to patent it, as it depends on a recent change and so there cannot be any prior art. I don't see why the criminals should be the only ones making money out of crime! Let them steal goods and money, for sure, but they'll have to pay me royalties if they want to do it the way I thought up.
However, then I thought it might be better to phrase the claim as a technique for being robbed instead. This ought to be more lucrative. The perpetrator may not get caught after all, and the victim probably is insured anyway.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The article is very superficial as far as it concerns the European Patent. 1. It address the European patent policy in one line with the European Parliament. Clearly, the author is unaware of the complete separation between the European Patent Office and the European Union. Therefore, the European Union as such (and even less the European Parliament) can issue any decision with respect to the European Patent Convention. 2. The concepts of languages is wrong: It is true that after a grant of a European Patent, that translations for each country must be filed. However, there is a great advantage for having a single granting procedure: one of three languages (English, French or German), instead of a procedure for each individual country. Furthermore, it should be noted that Europe does not consist of a federation of states (like the USA), but of individual countries. Furthermore, quite a few countries which do not belong to the European Union have ratified the European Patent Convention. In the Americas, it is still common practice that a patent application must be filed in each of the countries individually (US, Canada, Central American countries, Latin American countries), whereby the European Patent offers a single granting procedure. Finally, the author has completely overlooked the possibility of a World patent (PCT, WIPO), which offers a granting procedure for a large number of countries all over the world. Instead of superficially evaluate these patent systems as "embarrassments", it would be more interesting to indicate what could be improved in more detail.
I've got a great new idea, even better than Amazon's revolutionary one-click shopping!
I'm going to accept money in exchange for goods or services. Anyone else who decides to copy this business model must pay me, oh, how about $699...
Not only that, in Star Trek, no one ever needs to take a leak (or a dump). Think how much time that would save!
-- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
Laziness is a problem. It's in my honest opinion that most people aren't laziness. It's in my opinion most people want to work and contribute to society.
Patent issues, tax issues, etc., are going to keep piling up until society can't ignore it anymore. How long this takes, I don't know. Hopefully something is done within the next 20 years.
Not too surprising, really.
Now I'm no economist, but when it comes to the balance sheet, "Tax and Spend" makes more sense to me than "Just Spend".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I suppose that works if you are a young writer and you back up your statements with facts (as opposed to ethos), but this article doesn't even contain facts. Its some vague suggestions and a lot of fluff. I could have written it right here and now, off the top of my head, without any research. Really, a peace of crap article that happened to have the words "Patent" and "Reform" in the title, ensuring its posting on the front page of /..
I believe the Economist politically has a similar readership demographic to ./ as well.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
I wonder would the following simple addition to patent laws fix the bulk problem:
Basically, keep things as is, but limit the patent term to,say, 5 years. After that patent owner can extend it to the full 17 year term but make the extension EXPENSIVE (say, 40K per patent).. Basically, the idea is that 5-7 years of goverment protection should be enough to prove/disprove commercial viability of almost anything...And if idea is commercially viable, then 40K is not that much money, and if a patent is not viable, even IBM is unlikely to pay 40K for a useless piece of paper...
Of course, an (intended) side effect is that most companies will stop filing valueless patents.
(as 5 years is too short a term to bother and full term is too expensive)...The problem of submarine patents would simply go away...
The liability shield for corporations does NOT include negligent behavior. Blatantly stealing patented technology is negligent. You'd be f*cked.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I thought 'Star Trek' and got as far as Seven of Nine.
I tried again and thought 'Enterprise' and got as far as T'Pol.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm.
The article points out that we need a way of evaluating whether or not a patent system is meeting its goals of fostering innovation. The article suggests:
That's a good idea, but I think there's a better way to determine if the patent system is successful at promoting innovation: analyze how the patent database is used. The stated goal of the system is to provide inventors with a short-term monopoly in exchange for public disclosure of their inventions, in order to spur more invention. That makes sense, right? If you get good ideas out in the public where people can see and build on them, you'll generate even more ideas, some of which will also be good. Ideas spark ideas.
This implies that if the patent system is working, you should see inventors perusing/searching the patent database on a regular basis, in search of good ideas to spark their thinking, or in search of solutions to specific problems they're trying to solve in their own inventions. I imagine a scene something like this:
Engineer: Hey, boss, you know that tricky database search problem we've been trying to solve? I just spent a few hours searching the USPTO site and I came across patent #123456789. It's a *perfect* solution! It'll not only address the problem we had, but it will make our product even more flexible and easier to use.
Manager: Great! Get me the contact information for the patent holder and I'll contact them to check into licensing terms. If they're reasonable, this could save us a bundle in development costs. We've put several hundred man-hours into this problem already. Maybe the patent owner will have an implementation they'd like to license us, too.
Engineer: Sounds good. I'll tell Jim to shift his focus to tracking down that nasty memory leak, on the assumption that the search problem is solved. Meanwhile, while I was looking through the patent database I also came across another patent which we can't use, but which gave me another interesting idea...
Does anyone use the patent database like this? No. Especially not with software patents. In fact, in every corporation I know of the attorneys explicitly tell developers *not* to search the patent database, as it's generally better to remain ignorant, both to avoid allegations of "willfull" infringement, and also because it's just a waste of time. Most patents are contestable anyway, and even for the ones that might hold up in court it's generally more cost-effective to just cross-license using your own patent arsenal.
I think the measure of the patent system should be whether or not its required disclosures are observably fostering innovation. If not, it's broken.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Not too surprising, when the alternative has run up a $7 trillion national debt.
I believe you might be confused. My father subscribes to The Economist. I read /. While you don't qualify your perception of /.'s political "demographics," I would suggest The Economist is somewhat more pragmatic and a little further to the right than /.
I do enjoy the idea random /. posters would be questioning the bonafides of The Economist. I realize they only print on dead trees and they have a weird editorial policy you're unfamiliar with, but last I checked the had a slightly higher barrier to entry than the hoops one has to jump through to post on /.
The Economist traditionally does not give the name of an article's author.
Not only that, in Star Trek, no one ever needs to take a leak (or a dump). Think how much time that would save!
... but used it as an excuse to sneak away from Geordi.
In 'First Contact', Zephram Cochrane said that he had to "take a leak"
As far as I know, the only time it was ever mentioned anywhere.
The premise is that if you tax the economy, it won't grow, and people will adapt to the new code and hide more income, resulting in less revenue than you expected from your percentage increase. Whereas, if you lower rates, you spur the economy to grow and therefore more revenue is generated.
Laffer, Mundell, et al. can explain this far better, of course.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
A lofty article without some kind of qualifications to back up is pretty useless.
It's the ideas in the article that matter, not who said them. Appeal to authority is a common fallacy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
unless they are saying it in a way that shows they understand. Sometimes you don't need an engineer to tell you the bridge is unsafe. AFAICS the 'experts' are working from a corrupted paradigm.
Unless you have $1M to litigate, a patent is next to worthless. The lone inventor, unless rich, gains no real protection from them.
Did anyone read that as "We could do things for beer... GOOD"?
We would need replicators, so that food would not be a problem, then i would work for free... a few hours a day...
Humm free beer...
With all this shit flying around regarding software patents, I was wondering how the aerospace companies might patent everything in their respective field.
The idea being that no one will develop outer space but these companies and, of course, NASA.
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Imagine there's no patents,
And no copyrights,
We'd all share our software,
And reach new creative heights.
You may say I'm a dreamer...
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I guess mentioning supply-side would be a troll here, no?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Minor nitpick; they do put out a website http://economist.com/. YOu have to pay for access to a lot of it, but it is there.
sounds like you are talking about the guys at redmond, eh ?
The weirdest trope just occurred to me:
I remember when a barb with whirlwind and two life-steak greatswords was unbeatable. Now I don't really care whether it's bash-pallys or static field sorceresses that are in vogue, I just play to have fun and enjoy myself.
They nerfed barbs, and just like DotComs got nerfed, so will the patents be nerfed by the invisible hand of the economy. Better to just think about building a career and a family than to worry about which field is "hot."
We would need replicators, so that food would not be a problem, then i would work for free... a few hours a day...
If we got rid of the ravenous parasites on the economy that is ownership of capital and government, and replaced the ideal of maximizing profit with that of maximizing production, and replaced corporate management with self-management by labor, there's good reason to believe that we could all work for a few hours a day and maintain or improve our standard of living. No replicators needed.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's an op-ed piece, meaning editorial opinion--which needn't include tax.
Typically in The Economist, an opinion piece will be included in an issue with factual articles corresponding to the topic. "Peace" of crap though you believe it to be, the editorial is significant because the newspaper is influences powerful people--such as members of Congress who are responsible for reforming the USPO.
Fewer heads of state and business leaders read Slashdot than The Economist, but other than them, your demographics comment is accurate.
The Economist is fiscally liberal (from the European definition of liberal) and socially liberal (from the American definition). In fact, the previous issue had an editorial on the subject of liberalism. You might have found it, too, shockingly void of statistics and other lies on which to rest your wearied intellect.
Could you cite the Supreme Court case that legalized business method patents? If you can't cite such a case, I suspect it's much like the situation with software patents, which were legalized in spite of the Supreme Court, not because of it.
We would need replicators Replicators!? Are you mad? Those things beat the Asgard, it took a time dialation field to even stop them for a while.. Oh, wait
But what you see in the shows is only the military part of the Star Trek universe. The rest of the federation is probably not as organised.
Since you don't have currency, exactly how many chickens would you have to carry to the car dealer to get a new car?
The article references one of the traditional justifications for patents: that an inventor is granted a time-limited monopoly in exchange for full disclosure of the invention.
But with regard to software patents, particularly ones like Amazon's one-click patent, there are many inventions that are effectively self-disclosing: if you see that it is done, you know how it is done.
I wonder if it would be possible under U.S. patent law to challenge these patents on this basis? I strongly doubt it, but the very fact that such inventions are patented is a measure of how badly the patent system needs reform.
Ideas are not property, and patents do not grant property rights. They grant monopoly rights in exchange for something else. What is the "something else" in the case of things like the one-click patent? What are we, the public, getting that we would not get otherwise?
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
And it would be even better if all people contributed equally to society, instead of some choosing to be supported by it. The utopia of socialism ends where human laziness and greed begin.
I think most people want to do something useful, or at least entertaining to others. Of course, there are those exceptions who would become perminant couch potatos. If we can expand automated production enough that we can afford to carry those sorry few for now, they will eventually die of sheer apathy and the problem will be solved.
The real problem with socialism is that there are some jobs that need to get done that nobody in their right mind will do for a living unless threatened with starvation. Because those jobs tend to emphasize mind numbing repitition and back breaking labor over any sort of thought or skill, they are also typically held in low esteem, thus they pay very little. Modern capitalism 'solves' that problem by making sure there are a sufficient number of people threatened with starvation to fill those jobs. Before that, the problem was 'solved' by slavery. Those are the jobs that need to be automated out of existance. Most of those jobs are the sort that CAN be automated out of existance.
If you understand the USPTO mentality, there's no patent that you can't get through, they are simply that inept. I was once in an R&D position, after a having a few patents under my sleeve, I was able to pass just about anything without the help of a lawyer, true, they reject everything outright, but they simply don't understand what they reject, and are used to being corrected, after a few rounds of bogus rejections, some meaningless concessions on your part, and making them feel stupid enough (refuting their bogus rejections), they'll accept anything. I don't think I ever got a USPTO comment or rejection that was relevant to the invention in question. Knowing that, the temptation to broaden the patent is huge, because you want to leave room for said meaningless concessions, and because employer's greed does play a part once they find out what they can get away with. It's a good thing patent litigation is so expensive, because even the few patents I personally wrote for my employer could be used to wreck havoc on a lot of companies if they were actually used.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
If you have ever read a book called "Looking Backward" they deal with this by making people when they first start working taking the remedial jobs, and then you can, after a short period, go on to other jobs if you want.
It works, and isn't a bad idea by any means.
From Yesterday's Slashdot front page
The short answer: money. Lots and lots of money.
-- All views expressed in this post are mine and do not
-- reflect those of my employer or their clients
- You have to know how to do a patent search. This is fairly mechanical,
but many don't know how to do it.
- You have to know what keywords to search on. There can be many different
names for the same things, particularly between different disciplines (eg,
singular-value decomposition, principal component, Karhunen-Loeve, reduced
rank, and eigen-whatever can all mean the same thing). Even experts in the
field might not be able to think of all possible terms.
- You have to know how to read patents in general. This is no small thing.
- You have to be able to understand the particular patent you are reading.
Good luck. Patents can be remarkably opaque. I've read patents in areas
that I'm expert in, and been left with only a vague idea of what they were
about.
- After you understand the technical aspects of the patent, you have to analyze
exactly what is and is not covered by the patent. In many cases this can
take considerable legal expertise. It may even require the services of a
patent lawyer.
- Even when you have determined that an invention is covered by a patent, is
the patent valid? For example, a three-year-old patent might describe a
method that's been well known for a decade - in other words, it's prior
art. A common occurrence is that only part of the patent might be invalid.
Do you take the risk of ignoring the patent?
- Has the owner of the patent been paying the patent maintenance fees? Has
there been a judgement overturning or limiting the patent?
I'm sure others can add to this list.To my feeble mind much of the idiocy surrounding software and business methods patents stems from the premise that if I "create" an idea then it costs me something(in an economic sense - not only cash) if someone else uses that idea. The problem with this premise is that it is false. If I find a method of organizing my company that has the effect that I have increased my profit margin by 20% how does it cost me if someone else uses that method. It seems to me that I will still be benefiting from my "invention".
Even if you insist that it does cost me something(perhaps the overall market will be influenced because my competitor lower's her prices) how is that as a direct result of the patent. It is a choice that they have made to give up economic benefit to increase theit market share.
To my feeble mind it seems that patents are meant to protect things that have real costs if they are taken. An idea is not such a thing. To the contrary, an idea can have a net benefit the more folks that know about it.
"And rule one of capitalism: without incentives, there's no innovation."
And your incentives are not necessarily my incentives.
What is this, Kuro5hin? If you create something, it is yours. If individuals, acting in the name of The Public, choose to steal that which you've created, thats another matter. But you don't keep what is your creation by permission, you retain it untill it is stolen.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It made quite a row when they endorsed John Kerry for President, considering their staunchly fiscally conservative point of view.
I think you actually mean "It made perfect sense that they endorsed John Kerry for President, considering their staunchly fiscally conservative point of view." Bush is a walking fiscal nightmare- no intelligent businessman should support someone whos entire economic policy amounts to "Charge it!"
The Economist's endorsement of Kerry was the most damning commentary on Bush's presidency I've seen. The election cover was sheer brilliance: "The Incompetent or the Incoherent". I love the magazine- it's the last bastion of intelligent conservatism out there.
But then again, don't mind me, I'm just bitter. I didn't leave the Republican party- it left me.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I was simply refering generally to what might be described as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal viewpoint. Similar != Same.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Do you believe any other patently stupid things as well? Do you believe that I can sell you the title to the Brooklyn Bridge? Have you ever picked up an issue of The Economist? Obviously not, if you had you never would have made the stupidly ignorant statement that you did above. Go look at the front and rear sections of The Economist where companies and institutions advertise for jobs. The people they're looking for are typically high powered finance and business types and not retarded MSCE wannabees such as yourself.
Why don't you go back to smearing shit on the walls and watching Fox News? They can distort and you can comply and leave the complex issues to your betters.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I don't need statistics, I just need facts. I realize that The Economist requires a paid subscription for online reading, but this op-ed is pretty worthless without an accompanying article. IMHO it shouldn't have made it to the front page of /., and the only reason that it did was because of the title and the perceived respectability of the publication.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Modern capitalism solves that problem by paying enough for those awful jobs that people will take them over easier, lower-paying jobs.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If Microsoft doesn't patent its business practices, I will!
But if they do patent their business practices, then the conspiracy theories about microsoft will be laid bare for all to see (yuck!).
So what will it be, Bill Gates? If you patent a business practice, I will patent doing the very same thing *at a remote location* just like you did.
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Lionel Hutz's version comes to mind
Now if you will excuse me, I have a huge pile of shit that I have to get through smearing on my walls before O'Reilly come on, especially if I want to get a good nights sleep so I can take the MSCE exam tomorrow.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
"Tax and Spend" makes more sense to me than "Just Spend".
/dev/null the US economy for 20 years and fsck the world economy in the process.
I believe the appropriate term for the GOP's current guiding philosophy is "Borrow and Spend".
And despite what another reply to the parent said, It's ridiculous. Even if supply-side is true (the evidence is that supply-side tax cuts produce only a little growth, if any), the philosophy does not endorse borrowing into deep deficit. We are already experiencing a sell-off of the dollar due to foreign investors' lack of confidence in US credit. If that gets worse, it will fsck the US economy. If it becomes a runaway selloff (like a run on a bank), it will
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
They should allow patents only on physical devices. Drawings, descriptions and software are protected by copyright. Names and logos are protected by trademark. Data is protected by copyright, trade secrecy and privacy. Business practices and processes require no protection to recoup their investment: they require relationships, products, marketing, markets, labor and management, all of which atrophies when the process alone is protected from dissemination. The marketplace of ideas is inclusive, not exclusive. "Conservatives" would take us back to the prior practice of patenting only "working models". That simple system catapulted the US to the IP forefront, creating value not only in the inventions, but in the patent system that protected them. Now we're as big a joke as these flimsy patents, and everyone knows it.
--
make install -not war
Here's the reality: big companies get boatloads of patents because they can afford to file them. Then they sign deals with each other so they can use each others' patents. Result: big companies can freely use ideas without worrying about getting sued for the most part. Meanwhile, Joe Blow, who can't afford to make deals like this, must worry about every line of code he writes or every business process he devises, because it might be patented, and he can't afford a court battle.
So just what part of the patent problem does your scheme solve?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
its the people who willingly abuse it
Reality check... money corrupts.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Ch-ching. If people understood common logical fallacies ... there would be a lot less posting on here!
The system of patents was developed in a time when there were few people where were experts in a particular area, and the chances of them coming up with the same idea at the same time was slim, because the chances of them working on the same questions was slim. It did still happen sometimes though. Now, however, with our factory education system, there are dozens of people all working on the same issues and they come up with the same solution. The original idea was to protect the inventor from someone using an idea that they developed. Now, the same idea is probably patented at the same time many, many times during almost any parent's review process, which idealy would invalidate a patent on it's own. Why? Because obviously the solution was obvious to someone knowledgeable in the area of technology to have developed the idea at the same time. The patent system has outgrown it's usefulness and needs a major overhaul so that only those truly unique inovations can be patented. In these days, give enough resources, anybody can come up with a solution for nearly any technical problem, it's the true innovations that need to be protected. For example, the idea of an integrated circuit could be patented, but the idea of using a slightly different material to improve performance on it's own is questionable. Through trial and error, you can find what works best and doesn't, but the original idea itself is unique. Same with nearly every other "innovation" in technology today. The advancement of knowledge and problem solving should have raised the bar for patents, but it hasn't, instead the bar has been lowered.
And it would be even better if all people contributed equally to society, instead of some choosing to be supported by it. The utopia of socialism ends where human laziness and greed begin.
The fundamental problem of socialism is the allocation of scarce goods. There will always be goods which are scarce, even in a society of such plenty that you can have any object you want for free.
These are things such as:
Location Multiple people will want the same place. This is settled now by an auction or negotiation. What do you do without money besides arbitrary allocation? Services As fewer people are needed to produce the physical goods of society, we have seen an explosion in the variety of services available. There are never enough service providers to serve everyone. How do you allocate them, then? Fashion Some physical goods and some service providers are perceived as better than others - often for the most transitory of things, such as a name. These things are chosen because they are unequally available, so what do you do then?There are other problems, but this one might be seen as the fundamental one, and it has nothing to do with some people living off the fat of others.
Yeah, that leaves plenty of time to have sex with "fully-functional" androids, and bounce the positron particle beam off the main deflector dish.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Well, both parent posters have a point.
Maybe a system would be best where patents and copyright (etc.) is granted (exept for software and businessmethods, obviously) for a period of 5 years, being renewable every 5 years untill a total of 20 years. Each time the fee could get up, say from 1000 to 5000 to 25000 to 125000.
With an adequate social correction-mechanism, which allows individuals and small companies to do it for less (for instance 1/10th for an individual developer), and augmenting it depending on the size of the corporation, the problem you and some other poster mention would be greatly diminuished.
In that case, the prime purpose of lingering patents and copyrights that go on almost indefinately or no1 even knows exactly who has the IP rights (with as consequence that many works just go wasted and become lost for society), vanish, while at the same time there is a system in place that gives a more equal chance for small companies/individuals to be able to file patents and protect patents as well.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
On the other hand, The Economist itself is often considered an authority (in the sense used in the definition of the logical fallacy).
Drill baby drill - on Mars
This is getting way off topic, but I'm going to say this even if it's moderated down.
Socialism may not work. Communism may not work. And capitalism has it's own problems too.
What about a hybrid of the ideas. Take 30% of all tax revenue, and redistribute it among all legal citizens.
Example: If total tax revenue is $2 trillion among 300 million citizens, 30% of that is $600 billion. That's $2,000 per person per year. A family of six would logically get $12k.
I think what he's trying to say is that there should be no patents for functions rather than mechanisms.
For Amazon's One-Click Purchase, the function (allowing people to purchase items with a single click, rather than messing about with shopping carts and delivery options and confirmations) might be clever and original, but the mechanism is unremarkable, non-inventive software engineering. It's a "what to do" not a "how to do", and patents are supposed to cover "how to do"s.
It's like patenting the idea of automatically killing mice rather than a specific mousetrap. Functions should not be patentable.
"Appeal to authority is a common fallacy."
Yeah, what sort of commoner are you? You should be coming up with noble, rare fallacies.
These *common* fallacies are only fit for peasants!
I expect a higher quality of fallacy on Slashdot than this.
I don't know. Standards these days are falling.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Who cares if it gets offtopic? This could be interesting.
You've met the first requirement for a working system: deal in money. Hayek has an interesting section on money in his book The Road to Serfdom, which I will parapharase here: when you take money from someone, you affect the least of their needs. When you give money to someone, you supply the greatest of their needs.
So, when your redistribution plan only deals in money, you are helping people more and hurting them less than if you did anything else.
Milton Friedman (a Republican libertarian - rare beast these days) recommended that we have a flat-percent income tax, with an interesting feature: it's graded below a certain amount.
How it works is this: you pick an amount on which a person could live. X, we'll say. Then, if you make less than 2X, you get money instead of paying taxes. You get 50% of the difference between what you make, and 2X, so at 0 income, you get X.
What's interesting about this is that it's a universal form of welfare, and it encourages you to make more money. For every extra dollar you earn, you're making 50 cents more - a net profit. It's actually more profitable to make money than it is to stay on welfare, at every point.
You can prank with the points and percentages over time.
Why do I mention this? It's somewhat similar to your idea of income redistribution, but it provides a total system for welfare.
However, both of these ideas have a few problems: what people often desperately need is not cost-of-living but cost-of-not-dying: drugs, doctors, etc. Or the complaint is that the subsidy they're receiving does not allow them to live where they want.
These are limited-good phenomena: solving one side entails hurting another. Further, if you attempt to solve them, you enter the non-monetary realm, where you have to decide who is the more deserving of things.
Personally, I think that many of our problems stem from the large and intricate role our government plays in the public sphere: we limit the number of doctors medical schools can put out, then we wonder why the price of medicine goes up.
Some examples:
They consistently maintain low taxes and low regulation leads to high GDP per capita. Yet, a publication from their own stable "The World in XXXX" shows many countries that contradict this.
[Eg, "The World in 2005" lists the GDP per capita of Norway ($55 290), Switzerland ($51 490) Denmark ($48 920) and Sweden ($43 480) - countries with high tax, high regulation economies - beating the low tax, low regulation economy of the US ($41 430)]
These countries have beat the US fairly consistantly over the years. But how many articles does The Economist print praising these their economic models? How many articles do they print praising high social spending and strict regulation?
Another example is Indonesia and Malaysia since the Asian crises. The Economist advocated reforms similar to those prescribed by the IMF. Indonesia swallowed the medicine. Malaysia did not. The Economist wrote many articles condemning Malaysia for closing their markets.
Yet, since those dark days, Malaysia has done much better. How many articles did The Economist print on this? Nobel prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz, expressed exasperation at idiots who thought deliberately removing the social net from the population of Indonesia would make good economic sense (reduced social spending is a central tenet of The Economist's idealogy). Naturally, this action provoked rioting. And nothing scares away foreign investment like a country that has mass riots, as he pointed out. Interestly, Stiglitz's excellent book, "Globalization and its Discontents" got a stinking review in The Economist.
A final example: The Economist believes liberalising markets is of the upmost importance. But anybody who pays even a passing interest in Russia knows that privatization has been a disaster. "Soviet state enterprises did meet some of their citizen's need for food, clothing, housing and transport. The privitized businesses which emerged from them frequently did not," writes Prof John Kay in "The Truth about Markets". Saying in retrospect that the privatization was done badly after advocating it gung-ho suggests their inability to seriously predict anything.
Having said that, I read The Economist religously. It's a great mag. Just don't believe everything it is trying to sell you.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
First of all, I like the idea of http://fairtax.org/, but here's a very simplified idea that follows the same logic.
Whether we keep or get rid of income taxes, it doesn't matter for this idea...
Fix it so 30% of the total federal tax revenue is redistributed. If this means raising taxes, so bet it. If this means cutting wasteful spending, so be it. But with spending over a half trillion per year on "defense", I'm sure we could cut a big part of that, although some would disagree.
Semi-free college education at the least. Do something like this...
In exchange for a free college education, the person would pledge 5% of their income for 20 years to help pay for this. So not only would someone be contributing to the regular tax system by having a better job, but they'd be putting 5% of their income into this system. 5% of $0 is $0, so if you don't earn a dime in a given year, no big deal. And it's over after 20 years, hopefully by age 42 or so.
Personally, I think we should get rid of the IRS and get rid of property taxes, and simply go on a consumption/sales tax system, provided that the rebates are kept.
The 30% thing I mentioned earlier, let's play around with it. If current federal income taxes results in $2000 billion, 30% of that would be $600 billion. We could cut a large chunk out of the DoD, and modify some tax brackets too.
-
Now we got $600 billion among nearly 300 million citizens. That's $2000 per person, but we don't want people having babies just to get the money. Solution: Limiting it to just adults would result in about $2666 per person, if there are 225 million adults. Or maybe just limiting it to anyone who is age 5 and up, which is kind of like anyone who is school age.
-
If a college tuition is $4k per year, this could very well help. This could help seniors too. And those who are homeless on the street who get $0 now, this would surely help.
I just recently wrote a piece for AlwaysOn with a similar view, from the perspective of the inventor.
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=57 63_0_5_0_C
Um. He's not appealing to authority as you aver.
He's actually questioning authority. This is different. Read that wikipedia link again...
Get up off your ass and SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS. Do business in a way that will make customers WANT to keep you as their source.
That's what really gets me about this crap- it's just another form of vendor lock-in. I can't do it one way because someone "owns" it, so I either pay them to do their job for them, or I find another way. The reason people want method patents is simple...they want to be able to stop after only half the job is done and still walk away with a pile of money.
Remember something...the US did superbly WITHOUT business method patents up until 1998. Here's a good article that appeared in The New Yorker Magazine, that explains the issue quite nicely.
what your basicly saying is that the blame for cracking the system is on the crackers (ip-speculators)
This is, of course, true, but irrelevant. The point is that the system can be so easily exploited, and so should be reformed or rebuilt. It's a bit more realistic, IMHO, than trying to remove human greed
Working for necessity's mother.
You should have read further. Your parent also said, "Does anyone use the patent database like this? No. Especially not with software patents. In fact, in every corporation I know of the attorneys explicitly tell developers *not* to search the patent database, as it's generally better to remain ignorant, both to avoid allegations of 'willfull' infringement, and also because it's just a waste of time. Most patents are contestable anyway, and even for the ones that might hold up in court it's generally more cost-effective to just cross-license using your own patent arsenal."
If the methods they develop are any good, wouldn't they be a reward in itself? It is after all methods of making money they are developing?
Agreed, but is not extending patents to cover informational entities exactly the type of "throwing out refined wisdom" that you are afraid of ? It was introduced over a short period, and by throwing out the output of a considerable debate that had concluded that one should not do it. For instance, people seem to forget that between 1950 and 1970, the idea of patenting software and information processing was rejected after an in-depth debate, and by people who knew what they were doing. Refer to a remarkable paper by Christian Beauprez for full coverage.
Should we now accept to live forever with this absurdity because some interest groups took advantage of a momentaneous situation to install it ?
The system was pretty good, but corporations, always trying to extend the definition of themselves, have successfully destroyed the checks and balances. Any sane system will require human intervention so that it can evolve with the needs of the society that it serves. It is these humans who are first corrupted. For example, a patent lawyer who worked for the patent office may be given a very nice job package with a private patent firm, if they play ball. The message is then clear to remaining USPTO lawyers. Offers such as these are always made reasonable at first, so that the culture of the USPTO would never revolt against it. After a while it would become a goal to get a well paid job in private industry, via the USPTO.
At the core of corruption in our society is this type of breakdown between those who are protecting the public interests, and those serving private interests. Such corruption has always been a problem, and history has given us some novel examples of how different regimes have dealt with it. For example, the Ottomans used castrated Christian's (that were usually captured in wars with Europe) as administrators... presumably because they would hate everyone equally. Our British heritage has given us the division of powers and the democratic system. The people who designed those systems were very aware of these types of problems, and did an excellent job.
The problem is that it's impossible to change human nature... but we can change human culture. To me, the current culture of "why didn't I think of that patent first", is the most alarming thing about the whole patent debacle. It will take a serious revolt against the "status quo" to see any real change.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Modern capitalism solves that problem by paying enough for those awful jobs that people will take them over easier, lower-paying jobs.
The facts don't really back that. Fruit pickers (stooped over all day in hot sun, living in shacks) make a lot less than ditch diggers (same deal but go home at night) who make less than delivery people (who get to sit more and have a fan) who make less than filing clerks (who get air conditioning), etc.
Out of the above, I've never met a ditch digger or fruit picker who actually liked their job. The fruit pickers are already paid less than the law allows in many areas, there is no lower paying job in the U.S. The ditch diggers tend to be paid exactly minimum wage. If they could quit without starving, they would.
It's not until you get to skilled positions that you will find people who would still do their present job if not threatened with starvation. Even there, many would do it for less hours or demand better conditions if they could afford to.
This must be why you linked to a Wikipedia article to back up your opinion. I've got to hand it to you - whatever it was you were appealing to, authority it certainly wasn't. ;-)
First, the main article states at one point that if anyone wants to see that the patent monopoly system is broken, just look at Microsoft, the monopolist de jure.
But Microsoft's monopoly is not based in patents. Though they probably patented several aspects of Windows, their monopoly arises from copyright protection of the program, not from patent protection in it.
Second, the article laments that examiners "typically" don't know as much about an invention as the inventor.
Well, duh! The inventor knows more about the invention than anyone in the world, by definition!
Finally, the article argued that it is less work for examiners to just allow an application than to fight it. This, states the article, creates a perverse incentive to allow applications without scrutiny.
But examiners work in a point system. Points must be accumulated to keep your job. You don't get points for allowing patents. You only get points for rejecting them. So the system actually provides incentive to reject all applications, whether they are stupid or fantastic.
I recite these points (note again, the are not in the article linked here at /. but are in the paper issue of Economist) because in my view, the article was skewed. I agree with many of its points--the threshold should be higher for some areas of patenting; business method patents were always a bad idea; allowing third parties to submit art during examination would improve quality of issued patents (though it would definitely make the process more expensive).
However, the article ignored many benefits to patents and approached the issue as though there is no reason to have such limited monopolies. It also based its position on the some flawed points, mentioned above.
The legal ability to patent your ideas is indeed a right. The US Constitution, source of all our rights in this our secular government, enshrines patents and copyrights for useful arts and sciences.