Slashdot Mirror
Wireless Email Patents Vs. Innovation
Exactly a year ago Slashdot discussed Geoff Goodfellow's early contributions to wireless email and how they were conspicuously absent from the NTP vs. RIM patent fight. Techdirt points us to another early wireless email innovator, Nicholas Fodor, who recently came to the notice of the NY Times. Techdirt uses Fodor's story to highlight the problems with the US patent system that are by now so obvious to this community.
Okay, so reform is needed. But what's the solution, though? Is it legislation-based? Is it market-based? We have to make sure the solution doesn't fuck us over more than the problem it's trying to solve.
A good example of how a good idea can go wrong is Digg. It addresses one of the sore spots about Slashdot: the ability for anyone to submit news, and immediately have it viewable by others. It also opens up the comment moderation system to everyone. It's the Digg comment moderation I'd like to consider for the moment.
What we often find is that people in the know get their posts voted down, especially if they say something unpopular (even if completely factual). An example of this is noted Slashdot poster John Randolph, who goes by the handle jcr. He often speaks his mind, and that gets some people at Digg all riled up. So they moderate down his comments. This is especially true in his posts dealing with Apple, where John says it as it is. After all, John worked at Apple for a long time. He knows how things are done there. But that's not good enough for many of the morons at Digg. They bury what are perhaps the most informative, insightful and interesting comments. It's a perfect example of how a system that tries to fix Slashdot ends up being far worse in most cases.
I could see the same thing happening with proposed solutions to these US Patent and Trademark Office problems. If it's a legislation-based approach, the law may end up making innovation far more difficult, time-consuming and expensive for individuals and start-ups. A market-based approach will no doubt have even more problems.
Many in the Linux community look at the Novell-Msft deal for precisely this reason. "I will pretend to beat you, you pretend to cry" and in that process we will create the impression that I am a unbeatable big honcho on the hill.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
True, but the idea is to mainly kill off the venture funding for competing services. To compete with RIM the cost of entry into the market is high and it is well nigh impossible without venture funding. With the long shadow of 650 M$ settlement, there wont be big venture funding. Small players will try to invalidate the patent first, and they can be kept at bay using lawyers. And RIM might not even be shooting for a full 15 or 18 years of protection. If the competition is delayed by 5 years, RIM might figure, that gives me X B$ and as long as (X-0.65) > 0, it makes sense to bring in a credible partner who will assert the patent rights and keep the howling competition at bay.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Unless a competitor grows outside the US market. Believe it or not there are plenty of mobile users in Europe and, last I heard, even Asia!
So you can entirely make a market for yourself out of the US of A.
To m
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Yet Another Thermodynamic Cycle syndrome is just starting for IT and the center of the problem is not the patent system. The problems are that capitalism is unbridled and there is profit in litigation. I have a difficult time visualizing a patent system reform that will actually improve innovation because it never comes down to who is the inventor, it comes down to who has the resources to hire the most and best lawyers. There really isn't much point in attempting to obtain a patent if you have a good idea or product but don't you don't have a large corporation behind you. Either your idea is crap, you are so far ahead of your time no one will "get it" or a larger company will pick up on the idea. In whichever situation, a patent isn't going to help. I would think generally the type of person that invents anything truly innovative, isn't the type of person that wants to spend their life in a court room and dealing with the legal system.
I believe the Internet will eventually change this. If a good idea is spread very quickly, it reduces to a commodity very quickly. If one company "steals" your idea, many will. My opinion is that unless you want to spend your life in court, it's simpler to just publish your ideas in an open manner and then develop a business model around the sub-components and consulting. This is very similar to the Open Source vs. Proprietary software model. If you have a new idea that has value but you have minimal resources, you cannot show the profit of Microsoft, but you can be Red Hat.
Ahhh good ol mutually assured destruction. A scheme that has worked so well in the past...
Maybe the right solution to this problem is to actually have innovative products of a useful nature. If some jackass can rip off your idea trivially, then it's not really worth that much is it? If what you make takes craft and skill, it won't be trivial to knock off and you'll be able to compete in the market place.
If you actually think about it, patents are anti-capitalistic because it denies people the ability to compete on the merits of the product.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.