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Patents Don't Pay
tarball_tinkerbell sends us to the NY Times for word on a book due out next year that claims that beginning in the late 1990s, on average patents cost companies more than they earned them. A big exception was pharmaceuticals, which accounted for 2/3 of the revenues attributable to patents. The authors of the book Do Patents Work? (synopsis and sample chapters), James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer of the Boston University School of Law, have crunched the numbers and say that, especially in the IT industry, patents no longer make economic sense. Their views are less radical than those of a pair of Washington University at St. Louis economists who argue that the patent system should be abolished outright.
It doesn't surprise me that patents tend to be expensive & useless. The only place they are of any real use is in court. Any business model that has "time in court" from the get-go is probably not such a great model.
Especially in the world of computers it seems that so many of the patents are of questionable validity. A lot of software-related patents end up getting invalidated due to prior art when the patent holder tries to enforce it. Why do you think Microsoft isn't publicizing the list of patents that it claims linux infringes on? Tons of people will try to dig up prior art as soon as they know what patents MS claims are being infringed upon.
The Pirate Party also claims, with good justification (although a bit less of it in English), that patents should be abolished outright. Good to see some others chime in.
Nobody should make money off of an idea. Patents slow the progress of mankind.
Are they counting opportunity costs? If having a patent allows you to get into patent detente with other patentholders, then the patent saves you the license fees/amount you'd be sued by that you'd accrue if you tried to operate without it. That's where the value of patents truly lies.
That is the "killswitch". Engage it and it will kill you. Please engage the killswitch so the world become a better place (ie, with you no longer in it).
If the big companies all file for a bunch of patents it raises the barrier of entry very high for would be competitors. They may not get any revenue from these patents but they save a lot from not having to deal with smaller companies taking their business.
I mean the whole point of the patent is to give its inventor exclusive license to be free from competition, the author of this piece doesnt take that into account at all. Im not saying that this is good or bad for innovation, just that there is significant financial incentive that the writer fails to account for.
The Patent Hawk (rate for patent consultation: $140/hr) is already heaping scorn on the review.
From the 1990's, for publicly traded companies only. Mainly due to litigation costs.
For others patents did better:
Mr. Bessen said that besides girding the pharmaceutical industry, the system did seem to work reasonably well for small companies and individual inventors.
I know slashdot editors hate IP as much as they hate nuance, but the headline does not refect this guy's research.
That looks like a promising chapter. It the sample it talks about the obvious problems with vague, fuzzy patents. I think one strong possible answer for the software patent problem, is to only allow patents on an exact piece of code. it's like supplying a blueprint. A program that does the same thing as you patent, but doesn't share the same code is not covered by your patent.
We are all just people.
This has been invented already.
Its called "copyright".
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
He's always considered patents to be a gigantic ripoff for everyone but patent attorneys. A lot of people dismissed his anti-patent rantings in the early 90s as net.kookery, but it appears he was ahead of his time.
google started the trend: information is the most valuable thing in the world. a close second are the people who control and can quickly assess and manage information (as a group) are the second most valuable thing.
No longer are the widgets and doohickeys manufactured in large plants the items of value - and the concomitant world of patents to protect them. Frankly we have way too much stuff already, and mostly the need for more physical stuff is artificially manufactured by ads and more-pompous-than-thou one-upmanship insecurity. It's bags o bits, and bags o water that are the future, my boy.
In short: "Well, duh."
Everyone thinks they are special. It's a fundamental human attribute.
How else would you explain the people who play the lottery? Gamble at casinos? Think that out of all the millions of oppressed masses, _they_ are the ones who will live the American dream and become someone?
It makes life more interesting; without that drive there would be little innovation, little hard work and drive, few no obsessively hard workers spending three years of nights in a garage writing software, no interest in going for American Idol... ok, scratch that last one.
In the same way companies, which are only an aggregation of people, will think that they can be the one out of a million who will benefit from patents. Even if you can empirically and theoretically show that they are being taken up the arse by a banana. Human nature. Infuriating, isn't it?
Beep beep.
Except for the lawyers.
I RTFA, and I still don't know how he counted profits.
And that doesn't even factor in the fact that many IT patents last, what, 17 years. So it's also a gamble on the future needing that IP.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
They first flew under barely controllable circumstances Dec 17, 1903, but then spent several years trying to keep it secret, or at least not publicize it, while they made it practical. They used wing warping which physically bent the wings to control roll, and in order to get around this patented idea, Curtis, in 1908 I think, invented ailerons, hinged sections of wing which have been in use ever since. The Wrights spent the next ten years in court over the matter, and it wasn't settled until the US government forced a settlement when it joined WW I. The Wrights never did much at all after the first few years except sue the competition in court. Everyone else made advances in the technology, but not the Wrights, and they later had to merge just to keep the name in business.
A real lesson in the relative merits of innovation to stay at the front of the pack instead of dying in court battles.
Infuriate left and right
If a company is REALLY producing new ideas ... that's one thing.
..." and then fill in whatever you want.
..." would completely revamp our patent system.
But today, you don't even have to show a new idea. If you hear that a competitor is working on something, you can file a patent for "a process that
No real idea required. No working model. Not even a schematic or pseudo-code.
Just requiring SOMETHING more than "a process that
I'd be curious what percentage of patents were actually researched for this project and how they were selected. I'm not against the theory that patents can hurt more than help, but I find it difficult to believe that they had enough time to properly research a vast amount of patents. Especially trying to narrow it down to financial losses and gains for specific patents.
lol: You see no door there!
He considered patents to be bad for the little guy. Some people have found a way to make patents work; NTP for instance got hundreds of millions from RIM for what turns out to be bogus patents.
People in the electronics industry are familiar with the case of Edwin Howard Armstrong who invented many of the fundamental parts of modern radio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Armstrong RCA stole his ideas and basically lawyered him to death. RCA, on the other hand, had patents and could afford to enforce them with great vigour.
Armstrong's would be one case that Lancaster would use as an example of why patents don't work for the individual inventor. He never, afaict, said patents didn't work for the big guys.
Let's say you invent some new physical item, obtain a patent and line up licensing with a manufacturer to produce the product. In the first six months you manage to line up significant interest in large retailers for this product and the money starts flowing in.
Two months later you discover your retailers are deserting you and are buying an identical product made in China. Your revenue ceases because nobody wants your overpriced product when they can buy the cheap knockoff made in China. Unless there are substantial reasons to purchase your original (which there probably aren't), nobody is interested.
You are now looking at your investors that put up the money to get the product manufactured and advertised. They would like the big returns you were promising them and looked like they were going to get. Instead, you are bankrupt and have no friends (they were all investors).
50 years ago US Customs would have blocked the import of a patent-violating product. I don't know when they stopped, but today it is common to find products made in foreign countries that violate US patents and other licensing agreements. Where do you think all those cheap DVD players come from when it is $5 per player for the license? Any player under $100 retail is unlicensed and the Customs folks know it.
Rule 1: If it is a physical product that can be duplicated, it will be.
Rule 2: International trade is a race to the bottom with the lowest cost winning, always.
Rule 3: Patents and copyrights are only as good as the enforcement behind them.
Today, enforcement is a joke. You can sue someone in the US for violating a patent, but if they are violating it from outside the US (say, from China) you can't sue them. China would laugh - they don't enforce US laws. Customs will not block imports. Do you believe you can sue Wal-Mart for selling the product? You can't prevent people from getting cheap stuff - it is almost the 11th item on the Bill of Rights these days.
What this means is that patents are only good as tokens to impress potential buyers of a company with.
So how do you keep something from being duplicated? Have some encrypted software required to operate the device. The R&D effort to duplicate the development would make copying the product too expensive. Sure, they can copy the hardware but without copying the software they have a useless piece of junk. Maybe you can license the software to them, but doing so would be suicide - it turns your company from a hardware vendor into a software supplier.
A lot of software-related patents end up getting invalidated due to prior art when the patent holder tries to enforce it.
Inside the Slashdot Bubble this may seem true, but do you have any empirical evidence to support this assertion?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
He seems to be the only one who's read TFA.
The purpose of patents were to improve inovation and make the results available to society. Before patents were introduced, people would try to protect their inventions by keeping the details as secret as possible. Patents are supposed to get them to reveal the details by getting a timelimited monopoly in return. Then others can keep inovating by building on top and eventually the inventions will become free for everybody to use. And anybody who sticked with the old habbit of keeping the details secret rather than patenting it would run the risk of somebody else being granted a patent on the intention.
That is how it was supposed to work in the theory.
In reality we see abuse such as companies patenting things they didn't really invent, companies patenting trivialities, and patents that don't include all the details which were the purpose of patents in the first place. If software patents weren't bad enough in itself, it is made even worse by them not containing the full source of a working implementation. If patent applications were really being treated within the original spirit of patents, any software patent application not comming with the full source would be rejected. And of course once the patent is granted, the source is published available for anybody to use as long as they have a licensee for the patent. Once the patent expires, the source can be used essentially the same way you can use BSD licensed source.
Somebody seems to have forgotten why patents were introduced. And some companies seems to want to not only keep, but also extent patents (and copyright as well) because they want to make money from it. If making money is the only reason for keeping those kinds of protections in place, they should be abandoned. But for gods sake, don't make the big mistake of abandoning them only for economical reasons. Rather think the system over again and adjust it to serve its original purpose, even if that means companies will make less money on average.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Drug companies don't do the basic research that leads to new treatments. Drug companies do research necessary to bring drugs to market. In the past they had agreements that forced university researchers to keep mum if they found adverse side effects of the drug under test. Treatments that don't result in profit for the drug companies aren't researched. Drug companies often make minor changes to a drug just so they can keep it patented for another seventeen years.
Drug companies game the patent system like crazy. We would probably be much better off without drug patents. Research could then be re-directed to non-drug (cheaper) treatments.
and pimpin' ain't easy.....
Your point?
kdawson is ON TEH SPOKE today!!!
Unfortunately, it's better for you to get a patent for X than it is for you to allow company Y to patent your X and then sue your S off.
Lancaster. Don Lancaster. The Hackintosh guy?
Don has already figured that out. Years ago.
http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.asp
A third is that the economic breakeven needed to recover patent costs
is something between $12,000,000.00 and $40,000,000 in gross sales.
It is ludicrously absurd to try and patent a million dollar idea.
They only counted the dollar value of having a patent vs. not having it.
They didn't count the value of the leverage of having a large portfolio when used against another company that has a large portfolio.
If a large company unilaterally stopped accumulating patents, pretty soon it would have to start paying everyone, not just the patent-holding companies, royalties on patents it needs to license. As it is, you can just horse-trade your patents and call it even.
Without a systemic fix, large software companies like MS and IBM won't totally abandon patents any time soon.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yet, you keep coming back for more.
The following link makes the case: http://righttocreate.blogspot.com/2005/12/why-dru
The drug companies point to the numbers you quote to try to make us believe that they are pushing the progress of medicine. That isn't the case. Their research is mostly to bring other people's discoveries to market.
The system is, unfortunately, rigged such that a modern startup needs patents. First, they need to stockpile them against existing companies who would rather litigate than compete. Secondly, they need to be able to measure, in some tangible way, how much "innovation" they've done, for the benefit of investors.
The latter point is critical. The value of a startup should be based on how valuable the products are. A patent is an asset which increases the value of the company, even if it's a loss-maker by itself. It's used as a measure of how much innovative stuff is in your product, even though the only value of the innovation is in the product itself.
I'd like to hear some suggestions as to how we could show the value of innovation without patents. I'm sure there must be a better way.
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on average patents cost companies more than they earned them.
"On Average"? We are all aware of the way software companies will create patent "minefields" to entangle other companies, and I have to think that the word "on average" means that SOME patents are money-makers for companies, but a large number of patents (perhaps the ones they use to entangle competitors) might cost more money than their worth. If that's the case, then the article isn't really an argument against patents per se, but an argument against the patent-frenzy that some companies are involved in. It's an argument against excessive patenting - in contradiction to the title of this post: "Patents Don't Pay".
In other news, insurance policies often cost people more than they claim from them. To my mind, patents are just a form of insurance - against other companies, that would otherwise be allowed to compete fairly with the patent holding company.
I just filed for a patent and the comments here don't reflect the current situation re: software patents. Basically, the Supremes made it a lot harder to get a patent. The intent is to increase the value of good patents, filter out the copycat trash, and reduce litigation overall. A patent is a "teaching". You give up trade secret protection in return for patent protection. It's not code; that's protected by copyright. I think the premise of the NYTimes article is silly. Patents are part of a large IP 'eco-system' and judging the value of patents requires looking at the whole system. From my point of view (small company, great new idea) I think a patent will make my company more valuable in an acquisition. I absolutely have no intent or interest in defending this thing. Leave that to the stable of attorneys in the acquiring company. Thus is is absolutely a good for the small company / entrepreneur to have patent protection in that it motivates me to both innovate and then publish the innovation.
There was a guy once, who had a great idea. Why not make an institution where people will submit their money making ideas, along with their cash. In return, he would guarantee that no two people would use the same idea.
He immediately patented the idea, and started making money of it. Others, however, were not that happy.
Some claimed that his patent was obvious, and that its null and void. Others claimed that it impinges on their own ideas about institutions where people submit their ideas and money. Radical voices insisted that making money out of ideas like this hurts the economy. Reasonable voices claimed that it has been done before.
Eventually, after 5 years, his patent rights expired, and everyone started making institutions who will guarantee that no two people can use the same idea if you pay them. Bitter patent battles raged between the institutions, with regards to who owes what ideas.
Eventually, someone came up with a great idea. Why not make an institution where people will submit their ideas about institutions where people will submit their money making ideas, along with their cash, in exchange for a guarantee that no two institutions will use the same idea.
UNTIL HEAD(explodes)
Wanna bet that this will in certain circles not be seen as the proof that the patent law is broken, but rather that patent length is not long enough to get a return of investment, and thus it needs to be prolongued, preferably forever?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're arguing with the wrong person. The points you raise are a quote from somewhere else (ie. the link).
o f_Health ) report pretty much says it all: "To the extent that basic research into the underlying mechanisms of disease drive new medical advances, the R&D in industry is not performing the role played by public research funding."
In any event, the NIH (National Institutes of Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_
So, a branch of the federal government has studied the case and concludes that, as the great-great-grandparent pointed out, the drug industry isn't really advancing medical science.
Rather than quibbling about semantic niceties, why don't you dig up some facts to refute the NIH report.
Does it include the value of locking your potential competitors out of the market/solution?
The important patent the Wright brothers got didn't have anything to do with aerodynamic designs at all.
The patent squabble that lasted until forcibly resolved by the government, and which Curtis fought tooth and nail, was for wing warping.
Here is something from a Wright Brothers website.
August, 1909 also marked the initiation of a long patent war with Glen Hammond Curtis, who earlier that year had formed the Curtis-Herring Company with Augustus Herring and built a successful airplane with a control system that the Wrights felt was an infringement on their patent.
Infuriate left and right
I'm a big proponent of dismantelling drug patents. Now a bunch of people will cry "Bloody Mary" and claim that the patents are needed to fund additional research for new drugs. Here's a brilliant idea: They aren't!
Here's the alternative:
Rather than drug companies rolling in massive profits (which, might I add, are calculated AFTER R&D expenses), provide grants for drug research. Even better, provide purses for people who come up with cures and treatments. This will still stimulate pharmaceutical research, possibly even moreso than what it already is today. If somebody can see "Hey, I can get this much money for finding something out" as opposed to "I might be able to sell the rights for this much if I find something out," you'll probably get more people engaged in the business because a reduced risk in payout. As a side-effect, finding a cure for AIDS will probably also result in a team winning countless awards, medals, titles, et. al, which would also result in fame and, get this: more money.
I wonder how the average profitability of actual patents would rise if the patent rolls were purged of all those that are created and maintained for solely "defensive" registration.
Patents that are never used to stop an infringer, but rather to protect the registrant's use of the invention. If those patents were instead published into the public domain, they would have exactly the same defensive value. But publishing them into the public domain would cost very little compared to patenting them.
The rest of the patents would have their costs deducted from their greater value in stopping infringement. Those might actually look profitable.
While that analysis might not seem good for the invention industry choked by patents, it could actually turn patenting into a much rarer case. If most patents are in fact used solely to protect an invention from being stopped on "infringement" grounds, then most inventions would just be in the public domain, not patented.
Then the rest of the patents, and their system, could actually be reformed as a much smaller process. Make them expire once 10x their investment cost (stated at registration) is recouped, or after 5-15 years (depending on the invention). Require working models of all patents again, and prohibit patenting anything but a photo/electro/mechanical device. Software and math can be only copyrighted, business processes have no protection whatsoever. If there are so many fewer patents, stopping some of their types that are unworkable will be more manageable.
Then the rest that are left can actually be patented for the promotion of science and the useful arts.
--
make install -not war
It sounds like they were looking at how much patents made in licensing or in lawsuits. But what about patents that are neither licensed out nor lead to a lawsuit? The third way to make money off a patent is to be the exclusive provider of whatever is covered by the patent.
You can't stop China (the US won't even try since they own our debt) so there is no real value to patents anymore.
That's it, the end. Make a product, China will rip it off and sell it for 1/2 the price. Make a web/software product and they will copy it. I've had one of my websites mirrored entirely, tweaked, and put up in China (for an open source product, so I don't know WTF the point was).
Patents would have some value if they were enforced, but they are not. Add to that the fact that less then 1% of patents are in any way valid to start, and the system is just silly. They do let large companies intimidate small companies, and easily put them out of business with lawyer costs, so the system lives on.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
A lot of patents won't make a company that much money by themselves (i.e. through licensing and lawsuits). But they give companies leverage with which to push around other companies - the result being that there's diminished competition in that area. So they won't be losing as many potential sales of their product to other competitors.
"A deadlock has been reached. One task must die. We must now choose between murder and suicide."
Class.
Party.
Race.
The three pillars of Leftist thought are on display in a manner not seen since the 50's and even the 30's.
As you read about the manufactured "Health Care Crisis", consider the road to the Nationalized Socialist Health Care Scheme.
You will read about how the health of America is in the "hands of a few giant corporations." By implication, the Federal Government, the biggest of the giant corporations, will bring sweetness and light.
Hand in hand with the State extending its grasp on the economy through the control of Health Care and the resulting crushing increase in the tax burden is the assault on patent rights. The right to patent is in the Constitution and those who argue its demise should be seen as those who would literally destroy this society. It does not matter if a company or a person does not make a penny on a patent that is granted. What matters is that the right exists. PERIOD.
When Vespasian ended the Roman Civil War, Mucianus calmed the four very nervous factions of the assembled troops by reminding them that they all were bound by "the same oath to the same Caesar."
This is a very similar argument. The patent system guards against the State by placing power in the hands of individuals. There are those who have not learned from the Wars of the last century or even the last 2000 years.
But, the Left never learns, does it?
Charles
I've only worked for small companies and every single one of them (six?) have been dragged through courts on patent/trademark issues. Usually both. Usually from the leader of the industry.
I also suspect he can't possibly quantify the amount of money submarine patent owners are making. After all they are taking on the biggest of the big companies in the U.S. The money to lawyer-up doesn't just appear.
So, it does pay. It puts small companies at a perpetual disadvantage. Considering the author's publisher, it will probably get way more consideration than it should.
I didn't bother reading TFA, so mod me down if it doesn't matter.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
There's been detente between the big guys for ages -- you nuke my product line, I'll nuke your product line, so lets do neither.
The problem is Intellectual Ventures. They have no products. They just have patents. They can nuke, but they cannot be nuked. This model is spreading...honestly, just like nukes themselves.
The detente is over. It's just a question of what now.
away, so, the question is what to do about it NOW.
.02...
Whoever says patents were never intended to make money has obviously never run a business. The profit margin on a States sponsored monopoly is whatever the market will bear, not what your competition, (Who didn't endure the original R&D expense) feels like giving it away for. Of course you are going to make money with a patent, if you can keep everyone else off your backs! The only way that will ever happen is if the patent laws are indeed enforced, including by Customs at the boarder. (And I'd like to see sanctions against countries who continuously violate this {Ehhoumf CHINA! Ehhoumf}
As far as pharma patents? Screw them. Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate the billions that go into Pharma research, What I do not appreciate is the lies that come out of that research. (because not only do they own the R&D industry, they own the FDA and the better part of the medical profession also!) Nor do I appreciate that they will take a drug that makes them money (And has made them ALL of their R&D money back.) make one non-functional or trivial difference to it, and re-patent it, and start pushing it as the only drug for a MD to prescribe, at full price! Heaven (And the malpractice insurance company) help an MD that doesn't prescribe this new and "Improved" drug and something goes wrong from one of the "minor" side effects.
At the same time, a great number of software patents are ridiculous. I remember being taught years ago in Engineering school, that if an idea was so simple and obvious that any engineer would take that or a similar approach, the idea was not patentable! That standard alone would toss some large number of software patents out the window. Like one-click-shopping. If that's not an obvious idea, I don't know what is!
What we need there is some people in the patent office who REALLY understand what they are doing, and really understand the market to be able to make some rational decisions on what constitutes a real in ovation, or what is just profiteering at the expense of the community.
While I'm at it, their ought to be a "Quick Arbitration" initial step for patents where, rather than giga-buck liars (Um, Lawyers) who spend years hashing something out, and cost everyone involved the entire GDP of 10% of the worlds countries, the actual inventors (or CTO's If you don't understand your own tech, you shouldn't be able to use it!) sit down with a board of experts in the field for an afternoon, and hash it out. If they can't come to a real conclusion, then it goes to the courts. This will keep a lot of smaller companies from rolling on their backs and peeing on them self when some gorilla starts screaming "Patent Infringement" even when the small company is in the right, simply because they cant afford the first round of expenses, forget a real legal battle.
Patents were supposed protect inventors and their hard work. The system has turned it into a game of lawyers and cheap overseas manufacturing, not protecting the weak and right, but whoever can bring the biggest guns to the table, or who can afford to not show up at all.
Just my first
Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org
I hate to respond to a flame... but, I can't let these rampant, undeserved vulgarities go unchallenged.
First off... why do you say all of us "shitdot [Slashdot] sheeple [People] are against patents? That's like saying all of us are against Microsoft, or all of us hate the government to the very core of our existence. I'd honestly say that only a very small minority of the Slashdot users are truly 100% against patents. And even at that, by saying that an opposition to the patent system, or our general American economic system (if patents even apply in that context) is communist, then that makes you a fool. By arguing that an established "American" (even though other countries do the exact same) system is bad, we in turn improve (slowly) our "America". By having the people of a democratic country state their opinions about the systems in which they live under/by, they show their friends, neighbors and total strangers (like you for instance) that, while it may be harsh, they CARE about their country and how it runs... even if it seems to have gone to hell.
Secondly... Saying communism is the worst thing (you implied it) that has ever happened, means that you have no real understanding of it, or history at that... meaning that you (to quote you) are closer to a "fucktard" than all of the other educated and well-meaning readers of Slashdot.
And third... I don't think anyone has, or will say anything about getting anything free. Removing the patent system, or reforming it doesn't mean that products will be free. It just means that their will be more competition in the market, allowing more people to get more, better things, cheaply. Which, again - to contradict you - is the direct opposite of communism (Which does nothing but stifle competition). So... again, challenging these standards and systems actually promotes democracy and the American way of life, and keeps communism from manifesting our way of life.
Again... I hate to respond to a flame... but... people that ignorant and obscene I just cannot ignore.
GR
"Paranoia is the flaw and gift of man. Heed its advice, but do not live by its will."
Watching that happen to the company I used to work for. It's a really funny thing to watch. I'll tell the story without too much detail to avoid any hot water that might land myself in.
My former company - they make a widget. A specialized consumer widget. Other companies make similar widgets. They all began a patent war.
Widget for my former company has feature A and feature B. Other company patents the idea of combining features A and B in the widget. Company now has to make two widgets, one that does A and one that does B, even though the functions are complimentary and easily related. Obvious. And so on, and so on, and so on. The company would pay you if you had a patent idea there, so they would have something new to beat each other up with. Situation continues for years, with these small companies carving up the widget patent space so tightly it becomes a maze of legal decisions to simply make a non-infringing widget. Two main players emerged, my former company and one other.
Then, super-huge conglomerate X shows up in this widget space, and buys both major companies in the battle, as well as a couple of the small ones. Anyone see the punch line yet?
They didn't care about the companies - they wanted their patent libraries to lock out competition. Soon as they shored up their position in the market, they dismissed the engineering staff for all the companies but one - and outsourced the widget to China. And now that widget's market is locked up. There are no entry level players in this widget market anymore. Just megacompany X, and their single Chinese knockoff.
Sometimes everyone loses a patent war.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The fundamental flaw here is assuming that the benefits of holding a patent are easily measured.
Patents are sought as much to prevent copying and defensively to ensure your right to sell your product as to seek royalties from others. Any real evaluation would have to guestimate those values, and it would be very inexact.
In my crude estimation, many or most companies overinvest in patent protection versus other forms of protection such as pre-emptive public disclosure. But even looking at a single invention it is hard to determine the probable value of each form of protection. The fact that these determinations are frequently made by patent lawyers may slightly bias this process.
But those are all complex micro-economic tradeoffs. They are really irrelevant to public policy discussions. If many homeowners overspend on home alarm systems it certainly would not mean that we should legalize home invasions.
The case for patent reform is when it blocks usage of valid algorithms that were so obvious that they should not have belonged to anyone. The degree to which a patent holder can force their competitors to re-invent the obvious is actually one of the unmeasured "benefits' of holding a patent that they forgot to measure. Of course that just shows that what needs to be measured here is a lot more complex than was done. It's the macro-benefit of encouraging R&D spending that is the promised benefit of a patent system. The arbitrary nature of what can obtain a patent is the biggest drain on that potential. That calls for reform, not abolishment.
This doesn't seem hard to believe at all to me. At the actual boots-meeting-pavement level, what most people who file patents (while working as part of a big corporation) are looking for is just a resume line or feather in their cap, something to bring them a little closer to the next promotion. Whether the patent actually turns into anything hardly matters -- since most of them don't.
At a lot of companies, just having a patent with your name on it is a way to get yourself a little respect and maybe a little extra consideration come bonus time.
I've seen some spectacularly boneheaded ideas patented for exactly this reason.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I am currently in the process of patenting a simple invention. I am doing this because the device is so extremely simple, someone would be able to figure it out just by looking at it. I am worried that someone else will see, and patent it. Then i would be unable to use my own idea without having to pay someone else, who stole my own idea. I would love to not waste the time any money involved in the whole patent process. is there any way to get around the whole patent process completely, and not have to risk someone stealing your thunder?
-I only code in BASIC.-
Well said. And any others wishing to align "open-sores" with communism, please recognise that communism is only achievable to any degree by managing all variables of a society from a central point. More reminiscent of closed source systems than open source. Open source may have some faults (No 1 being not entirely compatible with current economic systems) but it is not communism.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Another use: Defending yourself in case you're accused of violating somebody else's patent. The more obvious patents you have, the more likely somebody else is to violate one of yours. If you ever get accused, you then may have the option of negotiating some cross-license deal.
So many companies are basically investing a lot of money into patents due to an issue caused by patents themselves.
Publish your invention. As a result it will be prior art to anyone who would want to copy your invention and get it patented. The publication will, of course, have to be court proof, so you will want to consider professional services such as ip.com.
...until you get busted for selling drug paraphanalia.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Having searched and examined patent applications for 6 years (or so, but not currently): I'd say the majority (my impression = above 95%) of patents are produced by workers and filed for companies.
... sure if your idea from your r&d log book makes them several million then you'll get recompensed but just getting a patent is nothing special. Anyone with £200 can do that.
Patents are used to protect technology fields from exploitation by other companies. They are thus bargaining chips and a major indicator for shareholders and other investors. Larger companies (and this may have changed now but was true 3-4 years ago) filed patents on everything remotely patentable (eg queuing for the toilet!)
Wasn't msft recently sued for $1.5B for violating (probably accidently) some submarine patent for some media format?
.NET system violates a patent Vertical Systems filed in 1999, and awarded in 2004, covering "a system and method for generating computer applications in an arbitrary object framework."
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F, 826,744&RS=PN/6,826,744
e _no-2:2007cv00144/case_id-102638/
Also, ripped from investorsvillage.com post:
As has been noted on Slashdot and elsewhere Microsoft has been sued for patent infringement by Vertical Computer Systems. According to the April press release "Microsoft's
Patent is here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,826,744.PN.&OS=PN/6
Dockets here for those with PACER access:
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/cas
( If someone with PACER access could make the complaint and MSFT response available...)
The suit was filed on April 18,2007.
The KSR v Teleflex decision affecting the determination of obviousness was on April 30, 2007.
Microsoft is in an interesting position when defending itself against software patents. What may now prove to be their best defense could set precedents that would seriously undermine their own patent portfolio. Settling rather than invalidating a patent that could be invalidated would just encourage more suits.
Recently shills for VCS (from th Y! VCSY.OB board) have popped up on the Y! MSFT board screaming that a settlement is almost a done deal with "a few details to work out". VCSY.ob stock is in the the two cent range. There have been a number of posts mocking MSFT's response to the complaint, including claiming the response has no defense of obviousness.
There seems to be no media coverage of the suit. I don't recall seeing anything about it on Groklaw. It could be an interesting case, not for the merits, but for how Microsoft deals with it.
Imagine the kind of money these lawfirms must be making. By the time it's said and done the lawfirms get about half the settlement. And these IT patent lawsuits are often in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
The growth of the number of lawers in the USA is explosive, and for good reason. You don't want all those new lawyers to have nothing to do, now do you?
This article is saying that being a big company with an R&D department designed to churn-out patents isn't worth it because the litigation costs more than the patents bring you.
The article is not saying that patents in general, or even software patents, aren't worth it. It only looks at aggregate statistics for the entire market. So if you are a developer or engineer who creates something new and unique and wants to patent it to protect yourself, go and do it. Nothing in this article is saying you should not.
Unnecessary. Any idea embodied in an existing product is by law un-patentable. The market is already the public domain. The problem is not the law. It's companies who knowingly break the law and patent unpatentable things, to force you into lengthy, costly and ruining suits.
Patents clearly are "good" for monopolies, and bad for consumers, postponing many technologies from reaching society until the expiration of the patent and preventing new ideas based on those patents from being created, slowing the overall advancement of new ideas. If some kind of compensation is to be given to an inventor other than the advantages that already exist, the idea must be shared with society and the time should be shortened or the current system completely changed.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
They're for individual inventors so that they can innovate.
Goliath companies have much more resources and can clone the ideas if you guys get your way.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
A list of the 20 worst ailments that *could* be treated with drugs should be created.
Migraines sure as hell won't appear on that list, but I'm happy to spend my $20 a month in perscriptions (3) to keep them at bay.
"Any idea embodied in an existing product is by law un-patentable."
not entirely true. a US patent can be filed up to 1 year after general availability of the product in the US and still be enforceable (overseas you don't get the extra year even if you file foreign). what it really comes down to after a filing date battle is documentation showing when the idea was first developed.
Software and hardware does not usually take that long to come to market ( not these days at least ) and do not have to be sold as cheap ( the iPhone is an example of that [ how many college students have used arm processor for their college projects ] ).
It takes about 2 years to get a patent, maybe longer in some cases, and if you are lucky you can do it in less time. That means that it is a 2 year investment, as well as there are patent fees and so on. For a drug maker having an exclusive lock on something is a good thing, because then they can recoup their initial investment. It will usually take someone else a few years to create a drug that does the same thing, so they can make money back that way. In electronics and software, it does not make as much sense, because usually people will not take as long to create a new program or hardware device ( thing gif / jpeg vs png ).
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Chuck :Buzz, wrong fucktard. Communism is where a ownership of property is owned collectively, even by the laziest fucktards 'Shitdot sheeple like you'. Patents are more of Capitalism, owned by the businesses. That is why your precious Linsux will always play catchup rather than beat Microsoft, because you Linsux fucktards have never been innovative, nor will you fucktards ever be innovative.
:Johnny, tell us what the fucktard Amani576 (971730) has received as a consolation prize.
Chuck
Johnny:A razor, so the fucktard won't have to search for a fucking razor when he commits suicide. It is extra sharp so once he runs a hot bath, slits his fucking wrists, and places his fucking wrists in the hot bath he will bleed to death and one less fucktard will be in the gene pool. Other shitdot sheeple will be receiving a similar razor so they can slit their fucking wrists at home. Back to you Chuck.
Chuck : The only other thing I have to say is...
Chuck : GO AHEAD, FUCKING FLAME AWAY OR WASTE YOUR GOD DAMNED MOD POINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE!
Chuck : BETTER YET, GO SLIT YOUR FUCKING WRISTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE!
... it should not be patentable.
Entrepreneurs should contemplate that a new, useful product should sell well during the first bits of its time in the market, because if it is any good, it will be copied.
That is a reality of the market and people should deal with it. The only thing that patents do is getting on the way of an efficient way of producing something.
If you have something novel then you should have your own chinese company lined up ready to make it cheap, pretty much at the same price as your competitors....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
"Specifically, they estimate that about $8.4 billion in global profits came directly from patents held by publicly traded United States companies in 1997, rising to about $9.3 billion in 1999, with two-thirds of the profits going to chemical and pharmaceutical companies. Domestic litigation costs alone, meanwhile, soared to $16 billion in 1999 from $8 billion in 1997." So they are comparing $9.3B in PROFIT to $16B in COSTS. Shouldn't they be comparing REVENUE to COSTS. Otherwise, saying they made $9.3 in PROFIT admits that patents make money because it already reflects revenue minus costs. If they are counting only licensing receipts, settlement receipts, and litigation receipts as revenue, vs. licensing payments, settlement payments, and litigation payments as costs, then of course the aggregate costs will exceed the aggregate revenue by the amount paid to lawyers, because a win for one company is inherently a loss for another. In the aggregate, smaller companies are taking more in, which tends to come from larger companies. That's why larger companies feel they are hurt more by the patent system. The small companies tend to pick out small segments of technology and know the IP landscape thoroughly so that they aren't infringing. Then when the larger players infringe, they don't agree to bypass litigation because they aren't both mutually infringing each other; only the large player is infringing. That's when a patent lawsuit is brought. And, as someone posted already, the authors seem to completely ignore the fact that a patent allows the owner an exclusive right to practice the invention, which often is exercised by the owner by itself, without licensing to anyone else, so that the owner can extract more monopoly-type prices for the feature. This extra profit attributable to patent ownership is very difficult to decipher in most cases. For instance, Apple owns a patent on the circular touch-dial on its ipod. This is partially a reason why they can charge $100 more for the same storage and features on an MP3 player than competitors can for comparable models. But its hard to say how much can be attributed to ownership of that patent. $10 per item? $20? The authors probably didn't account for this at all.
So that's your way of combating my statement? Well done, asshole. You truly are one of the most ignorant closed minded, obscene bastards I've ever had any sort of communication with. And you obviously still know nothing of communism outside of it's definition. Yes, by definition, communism is "a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed" [Merriam-Webster], but, it doesn't mean currency doesn't exist. Soviet communism maintained a system of currency and only applied services as free, albeit poor. And thus people still didn't get everything free. And I see you didn't even try to challenge my argument on the "free items through no patents". So I guess I proved you wrong.
And, I don't know where in the hell you come off saying that I mentioned patents as communism... seems to me that you're putting words in my mouth.
And your whole gameshow tirade about how people like me are "fucktards" and should "slit my/their wrists" is very shallow. And something I don't take lightly. Apparently you've never known the pain people go through (I haven't either, but, I've known plenty of people who have) when combating suicidal thoughts.
And your rampant use of obscenities just proves your immaturity. The only people I've known to ever speak so vulgar uselessly are younger than 14... So... I'll say you're 12-13 (or have that mindset), and think "cussing" so much is "cool" and will get you "props" with all your little whorish middle school friends.
Have fun being an ignorant asshole, and have fun living your life in some dark little hole as a sore spot on the face of this earth, and as a lesion on the intelligence of this website, and this society.
GR
"Paranoia is the flaw and gift of man. Heed its advice, but do not live by its will."
In a perverse way, I kind of like that, sort of like copyleft is a parody of copyright.
But my intent was to show that patents are not business' best friend. They lock companies in to their current product line instead of always doing what is best, and when they prevent competitors from building upon their idea and doing better, they are bad for society too.
I personally think patents have too little benefit and should be done away with. For every instance of a patent working like the system was expected to work, there must be hundreds or thousands of useless patents, or worse, patents which block progress.
Infuriate left and right
That's because it's as true today as it was in 1994. It is also true that you have always been nothing more than a fucktard. So go do as Mr. Hands did and earn yourself a Darwin award, or go slit your fucking wrists fucktard.
GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY FUCKTARDS!
Then why don't you take not only yourself but your entiire fucktarded family out of the gene pool by earning yourselves a darwin award. If you have any fucktarded children and a fucktarded spouse, why not tell them you are all going on a special trip, rent an suv and when you get to some tree, push the gas all the way and get into a fiery crash by hitting some tree, just as long as you only take other fucktards with you. That way you will be less fucktardeds in the genepool.
GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY OR WASTE YOUR GODDAMNED MOD POINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE
BETTER YET, GO OUT AND COMMITT SUICIDE FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE, WE DON'T NEED YOUR GENES
TO FUCK IT UP ANY LONGER!