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Broken Patent System? Google, Apple Disagree
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes "The AlwaysOn Stanford Summit featured the panel discussion 'The Patent Crisis: Crossroads for the Business of Technology.' Speakers included patent lawyers from Google, IBM, and Apple. According to The Register, Google's and Apple's patent jocks had diametrically opposing views. Google's head of patents believes the system is in crisis: 'The Patent Office is overburdened,' she said. 'The volume of patents going in is huge. And the quality of patents coming out — it could be better.' But Apple's chief patent counsel said the US patent system was 'not broken' and 'not in crisis,' calling it 'the best in the world.'"
gaah! Can't edit to save my life...
"broken/in crisis" and 'the best in the world' might actually BOTH be true!
Our judges and juries attempt to settle items that they can relate to and understand the importance of, such as loosing life, property, or liberty.
Is the judicial system really qualified to test for items such as obviousness in a technical field in order to dismissing a patent. For every witness that says it is obvious, I'm sure the opposing side will say it's not. Perhaps we should have a select group of technical judges just for this purpose.
Please note who said what: "But Apple's chief patent counsel said the US patent system was 'not broken' and 'not in crisis,' calling it 'the best in the world'."
The patent system can be BOTH 'best in the world' and 'broken and in crisis'. I don't know about being the best in the world, but I think it's completely obvious to anyone who's salary is not directly tied to the system that it is, in fact, a mess. Somehow I don't think patent attorneys really are the best qualified to make these statements. Yes, they know the industry exceedingly well, but it is their direct best interests for it to be complicated, hard to navigate, and functionally impossible to use without hiring one of their ilk. Having researched the costs and difficulties (and chances) of getting a simple patent I feel confident in saying that applying for a patent without an attorney to assist 99.99% guarantees you will not get the patent. Or it will cost you as much as hiring a patent attorney in the first place, or you'll get the patent but the wording will not be 'just so' and it will give you no protection.
If an inventor can't get a valid patent for a (let's assume) perfectly novel and new invention on their own with reasonable cost and chance of success then the system is BROKEN. That's how it should be defined.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Considering that Google does software, for which the idea of patents is just ludicrous, whereas Apple does hardware, where patents are clearly much more applicable. To be honest, it would have been surprising if the two didn't disagree...
Apple certainly has had fun with patent whores in the past, but they usually come out on top or take care of the issue
And how much does "come out on top" cost? To Apple, not much. But the companies you never hear or care about it is the touch of death. **Every** one of the companies I've worked for have been dragged into court on patent and lame trademark cases, it has directly imperiled the operation of the company for no good reason other than to drive the small guy out of business.
How much does "taking care of the issue" cost Apple? Again, not something they are willing to share with anyone because then the price Apple or any other company for extortion becomes the new lowest dollar amount to settle for.
"Best for them" is certainly not best for the consumer or the hundreds of thousands of small businesses delivering innovative products.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Your message board analogy is correct, but only so far as the only problem we are trying to solve is the minority of trolls.
The problem is much bigger. There are patent trolls, but there are also well-meaning companies who get patents for things that they shouldn't (too obvious, etc.), and there is the ensuing escalation of patenting (if company X gets an obvious patent, then we need to file obvious patents also, to keep up and be defensive). In the view of many, the problem is not a minority of trolls or bogus patents, it's that the majority of patents are bogus, which buries the legitimate patents and creates a massive legal and economic burden all over society.
In your analogy, when a message board is over-run with trolls and worthless posts, such that it is difficult to even find the good content among all the fluff (basically every post gets accepted and promoted to the same visibility status), then yes a rethink of the entire message board structure is needed. Hence why slashdot has moderation. Only a small fraction of posts are considered "worthy."
Similarly, many of us believe the patent system is now so over-run with bad patents that it has be be thrown out, or at least wildly altered, so that the productive patents get the priority they deserve, whereas the massive number of bogus patents get ignored.
(So, the question comes down to a matter of degree... it all depends on what percent of patents you think are illegitimate.)
Luckily we are smart enough to know we are listening to corporate dogfish that are in it for the money. They are the reason for every incredibly ugly lawyer joke. Bottom line, the system sucks. Soon we are going to have patents covering the sounds of a song or the look of a picture so that no one can create that same sound or produce similar pictures.
Of course it is broken. Patents for real products made of real materials are one thing but patents for ethereal objects made from ideas are not valid and due to the complexity of software engineering it would be nearly impossible for a patent clerk to understand and apply all the rules of law accordingly. So, of course it is broken, because it is impossible.
What Microsoft and other patent holders are relying on is that the system that grants these don't have a clue about how to decipher them adequately in order to determine prior art or obviousness. The only saving grace is that the Supreme Court of the US adjusted the rules about how to determine those things granting a much broader examination across any industry.
The only other saving grace here is that the world is producing software at a much more rapid pace than Microsoft ever could and are ESTABLISHING a HUGE body of PRIOR ART. The end result will be patents that are easily over turned due to prior art and the obvious obiousness.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
More particularly, Netscape couldn't sell it's browser for $35 after a years trial when MS was giving away IE for free, and pre-installing it in new systems.
If you like VisualC++, all I can say is "That's a matter of taste, and my taste differs from yours". Actually, I barely ever used VisualC++, but I presume that it's like their VisualJ++ and like their VisualBasic, both of which I hated. IBM had a good IDE for Java (VisualAge), though. Pity they dropped it for Eclipse, as Eclipse still hasn't caught up to it. I've still got a copy, but it stopped running on Linux back during the days of Linux2.4.
FoxPro was, indeed, a good product before MS bought it. Superior I would call it. Pity MS decided to kill it. (Is even the remnant of it still viable?) I considered it far superior to MSAccess.
MS has frequently used it's monopoly position to kill superior products, even when it had to buy them to do so. In the case of FoxDB MS had trouble killing it even AFTER they bought the product. Users almost revolted. So they continued to sell it and stopped development and slowed maintenance to a crawl. I expect that by now they've finally managed to kill it. I saw the handwriting on the wall and looked elsewhere. But I had by then lost all delusions that MS had the good of it's customers as a significant consideration.
The US should not have to abide by the EU laws. Similarly the EU should not be coerced into following the US laws. When we see evidence that this is being done, we should be aware of the vile abuse of power that is occurring.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.