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Apple's Billion Dollar Patent & Other Stories From Patentland
DECS writes "It has been widely reported that Apple secured a patent worth a "billion dollars." According to a patent attorney involved in the issue, Apple will be "after every phone company, film maker, computer maker and video producer to pay royalties." The good news is that all the news reports were based on misleading hyperbole. " Don't let the title fool you; the essay is a good background on patents, the horror stories of some of them but also why companies feel compelled to seek patents as a business "safety" precaution.
In my maybe subjective opinion, if there is one company I would fear in the patent and legal feald, this is not MS, nor Sun nor IBM , but Apple. Apple's legal hounds are legendary by their actions going after even individual users for such small things like "making a MacOS theme for Windows XP", or such things. What could they do for such things like a billion dollar patent... I'm scared.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
My favorite is the line in the article about how without patents there would be no incentive for pharmas to, say, develop a new treatment.
Innovation will always be driven by necessity, not by profit. That, and laziness: if I can invent a cotton gin so I don't have to spend hours and hours picking seeds out of cotton by hand, what do I care if I don't have a patent on it? My life is still simpler. What about drugs? If enough people are getting sick, then people will pool together their resources and develop a treatment. Sure, it might not happen in the same way we know things today, but I think that patents are a form of competition, and I'm beginning to think that cooperation is a more powerful force in economics than competition, despite the prevalent thinking.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
First of all, any use of OSX on a PC platform is a royal pain in the ass because it requires you to do so many workarounds... why even bother. If you're a person who actually needs OSX (designers, videographers, etc) then you will buy the hardware because you know its worth it. If you don't have a need to use one, yeah, you don't get one... and porting games isn't as big of a deal as people think... there are at least a few companies still dedicated to not screwing over mac users (read BLIZZARD).
Actually from here 'Starkweather wrote the patent in 1996 for a Vermont inventor who originally didn't show interest in patenting the idea or understand its value. The concept consisted of a desktop computer holding multiple songs with an interface allowing a hotel guest to select three songs and play them on an electric grand piano. Starkweather saw the broader value and broke the patent into three elements; remote music storage, selection of music to download and playing music on a music device. Starkweather realized that downloading movies was an obvious variation to downloading music. It was data manipulated in the same way. "Sometimes it's easy to break an invention down to its key components," Starkweather says. "That's why patent writing is an art, not a science, and requires creativity."'
I would correct Starkweather's last statement to be "That's why patent writing is a dark art, and requires the surrender of all ethical bounds checking".
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Eli Whitney, and the U.S Congress certainly cared. Although Whitney was able to patent his cotton gin, the U.S. patent laws at the time (under the first Patent Act of 1790) were so weak he was unable to enforce his patent and nearly went bankrupt. Whitney himself sold few cotton gins as large manufacturers could undercut his prices due to their established distribution chains. The next two patent acts (1810 and 1836) were drafted with Whitney's story in mind and provided greater protection for inventors (Abraham Lincoln's famous "patents are the fuel for the fire of innovation" quote was referring to the 1836 act).
So, out of all the examples you could pick as to why patents don't matter, Whitney's cotton gin isn't one of them (it is probably the worst possible example).
Necessity for drugs is not going to drive development. Money is.
Exactly, and there's no reason patents are needed. Other industries still make products there is demand for, without ever registering a single patent.
Pharma research costs big money, because 1) paying your PHDs to do the research, and maintaining research facilities, costs quite a lot, and 2) the FDA approval process is costly and takes years.
They spend more on advertising than they do on research. The FDA thing is another government created problem that can be done away with as easily as the patent system. The risk of lawsuits is so great that the phrama companies will still be plenty careful about what they release. If anything the FDA gives them permission to be sloppy as it stands now. They only have to do the minimum required for approval, nothing more. A private branding mark of quality, similar to UL, can be used instead of FDA approval.
on the day they start selling the drug, a generic manufacturer sells the same thing and cuts them on price--it's going to be very hard for them to recoup their investment
Wah. Every other industry deals with knockoffs. There's nothing special about pharmacueticals. Most of them are not trivial to synthesize.
without investing a single cent of their own in research. Which isn't exactly fair.
Plenty of markets exist without ever involving patents. Those markets are generally very successful at providing the service.
medicine has the potential to improve the quality of life of tons of people
It does, which is why it's so much more important to eliminate patents here than anywhere else. I don't know why you want to support corporate handouts so badly.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
With all due respect, you lose a lot of credibility by dedicating article space to this minor personal spat, and even more by participating in this red herring of a conversation.
It's been a long time.