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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
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
A beautiful and entertaining suggestion, although unfortunately it's easily worked around by generating spinoff companies and leasing the technology from them.
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.
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.
That would never work. Consider a company like Bell Labs vs some mom & pop garden-tool manufacturer. How can you apply the same patent limit across the board? You can't. Companies with more products need more patents, whether or not they need to be applied more appropriately.
Argh.
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.
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!
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.
One problem: the worst offenders, giant companies, can pay any reasonable fee amount without blinking basically forever. On the other hand small companies wouldn't and would be placed at an unfair disadvantage. However your idea isn't all bad, it just needs a little tweaking. If we make the fee based exponentially on time or on exponentially based on the number of other patents held, or both, then it might work. Small companies with few patents pay little, bug companies with over a thousand patents get it in the shorts. We all win because (in theory) the money collected in this way reduces our taxes.
Philosophy.
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.....
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." ---
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.
And the problem with forcing large corporations to think carefully about what they'd like patent protection for, rather than throwing one at every concept that has the remotest shot of being patentable, is...?
Parent's idea is a great one-it won't do a thing to impact the "small inventors" we always hear about the patent system benefitting (and it generally doesn't), while taking a significant step to curb both patent trolls and those corporations who simply overpatent. It would also be a significant step against business-method and software patents, which is also sorely needed, the companies who pull those often have patents by the hundreds.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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
There is a better, simpler cure:
1.) Forbid "method patents". This would include software and business methods.
2.) Forbid "naturally occurring" patents. This would include genome sequences.
3.) Require a WORKING prototype before issuance.
Just those 3 would go a long way to eliminating patent trolls.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
How do we protect intellectual property without going absurd?
Here's a question for you: Is it not a bit absurd, in and of itself, to presume that ideas, a nonrival, infinitely replicatable good, can -ever- be considered or treated as property?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
As a country, does the United States really manufacture anything besides ideas anymore? If intellectual property weren't property, we'd be even more screwed than we are. Conversely, if a global government actually enforced IP laws, the US would be beyond rich.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
~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.
This one can be bad.
You could have someone like Tesla, who conceived of the entire system of AC power generation and motors in his head, and who obviously could provide greatly detailed drawings and blueprints, and yet be unable to provide a "working prototype" because it would cost millions or billions to build. I think just banning software patents and business patents is good enough. And also fire judges who seem too stupid to throw out patents that are just goddamn obvious.
http://www.pirate-party.us/
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/
'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 what I first read, eyes half open over my first coffee.
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?