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Amazon Asks Congress to Curb Patent Abusers
theodp writes "As Amazon urged Congress to change the law to protect the e-tailler from patent abusers, Rep. Lamar Smith had a question: 'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?' Smith asked, a wry smile on his face." While it's nice to see to see tech companies behind such legislation, it would seem there's some pots calling the kettle black, so to speak.
...as long the protection is limited to abuse by small companies with little countervailing influence in the polical process. Otherwise the whole thing could just become a farce.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
While the supreme court ruling a few days back took out some teeth from the patent trolls, they still remain too powerful.
Only if they use their patent to stop someone from doing something. ...), or give it to the 'patent commons' that seems to be being established, then that might be something useful.
If they use it to attract collaborators (Show me yours and I'll let you see mine
Ok, there have been a lot of complicated improvements on patent law suggested, so let me propose a really simple one: there can be only so many patents owned in total by a corporation (patents owned by employees count towards this total). Yes you can patent like crazy, but that would mean giving up your old patents. Or you could just patent when it is really needed, just as the system was meant to be used all along.
Philosophy.
So Lamer Smith, the guy who pushed for DMCA2 in April this year, obviously knows there is a problem with this wry comment, but it takes a patent troll like Amazon to push the issue before Congress? The guy shouldn't have such a smug smile on his face.
Our courts are being tied up with silly lawsuits over patents all day long. Only large companies prosper, while end-users often get the shaft as would be competetors have their products ripped off the shelves.
Isn't it about time for some serious reform on patents and copyrights? How do we protect intellectual property without going absurd?
Thoughts?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
They can exist to benefit the inventors & business's using them to protect their ideas or be abused, i don't think we will ever see a balance, much the same way the internet has allowed many people to make an honest buck and a lot of people to also make a dishonest profit.
Unfortunatly its the speed of which patents go through approval, and legal proceedings related to patent infringment which seem to cause most of this problem, not the patenting themselves.
Spending years in court for a patent dispute seems so stupid, especially as when the cases end technology has progressed to such a point where the dispute becomes redundant.
Lawyers seem to be the people benefiting most from the patenting system, perhaps finding a way to move patents from the judicial system and having its own tribunal/mediation system devoid of corporate law??
This idea will probably get struck down, but idea's do needed to be made about it, we will only see innovation be stifled and small business unable to cope from the preassures of big business eventually.
"Now that we're done profiting off frivolous patents, we want to change the law to make sure nobody else can."
There's no way they can truly shut down patent trolls without dismantling the entire software patent system or making it completely impervious to small developers (the people that patents are really supposed to "protect"). If you have a "loser pays" technique, then the larger companies are just going to drown the small man into debt. Trolls already pay in lawyers' fees when they do lose, and the problem with trolls is that they are usually right. If you say that products must be actively developed, the troll will do it themselves... v e r y s l o w l y. And what if the patent holder is going to college, or another situation.
Patent trolls either exist or you get rid of the whole system.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Perhaps what Amazon is really saying is that if companies weren't allowed to take out stupid patents, it wouldn't have to take out stupid patents to defend itself.
That combined with a "If you license to one, you have to license to everybody" law, might be a good thing.
First thing they should do is fix the damn patent office.
* If they hadn't issued patents for obvious inventions, trolls wouldn't find it so easy.
* If you allow patents in a new area, you force everyone in that area to give up their trade secrets. Because they can't keep their secret in case someone gets a patent on it and locks them out of their market. So it was dumb to allow patents in areas where trade secrets were the best protection. Software is the classic example.
* Patents on business processes? Why? Thats just like the trade guilds of old.
* Why give patents to companies that haven't made the invention? If they can't make it from the patent then why would anyone else be able to make it?
There's about 5000 cliches that apply to this article.
POKE 36879,8
Your recent article ("Amazon Asks Congress to Curb Patent Abusers") is in clear violation of Patent #1805-J-9, "A Method For Comparing Hypocritical Actions Performed By Humans To Hypothetical Actions Performed By Articulate, Similarly Colored Kitchenware," which was recently awarded to Jacobw Incorporated. Please cease and desist your use of our patented metaphors, similes, and other rhetorical tropes.
Sincerely,
Jacobw Incorporated
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
So what? They're all black, these pots and kettles. Just because the black pot calls the kettle black, that doesn't change the kettle's color.
There's lots of English language folk wisdom that covers this: live by the sword, die by the sword. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Creating a monster. No honor among thieves.
Why would committing abuse mean that you aren't an expert in it?
--
make install -not war
The patent system is broken. Not just its practice.
When you can get patents on trivial implementation, legal pitfalls open up to EVERY business. When you create a webpage (even for non-profit), even if you just write a simple program, you could already be facing terrible problems. Especially in the non-profit area, patents pose a serious threat.
Imagine Boyer-Moore being patented. Or any other "best" algorithm. If you're in the non-profit "market", you're out of biz. You cannot pay patent royalties. Same goes for small businesses. You simply cannot afford to pay for the patents you'd have to use to actually create sensible software.
Patents serve a purpose, allright. But the purpose has reversed. The idea behind patents was to give the developer an incentive to publish it, so others can build on it and learn from it, while still giving you the exclusive right to gain from it financially, so people have an incentive to invent AND publish.
It turned into the opposite. Patents currently harm development and progress. And this has to be remedied. Just patching certain implementations isn't going to solve the problem. The whole patent licensing system has to be redone to fix it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How about this for a start:
A patent needs to be renewed every year. Failure to renew and it lapses into public domain. There's a fee every renewal.
If you want to discourage holding onto patents for long periods of time, have the annual fee doubled every year. No one would hang on to patents for 20 years anymore.
Just abolish them.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
First of all, we have to ask ourselves, what, exactly, a patent is. A lot of pro-swpat advocates use terms as Intellectual Property (IP) rights, while those encompass a lot of different concepts, such as copyright (which is already used for software). We can find the following definition:
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally 20 years from the filing date)... Per the word's original definition, the theory of patent legislation is to induce the inventor to disclose knowledge for the advancement of society in exchange for a limited period of exclusivity. Since a patent grants the right to exclude others from practising the invention, it gives the owner a monopoly in the economic sense. There is an ongoing debate about whether the benefits of patents outweigh the costs, particularly with respect to software patents.
A patent, thus, is not meant as an inherent right for financial compensation for the inventor. A patent is a state-ordained monopoly, that excludes others of exploiting or using similar ideas, even when they have come up with those ideas independently by themselves, for a certain time-period. Now, this seems rather unfair (in copyright this is not the case), but apart from that, why does the state give a monopoly to someone, while we all know monopolies are generally not good for the economy, nor for the consumers? This is why: a patent is a monopoly, given by the state, because it (is supposed to) promote innovation. It follows that, if it doesn't achieve its goal of promoting innovation, it should not be granted, period.
Now, while to some extend this may apply to patents in general (as a study done in the 80ies by the Australian government has shown), seen the particular incremental nature of software, and the more intensive studies done on them, it has become ever more clear that softwarepatents DO NOT promote innovation, on the contrary. It logically follows there is no compelling reason in respect to 'stimulating innovation' to grant patents on software.
Some swpat-proponents point to the USA, and claim there the evidence is shown: "the USA has swpat, and look at all those big, mighty IT-corporations!" This, however, is a complete fallacy: they 'forget' to mention that all those big foreign IT-companies were founded and grew to the behemoths they are today, in the ABSENCE of softwarepatents (which, in the USA, only started in earnest after 1991). So, it is not "thanks to" softwarepatents, but rather the reverse. Actually, it could be argued that the IT-business in the USA bloomed, exactly because they weren't patents around, back then. And in fact, this is well known by anyone working in the business of IT, and exactly what a well-known USA CEO has said in the early 90ies, someone who can know it.
Bill Gates said it best, in one of his internal memos:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."
Mind you, this has been said by one of the most prominent IT-CEO on the planet, acknowledging exactly what softwarepatents actually lead too. Not surprisingly, since swpat are allowed in the USA, his solution to the problem was "patenting as much as we can" so he could go for "patent exchanges with [other] large companies". Of course, Bill had the means to gather together a multi-million dollar software patent portfolio to defend his company (and thus did.) Most of the SME's (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), let alone the individual developer, don't have such means and allowing swpat can only spell hardship for small businesses and open source software.
Even Bruce Chizen, chief executive of Adobe Systems Inc. and chairman of the Business Software Alliance, which is leading the charge for the technology industry in the USA, acknowledges that allowing software patents in the 1990s was a bad idea.
Contrary to the pro-swpat camp, it
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
This one sentence submission left me feeling a little unsure because it was only affirmed twice in the same sentence (the only sentence, by the way, or did I already mention that?), so I have to ask, is it indeed Rep. Lamar Smith who asked the question?
To be fair to Amazon, while I think the one-click patent is nonsense, and I have nothing but contempt for their attempts to enforce it, at least it's something they're using! I generally think of a patent troll as a company that exists for no other purpose but to squeeze money out of patents. Amazon seems to be more interested in preventing others from using their precious technique than it persuading others to use it, and to pay for the privilege. Plus they actually have a business plan of sorts. We can argue later over whether it's a good plan or not, but it is a plan and it doesn't just involve suing other companies.
:)
:)
I hate to argue in Amazon's defense, but does being a hypocrite actually make them wrong? Doesn't it more depend on whether they're...well...wrong or not? If Charles Manson called for stronger penalties for mass murderers, would he be wrong just because he's Charles Manson? If Ken Lay asked for stronger legal protections for stockholders, would he be wrong just because he's Ken Lay? If Darl McBride called for mandatory jail time for anyone who files a fraudulent lawsuit, would he be wrong just because he's Darl McBride? If Natalie Portman asked me to rub hot grits all over her sweaty, naked body, would....
Er, sorry, guess that last one didn't make much sense, but I needed something to get the image of Ken Lay and Darl McBride out of my mind!
(Natalie--call me!)
One field where I think patents REALLY hinder innovation is wavelet compression. Have you seen the difference in size/quality between JPEG and JPEG2000? It's amazing. Last I heard, Xiph was going to make an audio format using wavelets as well, and nobody is willing to touch the damn thing because of all the patents on it. :(
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
What they want is further protection just for them, not to give up their patents.
i read all these articles about various seemingly simple things being patented, and Amazon.com's got a few of those for sure. the true abuse is the time length. i hear patent stuff is increasing so these are better thought out before approval but if you can't avoid patenting generic things at least give patent holders less time to exploit the public. patent and copyright last too long.
Okay okay, we wont use the Single Click idea, we will invent our own: single press solo tap solitary squash whos to say that these ideas aren't different?
Once a patent is applied for, the applicant has a cooling off period in which to decide whether to go through the whole process or to talk to other people about licensing (this helps small inventors)
The holder of a patent MUST either manufacture themselves or license manufacturing rights to any second parties on the same terms. The penalties for patent infringement shall be limited to legal costs plus the average current licensing rate for the goods sold to date. (If there are NO goods currently employing the patent, the licensing rate will be zero.)
Mathematical algorithms, natural laws and anything which has been created by a natural process (e.g. DNA sequences) cannot be patentable.
It shall not be possible to patent any business process simply because it is carried on in a different medium (e.g. one click is basically walking into shop, handing over money, receiving goods in exchange, and should not be patentable simply because it is computer implemented.)
Basically, the European patent system before the US and Microsoft started lobbying and threatening in order to try and break it.
Pining for the fjords
~Rep. Lamar Smith had a question: 'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a ~troll for patenting the one-click?'
I'm kind of confused as to how this negates the fact it should be fixed.
Also the extraneous comment about him smiling concerns me. He is overly pleased with himself for having the observational powers of a 10 year old child.
If you think office security is a pain now imagine what it'll be like when the stakes are raised.
There are already problems with onerous non-competition clauses in high level employee contracts. With no patent protection, you could expect EVERY knowledge worker to have to sign a contract saying that if they quit, that they can't work in any, even vaguely, similar career. So, if you're a software person and you quit, you better not be doing software anything for anybody else in your next job.
It'll be like all of the nasty parts of cyberpunk coming to fruition.
OK. I exaggerate. However much we all hate (software) patents, there probably does need to be some force that encourages invention disclosure for the greater good. The patent system may need massive overhaul, but abolishing it altogether ends up producing the problems that prompted its' creation in the first place. There's a reason that alchemy got nowhere for centuries... they all kept their research secret.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
You compete with the IP law you have, not the IP law you want.
http://www.pirate-party.us/
I claim prior art:
. htm
http://www.patent.gov.uk/patent/indetail/renewals
Also, if you don't enforce a violation of that patent as soon as you learn about it then you stand to lose any case you bring later. The idea that patents can be used defensively is only valid if you are also willing to use them offensively.
+4 Insightful? You are confusing trademark and patents. Trademarks you have to defend and show a product for, patents have no such requirments.
Delaying patent-claims is what is called submarine patents, just lying there waiting for a certain practice to be adopted by the industry, then BAM! 5-10 years into the fray, you claim your royalties or first-born. Remember "Burn all GIF-day", yeah, that was a submarine patent.
Submarine patents are much worse and damaging to the economy and IT-industry than patent trolls, since it will hit like lightning, stifling current practice and standards. Forcing people to reinvent the wheel..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
You are talking like there are people reading patents for gaining knowledge, instead of fearing lawsuits.
Try it sometime, I dare you..
Then we're back to the days when people hide their research to protect it
Research is rarely patented in the universities. Everybody gains from the shared knowledge, without patents. Patents stifles this process.
, and development progress grinds to a halt again where every company reinvents the wheel. Lots of unnecessarily wasted resources.
Everybody is reinventing the wheel already with closed source, and to avoid patent royalities. Now that is waste.
The cure is open standards, open science, open mathematics, open source, free software, etc.. etc.. Everybody benefits and gains value from open systems. Patents are not open systems, since it is based on fear, extortion and greed, rather than sharing a common good.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
where the cost of licensing a patent is proportional to the overall contribution of the patent to the product it's used in. For hardware the royalies were based on the component price, not overall price. E.g. royalities for a machine screw patent were based on the 10 cent price of the screw, not the 50 million dollar price of the jet it's in. I always though the typical patent software licensing scheme of charging x% of total product cost was ridiculous. In some cases when you added it all together, the licensing costs would be over 100%, meaning you lost money for every copy sold. Unless of course you paid people to take your product, giving you a negative cost which would mean the royalties would be paid to you. Kind of a Milo Minderbinder business model. If the lawyers for some of these patent trolls are arithmentically challenged, you could probably pull this off.
Here's a crazy idea: Instead of allowing patent holders to set their own licensing terms, congress could impose a 'cost of research sharing' model that, with some safeguards, requires anyone wishing to implement a patented idea to pay 51% of the research costs that have not already been paid by someone else to those who have already paid into the patent. This turns the monopoly into a cabal that shares costs. Naturally, there would have to be some fairly difficult to structure laws about the nature of what can be included in research costs, but I think this has the potential to really open things up.
One way of looking at patents is as a means of protecting the original inventor's investment in the idea so that first movers are not unduly penalized for having made the effort and taken the risk only to have it stolen by someone else who doesn't have to bear the costs of coming up with the invention.
If the original inventor wants to get rich off an idea, they should still have to have be competitive producers of the implementation of that idea and bear the risk that someone out there can do it more profitably than they can, but not have the handicap of competing with those who didn't have to bear the invention process costs.
First mover advantage and invention cost sharing aught to be enough for an inventor to succeed. there's no reason to give them a monopoly that provides no incentive to be efficient or innovate any further. History is rife with examples of patented innovations that stagnated for 17 years. Then, only after the patent expired, an explosion of new innovations moved the field forward.
To explain the idea further... imaging it costs $100 to invent some patentable idea. Then, if some other company wanted to produce a product or service that used the idea. They could do that, by paying $51 to the inventor for a license. If a third producer joined in they would pay, $25.50 to both the original inventor AND the second company. So each gets just a little more than half of what they had to invest in the first place. A fourth producer would pay $12.25 to each of the first three and so-on.
This system would not lock anybody out and would share the cost of the innovation with a tiny advantage to those who jump aboard first to encourage investment in research.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Insightful?
Congress = governement = no loss of Blackberries. They're exempt from anything inconvenient, didn't you know.
Now, if you'd claimed that their friends with crackberries might have had to go cold turkey...well, now you might have a point.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Seems like Amazon now want to assert the power they have over others, I guess we can only hope that one-click ordering is ruled as being something they can't have patented as it is like trying to patent online shopping itself. It's also quite a shame that nothing has come of the review of the patent (posted on Slashdot May 19th). Seems like Amazon want to get rid of free enterprise by taking out pieces of their rivals. I hope they get slapped down.
Business Voyeur
Great idea! Then everybody will jealously guard every innovation as a trade secret
Which in quite a few cases means not being able to sell a product that uses it.. sounds like a real good idea.....
and industrial espionage will surge.
Heh, as if that isn't happening already at a large scale...
If you think office security is a pain now imagine what it'll be like when the stakes are raised.
Most 'office security' serves the same purpose as airport security, its making sure they can say 'but we tried to prevent it really' and to make people think about not taking risks. More of it won't do shit to stop industrial espionage.
There are already problems with onerous non-competition clauses in high level employee contracts.
Those clauses should really be dealt with by law. It is absurd to ban someone from working in their field of choice because it is economically destriuctive. You effectively force a person to not contribute for a specific amount of time, resulting in lost production/inventiveness during that time.
With no patent protection, you could expect EVERY knowledge worker to have to sign a contract saying that if they quit, that they can't work in any, even vaguely, similar career. So, if you're a software person and you quit, you better not be doing software anything for anybody else in your next job.
How good I live in a country where this is simply out of the question since such clauses in contracts hae been found to be entirely unenforcable here (and actually in much if not all of the EU).
But at any rate, as I already said, this is a seperate problem that needs to be dealt with, regardless of patents.
It'll be like all of the nasty parts of cyberpunk coming to fruition.
OK. I exaggerate. However much we all hate (software) patents, there probably does need to be some force that encourages invention disclosure for the greater good. The patent system may need massive overhaul, but abolishing it altogether ends up producing the problems that prompted its' creation in the first place. There's a reason that alchemy got nowhere for centuries... they all kept their research secret.
I beg to differ with your conclusion.
1. Where I live, patents existed already in the 1600s. Examples of patents preventing further invention, stalling development of an entire country even, are also dating back to the 1600s.
2. Alchemy had some interesting but usually pretty impossible objectives, and did not often employ scenmtific methods to study things. Those are the main reasons it never got anywhere, where they wanted to get didn't exist to begin with.
At any rate, you have one valid point here, how to get companies to release information on their inventions to the public so that such information can be reused.
I don't know the answer, but I do know a system that allows you to document your inventiuon in ways to prevent reproducing it (read the typical software patent for examples of this) and where you can prevent your competition from using your invention (as opposed to can force your competition to compensate you for a bit for using your invention) is really seriously broken and is not accomplishing the desired result either, while it is expensive for everyone.
So in the end, yeah, a workign patent system might be even better, but abolishing the current system is very very likely a much better idea then keeping it.
'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?'
He showed both familiarity with Amazon's sordid patent past and managed to use the word troll during a session of congress!
I'm impressed. Wish I was his constituent...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
is a term devised to deflect attention from the real problem: the scope of what can be patented.
More like the iron pot calling the aluninum skillet black. This is "one click" Amazon, after all.
I'm just glad patents don't last as long as copyrights. Twenty years one can live with, but not 175.
(No MRC today, just a boring off-topic capcha)
is what I first read, eyes half open over my first coffee.
Take that you liberal dirt bags. Oh and before we troll back with this culture of corruption crap. Let's discuss Rep. William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana. Say whatever the hell you want to about Tom Delay, he didn't get caught with $90,000 grand in cash stashed in his freezer. Let's also discuss Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Democrat, Rhode Island and his little drug induced joy ride in the capital. You know, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, son of Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat, Massachusetts, the only serving Senator who has admittedly committed third degree murder.
The term "Patent Troll" when originally coined was aimed at companies that bought patents (primarily software and typically purchased through a bankruptcy liquidation) with the sole intent of forcing licensing deals. However, the use of the term has now spead to everyone that has a patent they seek to enforce against BigCo. BigCo wants protection from small companies with patents -- what protection are they willing to grant smallco from BigCo. BigCo has all the advantages -- more patents, money to pay lots of lawyers, money to ride out the lengthy legal battle, and money to lobby Congress. BigCo is certinaly not about to change their habits of bulk patenting -- they just want small co to have higher hurdles. Small companies have limited resources to create businesses around every good idea and concept they generate. That does not mean they should be prevented from protecting, marketing and licensing that concept. That is how small-co hopes to become big-co. The biggest issue I see is that patent holders (big and small) have established license rates that force costly battles. If the licensing rates were upfront and affordable many of the disputes would go away. But I don't see that happending soon. I just hope Congress has not fallen deaf to the concerns of small co.
I strongly disagree. The current patent system, while it really sucks and has certainly generated its share of absolute tripe, is certainly better than the alternative of no patent system at all.
At least now, a company has the option of whether to trade 20 years of protection, followed by a free-for-all, versus keeping the invention a trade secret and maybe being able to make money off of it for longer, but maybe having it reverse-engineered.
Most of them seem to choose the former (patents), and despite the shitty abuses of the system, almost everyone benefits from the body of knowledge that is accumulated in the public domain as a result of expired patents. Generic drugs, for instance, are one of the most immediate results. The companies who make generic pharmaceuticals couldn't afford to do the R&D necessary to either develop the drugs from scratch, or to reverse-engineer them and then push the reverse-engineered drug through the approvals process. (Or if they did either one, then they wouldn't be very cheap, which is the benefit to you and me.) If Pfizer decided to just sit on its formulae: slapping an NDA on every person who might possibly work with the drug, maybe doping the actual production pills with trace amounts of harmless substances to confuse reverse-engineers, we'd all be a lot worse off.
There are lots of other similar industries that instead of having competition, would basically become monopolies driven by the companies who had the tightest security and most robust anti-reverse-engineering capabilities in their products, and not the most innovative. And of course, it's you and me -- the consumer -- who are going to pay for all these anti-tampering technologies. You can bet that if that new Blu-Ray player wasn't covered by patents, that instead the whole thing would be filled full of lead-doped epoxy (so you can't X-ray or MRI it), probably with tons of extra chips and do-nothing components soldered to the boards, just for fun. I don't really want to pay for that.
Also, I think it's worth putting the patent system into perspective. The Patent Office issues probably hundreds of patents a week, and it's a very small number of those that are really egregiously bad. It's the filing and approval process that needs to be completely overhauled, with better peer review. (My feeling is that there ought to be a period of time, say 30 days, when proposed patents have to be posted somewhere and the public has a chance to come forward with prior art; also, patent examiners need to not have their pay or promotions in any way linked to the number of patents processed per week.) To say that the entire patent system is broken is to forget the many un-troublesome ones that just don't make the news, like the RIM/NTP and Amazon One-Click ones do.
I think it's also open to debate whether the 20-year term of most patents has become obsolete (can you say 'yes, definitely'?). If 20 years was the proper term of a patent in a time when a letter took a week to send from one coast to the other, then certainly 3-5 years would be the correct "inflation adjusted" value today. Also, we need to fix the loopholes that some companies exploit in order to unfairly extend patents beyond the maximum.
Overall, I cringe when I hear any of these comments suggesting that we just eliminate the entire patent system. Honestly, it's not that bad, and the alternative would be worse; it really would be a world run by the mega-corporations, whichever were the most ruthless about obtaining intelligence on their competitors and jealously guarding their own trove of secrets. The general public would probably lose any idea of how things actually work, and the startup cost of a new company in any technology or idea-driven sector would be enormous to the point of impracticality. Overall, it's not a world I'd much like to live in, even compared to our own right now.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Sure, that's because the stakes aren't all that high right now. However, if the costs of invention are high and there was no other protection against idea theft, then company security would likely become much more stringent. Even if it wasn't very effective, some companies would be sure to try harder anyways.
Absurd or not, if the stakes are raised, some companies will try to push this harder and lobby government to improve its effectiveness and reduce safeguards for employees.
The second point actually supports my point. Basically, the scientific method is discouraged without patents. Of course your first point shows that patents can also slow down the scientific process. However, slow is better than stopped.
I suspect that you're right. The current system is broken and abolishing it is probably the way to go. However, in the spirit of playing around with these ideas, I proposed another system in How about a cost of research sharing model? that has some potential to make the system work.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Just about everything in your post is already implemented by US law:
In 1995, the US congress "fixed" this problem. For applications filed after June 1, 1995, the term of a patent issuing therefrom is 20 years from filing.
The average pendency for US patent applications is 3-5 years. For most software patent applications, the USPTO is currently estimating a 7-10 year delay before the application is ever examined. This gives a lengthy period before any enforceable right is granted.
While the current standard is not a "MUST", the Supreme Court recently took away near-automatic injunctions in patent cases. See the z4 v. Microsoft case from Texas for a good example where just yesterday z4 was denied an injunction to prevent XP from being sold.
The USPTO is currently revising its rules for examining method patents: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/pre ognotice/guidelines101_20051026.pdf , you'll see that the test has never been merely performing a method in a new medium.
I still think that the answer, therefore, is to make it 100% illegal for anyone to give or donate any amount of money to a politician or political party.
Campaign money would come out of taxes* and be equal by candidate, so it's no longer 'rich and/or corrupt(able) guy wins'. Major media (minimum size?) like TV, newspaper etc would be required to provide space where the candidates could 'post' their platform.
Is this perfect? Hell no, but I think it's a lot better than the overtly corrupt system that exists now.
*Don't forget, as a consumer you're already paying for the campaigns out of the profits which they get from you. And as a corporation gets bigger and more profitable, they push for more and stronger legislation to make them more profitable which they use to buy even stronger laws... this method is fairly perfected by the likes of the mpaa and riaa.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I knew Californians were strange, but really!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Amazons reponce was
"We only exercised the patent against someone who at the time...had publicly announced intention to crush our business," he said. "This wasn't some scheme to hit up small users."
I didn't know that fierce competition was an appropriate reason to abuse the legal system. Its not that their Barnes and Noble was winning BECAUSE they had copied your one-click-system. Oddly BN is losing now but I doupt it was the removal of the one-click system that did them in (legal fees probably did have some effect though).
-1 Incomprehensible Legalese
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I think it's also open to debate whether the 20-year term of most patents has become obsolete (can you say 'yes, definitely'?). If 20 years was the proper term of a patent in a time when a letter took a week to send from one coast to the other, then certainly 3-5 years would be the correct "inflation adjusted" value today. Also, we need to fix the loopholes that some companies exploit in order to unfairly extend patents beyond the maximum.
/.
This may be true in some industries (computer hardware and software especially, since even 5 years is long past irrelevancy for a lot of ideas), but it is not universally true. Take the pharmaceutical industry for example: The patent is filed before the beginning of the approval process, which may take 8-12 years in and of itself, leaving the company the remaining 8-12 years to recoup its investments (if it is indeed approved).
I completely agree that the number of bad patents is probably a small minority that happen to generate a lot of press, especially on sites like
It doesn't matter if Amazon is the worst patent abuser in the world...what Amazon has said should stand on its own merits. They are pointing out a problem and asking that the problem be addressed. We should respond by considering whether or not there really is a problem, whether or not it needs addressing, and how to go about addressing it.
Once all that is done, we can then include Amazon.com in the solution, whether they like it or not.
Also, I think it's worth putting the patent system into perspective.
Yes, but lets put it into the perspective of what was originally the intention of the system..
The intention was NOT to help companies make a profit
The intention was to promote usefull inventions, and to make the details to their workings publicly available.
Helping an inventor to profit from an invention is the MEANS, not the purpose.
Now, by allowing patents that are overly broad, are written such that they are of absolutely no use for recreating the invention, and hinder others from participating in invention, basicly all the ideas that are underlying the current system have been broken. All it does now is indeed as you say allow a company some choice in how they profit from their inventions, but at such a huge expense to society that it is really better to just do away with it.
You, like many who argue to keep the current patent system are confusing the goal with the means here.
Absurd or not, if the stakes are raised, some companies will try to push this harder and lobby government to improve its effectiveness and reduce safeguards for employees.
Which should have zero chance in a working democracy... unless you have voting rights for companies and so many of them that they become a relevant force..
Oh wait.. 'working democracy' might be part of a problem there.
The second point actually supports my point. Basically, the scientific method is discouraged without patents.
Not really. You can say that having a working patent system encourages the scientific method, but it was known and used before a patent system similar to what we know now existed, and it wasn't unpopular either. Alchemy has other motives for not using the scientific method then lack of patents. Trying to achieve things easily debunked by that scientific method, and making more money by 'working on the invention' then the impossible invention could ever bring come to mind.
In other words, simply by looking at what alchemy tries to achieve it should be clear why it does not use the scientific method and why secrecy about what it really being done is of the uttermost importance for its survival.
And that makes it pretty much irrelevant for the patents discussion.
Of course your first point shows that patents can also slow down the scientific process. However, slow is better than stopped.
Its more a matter of hindering progress or not. Neither way results in no progress at all, wich is pretty much evident from progress in science having been there for much longer then a working patent system, and there being a pretty clear correlation between weak patent protection and a high rate of scientific progress.
Just to witness, patents are the one and only reason why people had to wait till the 50s for TV became easily available and usable, while the technology used had been there for the last 30 or so years.
The top 2 ideas are very good. I remember hearing a story about a little girl being awarded a patent because she developed a style or way to swing on a playground swing. And although the story was cute it was just plain stupid. It demonstrated by far how out of control patent system has become. Another is medical and chemical companies have been getting patents on peoples genes. People who have rare genetic conditions. The company patents there gene so that no other company can work out a cure for the condition. And they don't have to ask you if they can patent your gene. Apparently even though it does not belong to them they can patent it. It has just gotten way out of hand. It no longer serves the original intent. Huge companies can use patents to stifle innovation and such from small companies or the lone inventor. On the other side the companies that have to continually fiend of the patent troll also loose out by drawing there resources. This all is kind of like a karma response to the years of backwater deals in which the large companies lobbied congress to weaken the patient laws. And the countless judges who are appointed to oversee many of these cases have absolutely no experience in patent law. Its all coming back around now to bite those who contributed to the sorry state our patent system is in now.
I am not confusing the goal and the means at all. What I'm saying, and what I truly believe, is that in large part the patent system does its job: that is, it encourages innovation and promotes development. The abuses of the patent system are more rare than you would think, since the very large majority of patents never make the papers. It's the one bad one that sneaks through among a hundred or a thousand or ten-thousand fair patents that's the problem.
The profitability of companies doing the inventing and promoting invention itself are rather related. If developing new products and inventing things isn't profitable, then it won't happen (at least as quickly). So although the purpose of the patent system should not be the profitability of companies or persons using it, it's fair to assume that it will occur as a side-effect.
In general, I think you have to put the damage caused by overly-broad patents into perspective. I think you're greatly overstating the damage they're doing, versus the benefit we gain as a society from patents (as compared to a society in which patents didn't exist, and everything was protected as trade secrets, etc.). It's like watching CNN and inferring based on what you see there, that air-travel is very dangerous and we should get rid of planes. Obviously they crash all the time, right? No: it's just that the flights that don't crash don't make it onto the news. If you read Slashdot, or are at all attuned to tech news these days, it's easy to have a skewed perception of the patent system, since all we ever hear about are abuses. This totally ignores the unseen benefits of patents, and the very many of them which are filed, used by a company for a while, then fall silently into the public domain for other people to use.
The patent system certainly needs reform, but even in its current incarnation, the damage it does is outweighed by the purpose it still serves. I would rather have it in it's current state, fucked-up as it may be, than nothing at all. And I'm just a regular average-joe consumer: I don't hold any patents and probably never will.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I am not confusing the goal and the means at all. What I'm saying, and what I truly believe, is that in large part the patent system does its job: that is, it encourages innovation and promotes development.
Ok, if that is clear then we have a good basis for a discussion about the system.
The abuses of the patent system are more rare than you would think, since the very large majority of patents never make the papers. It's the one bad one that sneaks through among a hundred or a thousand or ten-thousand fair patents that's the problem.
I agree that abuse is not as common as some people on slashdot want to believe. However, there are many more situations where progress is hindered while not qualifying as 'abuse'. One of the examples I mentioned was the invention and general availability of TV. While there is some dubious behavior on the side of RCA, claiming inventions that they probably just 'stole', the basic issue here was RCA owning patents that basicly geave them the possibility to decide who could use radio broadcasting techniques, and thereby being able to forstall any public deployment of TV broadcasts. As a small inventor, Farsworth was in no position to negotiate a deal with them that would leave him in control over his own invention and could not deploy it without a license. This kind of situation is far more common then you seem to believe also.
Many problems in the current patent system are caused by the legal definition of 'obvious', which basicly comes down to 'combination of prior art together with a documented reason for wanting to combine them), which basicly means that whenever a new field of science and invention appears, anything in it can be patented regardless of actual 'obviousness' (dictionary definition as was clearly intended by the constitutional provision for patents). This effectively means that for new and rapidly developing fields patents cause:
1. big companies to get a grip on speed of development and quickly create barriers to entry for others
2. a 'patent minefield' for anyone involved in such a new field who doesn't have a signigicant budget for patenting anything in sight.
Electronics in the early 1900s provide a clear example of this with TV as its 'hilight'. Computer software has been free of this exactly because of it not being patentable for quite some time, but looking at the development of 'internet technology' we see the same type of problems occur that you see when looking at electronics development in the early 1900s on a larger scale. This is because there is virtually no barrier to entry for software development, so many more people can participate in it outside large corporate structures.
The profitability of companies doing the inventing and promoting invention itself are rather related. If developing new products and inventing things isn't profitable, then it won't happen (at least as quickly).
Definitely. I can also see how patents may help this, but they are definitely not the only way to make a profit on inventions, and I believe the burden they put on both the rest of the marketplace, and society as a whole to be too high for the positive effect they may achieve.
So although the purpose of the patent system should not be the profitability of companies or persons using it, it's fair to assume that it will occur as a side-effect.
It is the primary means by which the patent system tries to achieve promotion of usefull inventions, so much more then a 'side effect'.
In general, I think you have to put the damage caused by overly-broad patents into perspective. I think you're greatly overstating the damage they're doing, versus the benefit we gain as a society from patents (as compared to a society in which patents didn't exist, and everything was protected as trade secrets, etc.)
First of all, assuming that lack of patents would cause almost everything to be protected as trade secrets is wrong I believe, if only because there is no way in most cases to
I wonder who holds the patent on those?
Squirrel!
I used to have a liberal representative, but thanks to Tom Delay I now have Lamar Smith, or Mr. AT&T as I call him. Apparently my neighborhood of Austin high-tech workers share goals with San Antonio telecom workers and Suburban Houston oil engineers. Or not. Listen kids, this is what we've learned from the Republicans. If you rig the system you can fix the districts so that no one gets a representative. It's brilliant and a win-win for corporations.
Just like the lawn and garden company, the communication company has a similar scope of inventions to create. If they waste their time patenting uninnovative ideas they won't have enough patent slots.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
A patent troll makes its money by threatening lawsuits with its patent. It usually has no product at all. Amazon, on the other hand, has a product, the product uses the patented technology, and it makes most of its money off that product. You can't be patent troll if you live off a real product.
In a world without laws you would be crazy not to own a gun.
It wouldn't stop you from arguing for the establishment of law.
In our current litigious patent driven world Amazon would be crazy not to use patents to defend itself.
Why should that stop Amazon from arguing for patent reform?
My own opinion is that 1-click should never have been granted, but when everything about the patent
process is screwed up you have no choice but to use it to defend yourself until it gets reformed.
- AndrewN
Meanwhile, just ignore the Congress. Nobody on the Senate Committee has much interest in really rocking the boat here. Further, they all know that there's no point spending political capital on fixing something that the Court can do by fiat. So you are guaranteed that nothing will happen until the Supreme Court rules on Metabolite, and decides whether to take on KSR v Teleflex and how to rule therein. That could be another year, during which Congress will at best hold more hearings and put out more press releases.
The rest of your post clarifies things, but, here, you obfuscate everything. If you mean "a market free of anti-competative influences" why don't you say that or, for a shorter version, competition-free market? That way you don't have to explain yourself. Though, I'm glad you had enough foresight to provide that explanation to keep people from basing arguments on a misinterpretation of your post.
Keep lucid
The pharmaceutical example is easily enough handled by a system of short-duration patents in which the clock stops running if the patented product cannot be commercially produced due to regulatory compliance. So (using the numbers from your post and the one you were replying to), everything would have a 3-5 year patent term, but drug patents' 3-5 year window would begin when the FDA approved the drug rather than when the patent was issued. During the intervening 8-12 years, they have the patent (giving them the ability to prevent anyone else from copying the drug), but would not be allowed to produce the drug for sale (since it hasn't been approved yet).
Slashdot article: USPTO to Use Peer to Patent Program
Web site: The Peer to Patent Project: Community Review
Audio: Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence for our Intellectual Property System
- http://www.braveterry.com/
As anyone can tell who ever thought about this, this is called 'artificial barrier to entry' and is a really stupid idea if you also are striving for a 'free market' (that is, a market free of anti-competative influences, which is not at all the same as being able to do whatever the fuck you want)
Actually Adam Smith, the "father of capitalism", hated copyrights and patents. At first Thomas Jefferson did as well but evenually his friend James Madison convinced him that granting copyrights and patents could do more for progress than not granting them. If someone hacked, invented, or created something but couldn't improve their life by patenting and marketing said product then why should s/he release it? Once convinced he sat down with actuary tables and calculated they should only last for 14 years with another 14 year extension possible for a total of 28 years. Now you have congress inhibiting progress by making them last beyond the creator's death. If someone creates a blockbuster, very few do, then with all the money rolling in past their death then they don't have as much incentive to create more as if they only had a patent for a short tyme, they have to keep creating to keep the money rolling in.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you mean "a market free of anti-competative influences"
Because 'free market' is the right term for it but is often misunderstood.
If it is anti competitive then it's not a free market. By their very nature free markets are competitive.
FalconShould there be a Law?
How about this? Or is this way too "un-american" in this day and age... If the patent can be deemed to improve the general quality of life, or specifically health, education and even understanding - maybe the Government should be able to "buy out" the patent and use it for the good of all mankind....
Because that's not a proper function of government. At the national level, which is the level that matters here, governments are there to protect liberty or rights and to defend the nation.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I have only two words for you, Jeff ... YOU FIRST!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What, did you forget to read the third sentence of my post?
What, the "mutual assured destruction" part? That's not a business advantage. If you have to go through all of the stuff to get a patent, maybe have to defend it against someone who disputes the issuance of the patent, then have to sic your lawyers on anyone who threatens the patent, then you're being distracted from whatever product or service the business provides.
The US patent office office disagrees. Guess what the difference is between your opinion and their opinion? Their opinion matters.
As I don't have the wherewithall to do anything about it except to work to get those with similar opinions to mine elected, I agree, their opinion carries more weight. I am now using the first box of three that democracy has, the soapbox, and when elections happen I'll use the second, the ballot box.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Yeap, imagination or creativity helps with math. One of my favorite professors in college taught calc and physics, and he always stressed how important creativity was in both. He used to say he didn't want us the memorize formulas, instead he wanted to us learn to solve for the formula and creativity was important in this.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Perhaps you could of been clearer in your statement. You said "a market free of anti-competative influences" then you said "for a shorter version, competition-free market?".
I don't see me saying that anywhere, rather, I used 'free market'.
You're right, you didn't say "competition-free market" yourself, you included it in the post you were replying to. My mistake, I should of directed my reply to the one you were replying to and not to yours.
FalconShould there be a Law?