The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars

GMGruman writes "Bill Snyder warns that the tech patent wars are going nuclear, and could vaporize tech jobs in the process. He likens the situation to medicine, where so much money now goes to pay for insurance and 'defensive medicine,' rather than for actual care. In the tech world, he fears that the same will occur with patents, forcing companies to spend ever more money on patents and lawyers — and less on innovation and staff."

Comments

Dark side?

[Vectormatic]

is the a bright side then?

Re:Dark side?

[itchythebear]

Nope, the opposite side of "the dark side" is "the darker side".

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

is the a bright side then?

For the lawyers there is.

Re:Dark side?

[jimmydevice]

Came here to say THAT.

Re:Dark side?

[bunratty]

The bright side is that the people who innovated to make the patents are being compensated for their efforts. This is how patents motivate people to innovate. Would you prefer if Google could use other people's innovations without compensating them?

Re:Dark side?

[arth1]

The bright side is that the people who innovated to make the patents are being compensated for their efforts.

Are they, now? Please show me a list of wealthy inventors, and not just wealthy patent holders.

Re:Dark side?

[spikenerd]

Would you prefer if Google could use other people's innovations without compensating them?

Yes. I am an innovator. To build something truly useful, I must build upon the work of at least twelve others. If I have to pay royalties to them all, there's no way the royalties I collect will ever cover it. But I don't do it for the money. I do it because I am an innovator. I will innovate if I am compensate. I will innovate if I am not compensated. I will innovate even if I have to pay for the privilege of using my own brain. Google has demonstrated that they are (to some extent) of the same stock as me, and I think we'd all make more progress if we could pursue our passion to innovate without fear. If those who only innovate for money abandoned the game, that's okay with me--they are lousy innovators anyway.

Re:Dark side?

[maxwell demon]

Yes: It gives material for many Slashdot discussions. :-)

Re:Dark side?

[networkBoy]

Actually, once all the tech jobs are wiped out then there won't be any new tech to patent, and the companies will implode.
Once the owners of the patents all implode and the FSF owns all the patents, having bought them for haypennies on the dollar, tech inventers can resume inventing.

Since the patent minefield is such that nothing new can be made without stepping on at least one patent, the FSF can ensure any new megacorps have to enter a cross license. The end result is that the FSF will own or have a license for *all* tech patents. /dreaming
-nB

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, this is a crazy distinction. The problem is that inventions are commercialized by companies, not individuals. While individual inventors may receive something in the way of royalties or lump sum cash payments for either a license or assignment of an invention, the reason that companies either license or buy a patent is because they can receive more money than the cost of the license.

Second, a large number of the patents are the fruits of work of people employed by companies (the patent holder). These are exploited by the company and not the inventor and the inventor is compensated by the company as part of their standard compensation.

Re:Dark side?

[jhoegl]

You assume the tech patent holders care about what they leave in their wake.
If it implodes they will take their money and schemes elsewhere. Holy shit, just look at the pharma industry.
Have a heart condition that requires our pill to save your life? That will be $500 per pill, why that much? Because we can, and fuck you for living.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. For lawyers.

Re:Dark side?

[DragonWriter]

The bright side is that the people who innovated to make the patents are being compensated for their efforts.

Are they, now? Please show me a list of wealthy inventors, and not just wealthy patent holders.

GP said "the people who innovated to make the patents". That's the clever patent attorneys who made new and clever arguments as to why the invention was worthy of a patent, right? So he should be pointing you to a list of wealthy patent attorneys, not wealthy inventors.

Re:Dark side?

[bunratty]

Why do you assume compensated means wealthy? Compensated means gainfully employed. I can show you millions.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bright side is that it's great (and free!) entertainment.

Re:Dark side?

[MightyMartian]

+1 Sad But True

Re:Dark side?

[Darkness404]

No, innovation happens with or without patents, especially tech patents. Innovation happens when one of two things happen.

A) There is a problem and I want to fix it, so I fix it and then later show/sell my way of fixing it to others who are having the same problem.

B) A company is faced with competition that they can't compete with on cost so they need to make something better.

The thing is with patents is that you have to be so forward thinking in the concepts for any non-troll idea that unless you are a huge corporation and can pay the $$$$ to maintain your patent and protect against potential infringer that most likely by the time it is commercially viable for your idea to come to market, the patents will have expired. As a perfect example, look at the guy who patented the digital media player, who, since his project wasn't commercially viable in the early '80s, wasn't able to raise the money needed to continue work on it and renew his patent application. By the time storage levels had increased so a decent level to make his project viable, the patent had already expired.

Re:Dark side?

[arth1]

Why do you assume compensated means wealthy? Compensated means gainfully employed. I can show you millions.

That's not compensated. It does not adjust proportionally to the value of the inventions. Others are reaping the profits from the inventions.

By your logic, slaves were compensated, because they received room and board.

Re:Dark side?

[Necroman]

No, it has to do with recouping the costs of development and testing. Wikipedia has the estimated cost of producing a new drug in the US, which it says may be in the range of $55 million to $800 million (US). Different studies seem to disagree with one another about the costs.

Regardless, drug companies patent the drug prior to clinical trials. It can take up to 6 years in R&D to develop a new drug, and another 8 years in clinical trials (that's the clinical trial period for cancer drugs). Lets say they get their patent 2 years before starting clinical trials. That means they only have 10 years to reclaim their R&D costs until their patent runs out (patent length of 20 years). Once the patent runs out, generic versions of the drug can be made and the original pharma will make much less money on the drug. Plus you have to take into account how many people will be purchasing your drug when setting the price. If it was something like cold medicine, you can charge less since you'll get a ton of customers. Cancer and heart medication is going to have fewer consumers, which means higher costs are required to recoup the R&D and testing costs.

I don't disagree with you that pharma probably charge way too much for their drugs, but you have to keep in mind that the cost of bringing a new drug to the market is very expensive.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark"

Re:Dark side?

[0123456]

I don't disagree with you that pharma probably charge way too much for their drugs, but you have to keep in mind that the cost of bringing a new drug to the market is very expensive.

And that cost is almost entirely imposed by the government, so it could trivially be reduced by changing the laws.

Re:Dark side?

[Wovel]

Do you spend 100s of millions of dollars on research to formulate new ideas and then bring them to market? Would you be able to afford to do that in a world where everyone freely copied your ideas and took them to market preventing you from ever recovering investment.

Your message sounds nice, how about some concrete examples. Show off some of the inovations you are talking about. Your post is interesting philosophy. It doesn't actually say anything.

Give us 3 examples of the significant contribution to life , technology or even pure research that has come from your innovation. Show us how the 36 people you borrowed from all benefited as well. Note, for your model to work, you may not have any business relationship to an of he people you are working.

Re:Dark side?

[Billly Gates]

Thats BS

It did not cost taht much 10 years ago and no they do not do 5x as much R&D. Celebrex is as powerful as an asprin yet costs $$$$. Yet people seeing these commercials on TV want it and you and I both pay for it by our premiums. Fuck them.

They are price gouging and using patents to abuse their power. Their margins are well in the thousands of percents.

Re:Dark side?

[GrumpySteen]

Most of the costs imposed by the government are for things like trials to ensure that the drug works and doesn't kill people. Are you seriously suggesting we should just get rid of those and return to the days of snake oil sales?

Re:Dark side?

[hedwards]

Care to provide some sort of a citation for any of that?

Re:Dark side?

[cgenman]

Wouldn't it be great if most patents actually reflected 100's of millions of dollars of research?

In the industry where I work (video games) there are patents on
1. Playing 2 sounds at once when the player hits one button.
2. A big arrow pointing to where the player needs to go (the "Crazy Taxi" patent).
3. The entire idea of haptic feedback when applied to game controllers.
4. Changing the strength of an attack based upon how many enemies are clumped in an area.
5. Cloud-based gaming. All of it.

And there are literally thousands more, that cover every aspect of gaming from how you can score players to how you can monitor their inputs. Most of them are good ideas. All of them are obvious (Big Arrow pointing where you need to go). None of them took any actual money to develop whatsoever. And taken as a whole, they're grossly stifling.

If the patent system is to reach the original goal of protecting major investments in research, we need to get back to that. Because at the moment, the patent system just rewards people who file patents for anything, then sue everyone else.

Re:Dark side?

[Halo1]

Do you spend 100s of millions of dollars on research to formulate new ideas and then bring them to market? Would you be able to afford to do that in a world where everyone freely copied your ideas and took them to market preventing you from ever recovering investment.

It's called competition. Why don't lawyers ask for patents on court strategies? After all, by not doing so their peers can steal those strategies and win cases without paying the original inventor of that strategy a single penny. And yet the entire lawyer profession hasn't imploded yet due to no one being interested anymore in helping their clients to the best of their abilities even though everyone else can look at how they argued the case.

No two cases are identical, you say? You can't just "take an argument" from one court case and apply it to another? Clients also care about how your ability to talk to them to figure out where they come from, what their background is and the background of the other party, and how to puzzle all the pieces together in this particular case? In fact, the most valuable part of the services a lawyer provides is not whether or not he uses some special argumentation, but rather how he tailors everything to the current case and uses whatever is most appropriate under the circumstances? Lawyers build their cases based on precedents argued by their peers? And their innovations are an inherent part of their work that they have to do to be competitive and get good results, rather than something they only do to get exclusive rights to them and get other people to pay for the privilege of doing something similar? And innovating in arguing before a court is definitely not something they stop doing because most of it becomes public without them being able to get royalties for it later?

Maybe the lawyer profession isn't that inherently different from software development after all...

And yes, there is more than philosophical rhetoric: in general, patents are some of the least used and least valued tools to ensure competitiveness for software firms (see esp. slides 14 and 15). This has been shown time and time again both in the past and in the present.

The best quote I know of is still this one from Robert Barr in a hearing before the FTC (and Cisco most definitely invests hundreds of millions in R&D, so it even addresses your point literally rather than only generally):

My observation is that patents have not been a positive force in stimulating innovation at Cisco. Competition has been the motivator; bringing new products to market in a timely manner is critical. Everything we have done to create new products would have been done even if we could not obtain patents on the innovations and inventions contained in these products. I know this because no one has ever asked me ‘can we patent this?’ before deciding whether to invest time and resources into product development.

On the other hand, I am sometimes asked whether anyone else has a patent on a product or feature that we are considering. But, despite the fact that our products are independently developed, that we do not copy, I can never definitively ‘clear’ a product or feature, or determine the costs of licensing in advance.

I.o.w., he basically said the same as the GP.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you demonstrate how many patents required 100s of millions of dollars worth of research?

Concrete evidence please.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you spend 100s of millions of dollars on research to formulate new ideas and then bring them to market?

If you spent 100's of millions of dollars to research something that someone else did in their back yard, then you wasted all that money on those typewriters for the monkeys and are clearly Doing It Wrong.

Re:Dark side?

[Halo1]

Forgot to mention: Robert Barr was Cisco's Chief Patent Counsel at that time.

Re:Dark side?

[trout007]

First off the amount of money you spent on R&D has little correlation with the value of the invention. The market places more value on Snuggie for Dogs than millions in research spent on New Coke.

Take some industries that don't have IP such as restaurants and fashion. There is lots of innovation and money being made with no laws to protect ideas. In fact it speeds up innovation since all resources are brought to bear on staying innovative and not playing the legal game.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you spend 100s of millions of dollars on research to formulate new ideas and then bring them to market? Would you be able to afford to do that in a world where everyone freely copied your ideas and took them to market preventing you from ever recovering investment.

Dude, you're clueless. Think about this. If software patents had been allowed all along there would be no internet or software industry all those software patents are built on. Sliding windows, patented. A packet with a separate header and payload, patented. Using a destination port to indicate where a packet should go, patented. Using a source to know where to reply, patented. Adding an ack to return packets, checksum validations, using an urgent pointer, using a data offset to allow variable header sizes, adding padding to a header, using sequence numbers to indicate packet order, using a syn flag to resync packet sequence numbers, a finish flag, a reset flag, all patented. So that's 14 patents you'd have to pay royalties on just to send a TCP packet. I dare say all of these are far more innovative than a one click purchase or visual voice mail. I dare say the innovation in a TCP packet was genius to have stood the test of transforming from supporting half a dozen university computers connected to support the billions of nodes currently on the internet. Lets say they each want a 1/100 of a penny in royalties for each packet. That's more than reasonable for such genius and downright cheap compared to what they get these days. Yup. you're clueless.

Re:Dark side?

[Ster]

Profession, Isaac Asimov, July 1957

Full text (But the design of the site... the googles do nothing!)

-Ster

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

By your logic, slaves were compensated, because they received room and board.

I think you made his point for him. Just sayin...

Re:Dark side?

[DNS-and-BIND]

What the fuck is a haypenny? Some sort of agricultural redstate slang? Nobody knows what hay is, you ignorant redneck. Go back to feeding the livestock with antibiotics and molesting ruminants.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

I did "digital media playing" in the 80s all the time, it just wasn't as small and cheap and convenient as it is now. Therefore your example serves to show a problem with the system :)

Re:Dark side?

[Zinho]

Calm down, the writer you're referring to is simply misspelling a word he's only heard and never seen written.

Ha'penny is an abbreviation for "half penny", a coin worth 1/2 cent. According to a quick wikipedia check ha'pennies have been minted in Great Britain (including Ireland and Scotland), Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (probably not an exhaustive list). Half penny coins were also issued before decimalization (i.e. before a penny was 1/100 of anything, becoming a "cent"), with varied values.

What the poster you replied to probably meant was 1/2 pennies on the dollar, or purchasing for 1/200th of the original value. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, anyways. It makes me sad that neither of you apparently had someone teach you the nursery rhyme "Christmas is Coming", or else you'd know all this already (wow, I think I'm having a "get off my lawn" moment). And I don't know what's going wrong in your life that a simple misspelling leads you to lay the invective on that thick as a response, but I hope your day gets better.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Care to provide some sort of a citation for any of that?

"

sure

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many innovative ideas cost hundreds of millions of dollars? It could not be the vast majority, because if that were true nobody could afford anything because of the expense that was required to develop the product. Unless you are saying there are very few innovative ideas? In which case you should not have a problem with changes to law that would greatly reduce the number of patents.

Why should coming up with an idea first (or patenting it first) entitle you to exclusive rights anyway? If someone independently came up with an idea, I see no reason they should pay someone else for coming up with it first. Maybe a law to prove you indeed came up with the idea yourself would be better? And only apply it to ideas with a measurable expense of a certain amount (such an medical research requiring hundreds of millions of dollars.)

I think people should just accept that, for the most part, ideas are cheap and many of the truly innovative ideas are given away for free (see lots of academic research), so very little is deserving of protection.

Re:Dark side?

[pwizard2]

Many drugs that make it through the FDA process still end up harming people (Phen Phen, Vioxx, Accutane, etc. are just a few off the top of my head) so what's your point?

Re:Dark side?

[greg1104]

Well, the fact that Pfizer spends a lot of money advertising Celebrex shouldn't need any citation. They have ads on TV, in magazines, I see them all the time. And the sales reps they send to doctor's offices to convince them to prescribe the medicine aren't cheap staff either.

All that overhead is paid for out of the profits made from selling it at a high price. Pharma companies complain that drugs are expensive because they have high R&D costs. The way they turn around and spend giant amounts of money on advertising/marketing for them each year--all of which must drive up the cost too--should make you wonder just how much of that is true. The wild claim that the margins are "thousands of percents", that sounds a bit hysterical, but I wouldn't rule it out for some cheap to manufacture medicines protected by patents. I've seen an order of magnitude price drop going from a single source, patented medicine here, after the patent ran out and the generics hit the market.

And fact that people see those advertisements, ask their doctor to try the medicine, and sometimes then end up with an expensive prescription for it has to drive up average insurance costs for everyone to cover that prescription. That follows just from assuming the marketing they're doing works to any degree. If it didn't, surely they'd stop doing it. So Pfizer here is a) driving up the price of the drug through increasing overhead they presumably pass along via the sales price, and b) forcing everyone to pay for some of that by virtue of making people who may or may not really need the drug to "ask for it by name", as the old ad slogan goes.

Here's a true story about this particular medicine, which I can only offer as a unverifiable personal anecdote. I had a temporary injury once, at the age of 30, that it turned out Celebrex was just the thing for. My doctor ended up giving me a giant stack of the free samples his sales rep gave him on the last trip, long enough to last me until I was completely recovered a little over a month later. You see, he knew there was no way my insurance company was going to authorize a prescription for the medicine. He told me that they know once patients are prescribed Celebrex, they're often taking it for the rest of their lives. So he doesn't even bother trying to fight through all the necessary insurance paperwork unless someone really does need it indefinitely like that. He just takes some from the samples pile happily provided by Pfizer. First hit is free etc. (All of that paperwork I just alluded to is also an indirect cost of health coverage that only exists because the medicine is so expensive here.)

Re:Dark side?

[GrumpySteen]

That's the stupidest argument, yet everyone seems to use it online.

X isn't 100% perfect, so it's useless! Who cares if it saves 99% of the lives that would have otherwise been lost!

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a medical research institute and that is how the researchers feel. It's the patent body off the university that pushes for patents. Not those that actually do the work.

Re:Dark side?

[dbIII]

The higher cost within the USA of items developed and tested elsewhere, such as the HPV vaccine, shows that to be incorrect and confirms old fashioned price gouging on top of the real costs.
It's whatever the market can bear, and due to a fucked up health system where profit comes a long way before health your market can bear a lot.

Re:Dark side?

[thePuck77]

Statistically speaking, it's impossible to avoid a few bad drugs slipping through because of the large amounts of drugs that go through testing and the vast differences in individual human body chemistry. Nonetheless, the safety procedures are still significant and I would rather have them than not have them.

Re:Dark side?

[yacwroy]

Do you have links for those patents?

I'm just working on something related to one of those items.

Re:Dark side?

[CTachyon]

The bright side is that the people who innovated to make the patents are being compensated for their efforts. This is how patents motivate people to innovate. Would you prefer if Google could use other people's innovations without compensating them?

If anything, patents in the software industry cause innovation NOT by rewarding the company that holds the patent so that they will feel inclined to invent more, but by encouraging companies to patent the lowest-hanging fruit and forcing everyone else to invent workarounds as the patent owner lords over the market by charging exorbitant prices. Think of gzip, PNG, Vorbis, Tarkin, and to a lesser extent VP3/Theora and VP8/WebM, which were all developed in response to the patents on LZW and MPEG 1 through 4 because the licensing terms were greater than the market would bear.

Patents give their owners monopoly power, which ipso facto means that the licensing fees charged by the owner will never be at the free market price created by the intersection of supply and demand. Even the MPEG-LA consortium, which actually goes to the effort of trying to invent a "fair" price, doesn't have enough information to actually determine what the fair price would actually be in the absence of a monopoly, e.g. what the MPEG algorithms would sell for if they were a contractually-protected trade secret bought and sold on the open market (the scenario that patents were created to prevent).

Re:Dark side?

[cgenman]

1. The sound patent bumps into a bit of an ugly area that I have a history with. I'll just say to search for Konami based patents. And if you're working in this area, Harmonix and Activision too.
2. Crazy Taxi arrow patent - U.S. Patent 6200138. And yes, they've upheld this one over and over again.
3. The haptic patent is from Immersion, which covers vibration based feedback. There are some strange limitations and extensions here, (nintendo has a different vibration feedback patent, for example) so if this is your issue you might want to get a skilled lawyer and engineer in a room together. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_v._Sony.
4. This is a KOEI patent. http://www.patentarcade.com/2007/07/patent-us-pat-no-6729954-attack-power.html.
5. Cloud-based gaming patent. http://www.shacknews.com/article/66833/onlive-claims-patent-for-cloud.

I am not a lawyer. From my interactions with lots of patent lawyers, even they don't quite understand this stuff, so expect weird / odd / contradictory interpretations. In short, if you're not going to go to the expense of a head-on attack to get one of these invalidated, and you don't have patents of your own that you can use as counterfire, stay the hell away from anything patented.

I will also say, that these represent a very small fraction of the game-related patents out there. There are many, and many of them cover pretty mundane things. I believe Sony, for example, had a patent on feeding a camera's direct signal into a game world. And, of course, Namco has a patent on playing minigames while waiting for the main game to load (Ridge Racer). It's silly / crazy the stuff that has been patented.

Re:Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you prefer if Google could use other people's innovations without compensating them?

Yes. I am an innovator. To build something truly useful, I must build upon the work of at least twelve others. If I have to pay royalties to them all, there's no way the royalties I collect will ever cover it. But I don't do it for the money. I do it because I am an innovator. I will innovate if I am compensate. I will innovate if I am not compensated. I will innovate even if I have to pay for the privilege of using my own brain. Google has demonstrated that they are (to some extent) of the same stock as me, and I think we'd all make more progress if we could pursue our passion to innovate without fear. If those who only innovate for money abandoned the game, that's okay with me--they are lousy innovators anyway.

In my book that means you are scum stealing other peoples hard creative work.

Thats what happens when you patent mathematics.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats what happens when you patent mathematics.

After all, it is the base of all descriptive sciences, which is all computer science is.

MAD?

[Nidi62]

Mutually Assured Destruction for patent trolls? Yes, please!

Re:MAD?

[wren337]

Not hardly, since so many patent trolls aren't developing anything. You can't even sue them back for violating your patents, so mutual assured destruction breaks down.

Re:MAD?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have mutual destruction of patent trolls. Patent trolls don't make anything - their business is buying patents and suing companies who actually do make something. Until someone patents a business model of buying patents and suing companies, they won't be sued into oblivion.

Contrary to what you might think, companies like Microsoft and Apple and Google and Samsung and whoever else you may or may not like because they're using patents to sue other companies are NOT patent trolls. They actually spend time and money on R they create products; their main source of revenue is not lawsuits. They are not patent trolls, no matter how much you are against their proclivity towards suing other companies for patent infringement.

If you're going to use the term "patent troll", please put some effort into understanding what the term actually means.

Re:MAD?

[MightyMartian]

Which, at least as far as software patents goes, is meaningless. Software patents shouldn't be permitted... period.

Gee

[Osgeld]

you just now figuring that out, when no one can make tech goodies cause of being sued to oblivion, people dont work to put them together and maintain them

no fucking duh

Re:Gee

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they do. The only thing is, they do it in countries with saner patent laws...

The Dark side?

[lsolano]

Is there a bright side?

How is it comparable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tech industry has nowhere near the liability of medical companies. Fortunes rise and fall on the performance of a single molecule, and thus it is a closely guarded patent. People put it into their bodies. And unlike electronics manufacturers, it's the pharmaceutical companies' asses on the line if ANYTHING goes wrong, and they get sued by everyone down the line: distributors, shareholders, providers (anything from HMOs to individual doctors) and ultimately the customer.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[BBTaeKwonDo]

Now there's an arms race in the technology industry, with patents playing the role of ICBMs. "Patents are emerging as a new currency," Alexander I. Poltorak, chief executive of the patent licensing and enforcement firm General Patent, told the New York Times. "I've recently received several calls from financial analysts and bankers who want to know how to value patents and what does it mean."

I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying, but Mr. Poltorak clearly has a vested interest in a patent war, or at least fear of a patent war.

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it? I thought its selling point was that it was essentially free to carriers. The App Market can't be pulling in that much, can it? I feel like I'm missing something here.

Karma-whoring link to print version of TFA

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[deains]

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it? I thought its selling point was that it was essentially free to carriers. The App Market can't be pulling in that much, can it? I feel like I'm missing something here.

Advertising revenue, maybe? Google make their fair share out of developing Android OS, I think.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[arth1]

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it?

As any drug peddler knows, you need to push the product before you turn the screws.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[rufty_tufty]

"I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it?"
I'm not sure that's the issue. I'd be more willing to bet it is more to do with perceived future control of the platform.
Imagine there was no android and that there were no PCs, everything done through tablets, mobile phones, set top boxes games consoles etc. Assume they are all sufficiently well integrated that it would work too. What platform do they run? Their own proprietary OS? Windows? iOS? Either way without android either Apple of Microsoft therefore controls the whole experience. With an open option like Android at least there is room for other to play.
Look at it this way in a future where 99% of people don't own a PC because their tablet/phone/set top box does everything from gaming to web browsing then where is there for Linux? Suddenly your phone comes with Microsoft Mail reader bundled, so you don't install the gmail app. So you use your hotmail address instead of your gmail. So you could go to OpenGames.org,to get a game or you could just look at the games that your Microsoft Apps Market offers you.
Own the Platform and own the Market.

So as Google you have to defend android to give yourself room to move, the best way to defend it is to buy it.
Google already did that, now what? Pour money into it to expand the platform, done that.
If they don't defend Android against patents then it could become an impossible platform to develop for because as Samsung and others are discovering developing for Android gets you sued. So you stop targeting android and sign up for the only other game in town Windows. You're now back to the picture I painted earlier of controlling the Platform to get rid of your competitors. Microsoft is very good at this but as has been discussed before it is almost impossible to make a truly open piece of Android hardware because mobile devices are so varied and by their nature have to be. (see /. article earlier today)

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[DragonWriter]

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it?

Yes, it can, even if not directly. Consider how important the mobile environment is and the disadvantages Google's profit-making operations aside from Android would be if the mobile space was a virtual iOS monopoly. Google needs Android to stop someone else (the short-term threat would be Apple) monopolizing the mobile space and being able to charge rents to online service providers that want to reach mobile, like Google. It also is, much like Chrome is in the desktop browser space, a lever to move the mobile market, including offerings from other vendors, in a direction that better supports Google's online services (both current and what they'd like to provide in the future.)

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it? I thought its selling point was that it was essentially free to carriers. The App Market can't be pulling in that much, can it? I feel like I'm missing something here.

It's not a matter of how much they're making from Andriod. It's a matter of how much in damages they'd be liable for when they get sued for violating the patents that they could have purchased.

A big part of the patent wars is the acquisition of defensive patents, then once you have all these patents that keep you from getting sued you garner further value from them by going out suing others with your newly acquired 'assets'.

Unlike previous arms races between defense and offense, in the patent arms race the patent is both the big shield and the bigger stick.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[subsoniq]

Mobile Search is generating a lot of revenue for Google, and it's only going to increase. Having Android as the dominant mobile platform means a hell of a lot of search money for Google.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it? I thought its selling point was that it was essentially free to carriers. The App Market can't be pulling in that much, can it? I feel like I'm missing something here.

According to http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/14/technology/google_earnings/index.htm in 2010, they made about $1 billion on mobile advertising. Since Android has grown a lot since then, we can expect that they are making more now.

Sure, not all of that is directly from Android. But still. In general, Google earns about $24 per user for their online services. (http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/google-generates-6-times-more-revenue-per-user-than-facebook.html/ )

So, convincing users to be loyal to Gmail, Google search, etc. is definitely worth a lot to Google. Even if they only earn $10 per Android user, that is still a *lot* of money.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[greenbird]

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it?

This lack of understanding is exactly why we're in this patent mess in the first place. Google makes money by having eyes on the internet. Anything they do that increases the number of eyes on the internet makes Google money. Google makes money despite giving SO MUCH of what they have created (innovated) for free. Actually they pay money for people to use what they have created, bandwidth, servers, support systems, etc... Google is the perfect example of using the free market to make money rather than relying on government granted monopolies.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[greenbird]

I'm not sure that's the issue. I'd be more willing to bet it is more to do with perceived future control of the platform.

No, no, no. You're missing the point entirely. Google makes money by having eyes on the internet. Doesn't matter how those eyes get there. Windows, Lunix, iOS, Android? They don't care. All of these increase the number of eyes on the internet at any given time. Google loves a competitive smart phone industry. That competitiveness drives innovation, again increasing the number of people accessing the interenet. The danger that Android averts is a locked down system like iOS. Steve Jobs controls who can access what. That gives them the potential to keep all those smartphone eyes away from Google. Android headed off that problem because with viable competition it pretty much reduces the ability of Apple to lock down iOS. If it gets too locked down there are alternatives.

Unless Google gets taken over by a Jobs/Ballmer/Ellison'esque type I think you'll continue to see Google giving away the things that most companies view as things to patent and lock up.

Re:Never ask a barber if you need a haircut

[dbIII]

I feel like I'm missing something here.

Google are an advertising company. Nobody pays them for the frame of the billboards, just to put their advertisements where they can be seen.

Get on it

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference is that only a certain percentage of a population of sick people can go somewhere else. This isn't true with regards to tech companies.

Someone very high up in government better start caring about the effects of these trolls before our entire economy consists of cruise ships and booze. Not that this is entirely a bad thing, but I doubt the pay is all that great...

positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[RichMan]

From a systems perspective the system is designed to requrie a lawyer. And the lawyers are in control of that requirement.
Until negative feedback can be applied somehow this system is just going to keep on requireing more lawyers.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Groovus]

While the majority of innovation occurs in locations with sane approaches to the circulation of ideas.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

I'm a lawyer; are you going to shoot me? If so, are you going to do it to my face or are you going to shoot me in the back? Will you allow me to arm myself first, or will you eliminate your risk by making sure I'm unarmed? If I wrestle the gun away from you, do you think I am justified in shooting you with it? I'm really curious about your philosophy.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Unnecessarily literal minded, overly argumentative and verbose, completely missing the point, yup, you're a lawyer.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

So you're only going to figuratively shoot me with a .357 magnum? What is the .357 magnum a metaphor for?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[WhiteLudaFan]

Cost is a negative feedback.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[NixieBunny]

There's still time to get a non-lawyer job. Some of us actually invent stuff. I have no use for patents, as they seem to exist solely to give jobs to lawyers, and to induce large corporations to employ large numbers of lawyers.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Penguinisto]

Fer cryin' out loud - your UID says you've been online long enough to know about this phenomenon

Now all that said? Seriously - your profession does leave a whole hell of a lot to be desired, all things considered. So while I certainly do not condone the GP's proposed action, I can easily understand why he expressed the sentiments.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a metaphor for "you're a leech of society and you and your kind should disappear from it". Or you're just trying to justify your carrier choice and kid yourself into thinking that you have an honourable profession ? A bit like calling yourself a "exotic dancer" when you're just a stripper.

Plain and direct enough for you now ?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[arth1]

So you're only going to figuratively shoot me with a .357 magnum? What is the .357 magnum a metaphor for?

A Heckler & Koch HK416 semi-automatic rifle might be able to penetrate the selachimorphic skin.

Seriously, have lawyers really no imagination, and lack the ability to understand metaphors, exaggerations and understatements? All the more reason to rid the world of them.

To kill off all lawyers, what you need to do is make in unprofitable to be one. Many of the functions can be taken over by software, and the rest by public servants.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like someone who creates a false argument to mislead a conversation, or maybe you are just frustrated because you are in a line of work people dislike. People make comments like that because there are so many situations where lawyers make things worse. Lawyers, politicians, sales-people: all necessary, but when unchecked, they run amok. There is a small place in society, but they are all motivated in and skilled at making their space larger. Of course, there are good people with no bad intentions in all areas of society, hopefully you are one.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[arth1]

It's a metaphor for "you're a leech of society and you and your kind should disappear from it". Or you're just trying to justify your carrier choice and kid yourself into thinking that you have an honourable profession ?

Possibly trying to trip you into saying something he can sue you over?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." is a meme dating back to (at least) Shakespeare. Type "kill all " into Google and "kill all the lawyers" is the FIRST result. Perhaps society at large has felt for hundreds of years (and continues to feel) that your profession is a blight, a pox, a cancer on society. There's a REASON that most politicians tend to be lawyers: because they're snakes by nature.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh yes .... the old maximum of "everyone is american" and thus bound to the "american" legal system. Nop ... doesn't work that way!

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

No, in the back is fine. At range, so you can't wrestle the gun away. And you should be unarmed. Basically, we want to kill you in the way that Bond villains refuse to kill James Bond: directly, quickly, cleanly.

It's not personal. If life were a game of Nethack, I would use my scroll of genocide on lawyers.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

You sound like someone who creates a false argument to mislead a conversation

Well yeah, he's a lawyer. Lying is what he does for a living.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[trout007]

Since you are a lawyer you are already heavily armed. You have the complete police state and the monopoly of the legal use of the instigation of violence at your disposal. What? Did you think people comply with your insane laws and judgements for any other reason?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Or perhaps I was, you know, joking, to make a point?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, obviously you're also an American lawyer. If I were to kill you, it would seem an accident, tripped over your feet going down the stairs, fell of drunk from the balcony, accidentally swallowed a fork and knife so on.

No, I don't particularly hate lawyers. I'm actually joking, to kill someone I'd rather use rat poison.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Bob9113]

What is the .357 magnum a metaphor for?

Justice? :)

Look, we're tarring with a single brush, but it really isn't that broad. Fact is, your industry is doing serious damage to our society, and profiting from the damage. That is reasonable cause for some pretty serious backlash.

You may be innocent, you may be one of the good guys. Maybe you are working to fix the problem. Maybe you are not, but you have convinced yourself that being a part of the system does not mean you condone it. Maybe you work in a corner of law that is not quite so seriously screwed up by your kin. If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you.

If you want us to believe that lawyers, in general, are not worthy of society's scorn, well, simple fact is you are wrong, and it is not going to happen.

If you want us to express fondness for you, despite your profession, then you've got to tell us why you are not part of the problem. Same treatment you would get if you were a congressman or an Abu Ghraib guard.

This is how cultures deal with internal threats that cannot be easily handled through official channels. We ostracize them. You can get special dispensation, but you have to ask for it, and explain why you deserve it.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The .357 is a metaphor for shut the fuck up and find something useful to do with your life. Something that contributes to society, rather than the thing you do that makes it worse. It's easy. Hey, maybe you could go back to college and get an English lit degree. That would be way more beneficial, and, at the same time, you'd be able to understand figurative language!

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Owned.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. People will come to their senses once they think it through. Trying to kill lawyers will inevitably lead to a lot of court cases in the aftermath, and that won't help at all. It's kind of like trying to "solve the vulture problem" by "shooting vultures". That just gives them more carcasses to feed on.

So, I'm fully in support of simply handling any and all business without lawyers being involved at all. Starve them into extinction, or at least in order to keep them at a level of involvement on par with a nuisance pest rather than a plague, the latter being where we are rapidly approaching when it comes to software patents in the tech industry.

Look, I sympathize with your chosen profession, and I think it is even an important and honorable one in many if not most circumstances. We need lawyers. But I don't understand why you should be involved so much in society's business and paid SO MUCH more than people who also play critical roles in society, such as garbage men. It's gotten completely out of hand, to the point that more and more of our best and brightest people are going into law "for the money", and we're going to have more lawyers arguing over what should be done, what was done, and who should be compensated than people actually doing and creating things to improve society. The solution to the world's problems is not to write more complicated laws and hiring more lawyers to figure them out. We can't keep piling complicated law and legal concepts ever higher and expect ordinary people to make sense of it and abide by it. There are great accomplishments in law and its implementation over the last couple of centuries, but the legal profession is gradually becoming like a heavy tax on all businesses. At some point I suppose society can collapse and we can all go back to growing our own food and arguing as amateurs rather than hiring professionals. Until then, you're going to find that lawyers often are not very popular among ordinary people because they are the representatives of a problem that practically everybody recognizes and complains about: a world that is becoming TOO litigious when it comes to solving its differences.

Look, nobody's really suggesting we kill lawyers, but don't you ever wonder whether we will ever have enough lawyers involved in every aspect of society and if the cost is becoming a burden rather than a help? If you can admit that there may be a problem there, then I'm sure that people will also admit that they don't really want to hurt you. They just want things to change, because in many people's opinion lawyers are gaining too much control over the way that society is heading, to the point that lawyers are writing the rules and implementing them to their professional favor (i.e. that business *can't* occur without lawyers getting involved at high cost at every step).

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Wovel]

IANAL and I am not sure I understand the metaphor either. It was a very specific threat. First kill all the lawyers is one thing. Describing your means of doing so is going to another, more disturbing, level.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Wovel]

What have you invented? Please post it here. You are the second inventor on this thread who does not believe in patents. There was also on innovator. Share away, were listening.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[arth1]

IANAL and I am not sure I understand the metaphor either. It was a very specific threat. First kill all the lawyers is one thing. Describing your means of doing so is going to another, more disturbing, level.

I wasn't the one who brought up a .357 magnum. I only provided a tongue-in-cheek speculation on what a .357 magnum might be a metaphor for.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be a lawyer too, because you're really great at not answering the question. hey look, everyone - shakespeare!

"i wasn't really talking about shooting people. it was a metaphor!"
"for what?"
"uh...shooting people?"

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

Newp, I don't have to tell you a damned thing. I'm a lawyer because I got a degree and took a qualifying exam. You have no idea what I'm doing with my life; I could be tending lepers in the South Sea, bartending, working on a commercial fishing boat, etc. "Lawyer" just means I have a license.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

"It's not personal. If life were a game of Nethack, I would use my scroll of genocide on lawyers."

You would also kill yourself if you did that. It's like genociding a nurse.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Unwilling to relent when obviously outwitted. Definitely a lawyer.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Bob9113]

Newp, I don't have to tell you a damned thing.

Correct. That would be covered by this part:
"If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you."

You have no idea what I'm doing with my life

Umm, you said, "I am a lawyer." That is an expression of identity. Expressions of identity mean something to people in normal parlance.

"Lawyer" just means I have a license.

Don't be ridiculous. "I am a lawyer" means you are a lawyer. It is an expression of identity, and it has meaning. This is not a court of law, it is a discussion forum. Words mean what they actually mean here, not what weasels sharpen them into.

You are the one who introduced the fact that you are a lawyer. If you want to discuss that, we can. If you are now saying you do not want to discuss it, I completely understand.

If you are now saying that you are not really a lawyer in the common sense that is reasonably construed from "I am a lawyer", then there is nothing to discuss, and never was, except perhaps for your misrepresentation.

But to say, "I am a member of a justly ostracized class, and I don't want to be ostracized, and I will not tell you why" is utterly uncompelling.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

"But I don't understand why you should be involved so much in society's business and paid SO MUCH more than people who also play critical roles in society, such as garbage men."

Lawyers actually make, on average, about what most people with similar education levels make (and less than some) (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos053.htm#earnings). Even these numbers are inflated right now, standard starting salary for someone just out of law school (or after 7 years of higher education) is about 50k, though a lot of places it starts even lower, with 35k being standard for small firms that handle minor issues. I personally would have no problem lowering the amount many lawyers make; partners at large law firms are terribly overpaid, as are Federal government lawyers, but the average lawyer makes a middle-class living. But then other highly paid professional groups are also unfairly paid more than those garbage men -- doctors, software engineers, MBAs, etc.

"It's gotten completely out of hand, to the point that more and more of our best and brightest people are going into law "for the money", and we're going to have more lawyers arguing over what should be done, what was done, and who should be compensated than people actually doing and creating things to improve society"

Agreed. But the problem is if you are very good at the things that make a good lawyer -- communication skills, analytical reasoning, etc. -- there aren't really that many career paths open to you. Used to be that if you graduated with a liberal arts education you could start your way up the corporate ladder and end up an executive; nowadays corporations want to know what you can do NOW, and being able to knowledgeably discuss history or politics or literature is not one of those things. And as a lawyer I am continuously surprised how often people insist on trying to get us involved in things that don't need a lawyer. And you'd probably be surprised how often a lawyer will plead with their client not to sue over something because it's just not worth it.

There are many really obnoxious lawyers--I have to deal with them. Law school frequently attracts borderline sociopaths. My problem with the mentality of the average slashdotter is they criticize the wrong things. Law isn't some secretive guild where we all meet to discuss how to destroy society. There is a huge backlash in the legal field against the ABA right now because they have adopted policies that are flooding the market with too many lawyers. There are plenty of things to criticize about the legal field, but the average slashdotter comes off as a mouth-breathing yokel, the uneducated dirt farmer with a shotgun in front of his shack threatening to shoot the guy from the bank trying to repossess his farm, on this issue.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

You don't really understand the meaning of the word. "Lawyer" has a legal meaning; licensed to practice law. That's pretty much it. A guy who has been cleaning stables for 50 years but maintained his license is a lawyer. A guy who researches and writes for a law firm is not if he failed the bar.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

Yes, those murder and manslaughter laws are completely unreasonable.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you sure don't have to tell us anything. But the price for that is that you will be subjected to comments like the one you originally objected to. It's your choice.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[trout007]

Good job finding two laws that were in existence for 10,000 years and attributing them to the current legal system.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Bob9113]

You don't really understand the meaning of the word. "Lawyer" has a legal meaning;

You are being deliberately obtuse. This is not a meeting of the bar association, it is a public discussion forum. If your intent is to recant your initial statement, because you did not realize this was not a meeting of the bar association, I will not fault you for it.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

You would also kill yourself if you did that. It's like genociding a nurse.

But I would cleverly polymorph myself to another race before the genocide, thus sparing myself.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Deliberately (and theatrically) obtuse is in his job description. That's what his original complaint against my (humorously intended) ".357 magnum negative feedback" was, and what his arguments against you continue to be. You're just "wrasslin with a tarbaby". He'll continue to parse nits and play word games with you all day. He's done more to prove my "lawyers are parasitic lying scum" thesis than I could. My advice to you is to let him have the last whiny lying weasel word and move on with your day.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a huge backlash in the legal field against the ABA right now because they have adopted policies that are flooding the market with too many lawyers.

I can tell you're lying again because your lips (and fingers) are moving. The "huge backlash" is because making yet more lawyers would reduce the hourly rate of those already practicing. You really can't stop being disingenuous, even for a minute, can you?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[SleazyRidr]

I have a licence to drive a car, but I don't come on forums telling people that I'm a "driver".

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Kupfernigk]

I am going to intervene to make an obvious point. You are wrong. Laws against murder and manslaughter are quite recent. Before that you had blood feuds and honor killings. Lawyers are the reason that legitimate companies settle disputes in court while the mob and drug dealers use guns. They are why most people in the developed world (and a majority of Americans) don't need to know how to kill intruders. In many countries, like Apartheid South Africa, lawyers are often heroes in defence of civil rights.

The problem in the US is bad laws.

I am not a lawyer, I don't even pretend to be on the Internet, but I think it is significant that my family includes computer scientists, engineers and lawyers. We all seek to create order out of chaos.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

Post under your slashdot nickname, coward.

The number of lawyers on the market has no effect on the hourly rates of those practicing because the new graduates don't compete with the older ones, and unless they are one of the tiny minority able to get into a law firm partner track they never will. If it did we would already noticed a big drop in hourly rates because of the huge increase in law graduates over the past 10 years. Hasn't happened.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

So the .357 magnum is a metaphor for an H&K HK416 semi-automatic rifle?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a metaphor for a gaziebo!

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[jafac]

From a systems perspective the system is designed to requrie a lawyer. And the lawyers are in control of that requirement.
Until negative feedback can be applied somehow this system is just going to keep on requireing more lawyers.

I think I remember an old "Sliders" episode where they visited an alternate earth, where Lawyers were required to wear pistols, and shoot-it-out to resolve legal disputes.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[arth1]

So the .357 magnum is a metaphor for an H&K HK416 semi-automatic rifle?

Obviously not. Because you appear to be too thick, too sue-happy or too something else to get the point, and without claiming to speak for the OP, let me in on a little secret: It's not about weapons, it's about a strong feeling of animosity towards lawyers in general, and on the subject of patents in particular, where some feel that the greedy lawyers (but, I repeat myself) is the main reason why there is a problem. As such, you can say that the .357 magnum and HK-416 is a metaphor for a wish to see your profession obliterated.

Did that make things clearer, or are you going to respond with more of your deliberate misunderstandings in order to troll more?

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[nomadic]

Oh, stop whining you little baby, I was confronting the odious, snarky reaction of "waah I don't like these people so I'm going to kill them." It wasn't a metaphor about killing "the profession" and you know it.

Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

The system does not require a lawyer. You do not need a bar licence or a law degree to file a patent or a civil claim in the United States.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that "lawyers are in control of that requirement" beyond what I clarified above but in case there is any confusion, article 1 section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants the congress with the power to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Sounds like voters and perhaps lobbyist are the core influence over granting or removing the power and authority of the U.S. patent system and perhaps international patent treaties, still don't see where the lawyer fits in.

The US patent system certainly has flaws but the assertion that somehow we would have more tech jobs and innovation without patents seems disproportionately supported on slashdot perhaps due to the successes of the opensource community, IMO, this is a reflection of the communities distorted perception, bias and perhaps a lack of intellectual integrity on a subject where slashdot should be an authority.

This is what happens.

[TheSpoom]

This is what happens when businesses and government consider "intellectual property" to be a great base for an economy.

Re:This is what happens.

[Herkum01]

This is what happens when LAWYERS put themselves up as middlemen for everything in the economy.

Re:This is what happens.

[kellyb9]

This is what happens when businesses and government consider "intellectual property" to be a great base for an economy.

Why wouldn't they think that? Seems like there's a lot of people making a lot of money in litigation.

Re:This is what happens.

[Billly Gates]

Yeah great Chinese economy.

If I were a phone maker I would be tempted to charge 5x as much as I would for the same phone in Asia where I do not have to worry about I.P. If Apple wants billions just to exist in the US. I would leave the US market as the fixed costs would not be worth it. I would then hire only Asians because of IP threats on operating on US soil.

Something needs to be done

Re:This is what happens.

[purpledinoz]

This is really a small part of a huge problem in America, and the rest of the world. Although I can see the case for patents, the system has become so corrupted, that it no longer serves its original purpose. It is now a tool to stifle innovation, restrict competition, and funnel wealth to the wealthiest. Companies have to put more and more resources are being put into non-productive purposes. Instead of hiring 1000 more people, they have to hire 50 lawyers to fight patent suits. America is turning into a country of lawyers and bankers, who are leeching off the hard-working people who actually make something real. What really pisses me off is that these leeches are the wealthiest people in the world.

WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have thought of that!!!!!111eins

*facepalm*

Fix your patent system

[oobayly]

Seriously guys, it's starting to contaminate the rest of the world.

Re:Fix your patent system

[Anonymous Coward]

As the U.S. starts to lose it's grip, I think it's more likely we'll strangle ourselves and be ignored as we bitch about how everyone is violating our patents. China seems to have already figured this out.

Re:Fix your patent system

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no starting about it.

There is no dark side of the tech patent wars...

[hyp3rhippo]

Its all dark.

Surprisee surpriseee

[unity100]

No different than feudalism. Most of the lords' resources and time were being spent on undoing other lords or defending their rights. And people got shafted during the process.

Patents are no different than intellectual feudalism. Claim a piece of land, and you can just suck blood off of anyone who enters on it to do anything on it by extorting money.

patent holders are the lords, and lawyers are their enforcers. all hail new intellectual feudal overlords.

Re:Surprisee surpriseee

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one do not welcome our new intellectual feudal overlords.

Re:Surprisee surpriseee

[hitmark]

Bah, just say it as it is: Corporations are feudal fiefs by a different name.

Re:Surprisee surpriseee

[unity100]

well, and concisely said.

Re:Surprisee surpriseee

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, do not welcome our new patent overlords

No that can't be right

[Nethemas the Great]

Patents are supposed to foster and support innovation. Everybody knows that.

Re:No that can't be right

[LWATCDR]

Patients can and do support innovation. The thing is that like everything else they can abused and some patients should never have been awarded.
Software and process patients didn't exist for the a long time. That changed in the 1990s and that is when things got nuts. Before then you used copyright to protect software which to me is logical.
You can look at software patients from two sides.
Take VisiCalc for instance. It was the first spreadsheet for microcomputers and some say the first at all. Had their been software patients VisiCorp would still be around and it would be huge. The down side is that we wouldn't have Excel. Would VisiCorp kept improving their product if no one else could have made a spreadsheet? Actually they might have. They could have also just offered licenses for a reasonable amount. Maybe 3%. If so they would have collected $15 from every Lotus 123 sale and goodness knows how much from other software makers. I am sure that the author of Visicalc would have been very happy to have had patient protection.
While I am anti patients I will say I can see why some would really like them and it isn't just all mega corps.

Re:No that can't be right

[trout007]

You are confusing your magical utopia where everything works perfectly according to you and the real world.

Re:No that can't be right

[Wovel]

Having used all these products. You just made a very strong case for Software Patents.

Re:No that can't be right

[Nethemas the Great]

There is nothing intellectually different between a physical item and virtual item (hardware vs. software). A difference is trying to be manufactured for the sake of legal leverage against laws written back in the time when everything was "physical". The exact same bullsh*t is taking place in the physical world with regards to patents as there is in the virtual one. It is a grave societal injustice that we have to waste our resources inventing new solutions to old and solved prerequisites before we can get down to the business of original innovation. It is a grave societal injustice that we have to waste our resources conquering legal hurdles and defending against legal invasion instead of devoting it to original innovation. It is a grave societal injustice that brilliant minds are squandered because they cannot surmount the financial roadblocks of intellectual property law necessary to being original innovation. The shackling of technological innovation has long been one of humanity's greatest sins and it is a stain that must be cleansed utterly.

Re:No that can't be right

[robot_love]

Patients can and do support innovation.

No, they don't.

At least, that's what the evidence seems to say. Here's some reading on the matter:

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

Re:No that can't be right

[LWATCDR]

Well on a side note if you want to see what Visicalc was like http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm
You can download it free legal. It still runs and is still a useful tool Its also only like 27k!

Re:No that can't be right

[CBravo]

Adding 1+1 is mathematically very different from the physical design (e.g. putting two things next to each other like 2 apples, 2 magnets or 2 elektrons).

Physically there are two things: the result and and the way that result was obtained.

Mathematically there is only one thing: the result. Software is a way that result can be calculated and it is already protected by copyright.

Software patents are not software patents but mathematical patents claiming to be software patents.

Re:No that can't be right

[Nethemas the Great]

An algorithm is no different than a mechanism. An algorithm is required to obtain a result, a mechanism is required to obtain a result. The objective of an algorithm is the result, the objective of a mechanism is the result. Your argument does not follow logic. Rebranding an algorithm as "mathematics" does not change the argument. Let's take dividing an item into two equal parts. You can take a hydraulic press with a knife attached to the end that when actuated can divide an object by two or you can move the object by conveyor through a rotating saw. Or, let the object be represented by symbol "x" and express the division as: f(x) = y ; this function may be implemented as (x / 2 = y) or ((x - 3) >> 1) + 1) . There is no intellectual difference between a hydraulic press with a knife and (x / 2 = y), nor is there one between a conveyor and circular saw and ((x - 3) >> 1) + 1). You're still dividing something by two. One set of solutions applies to the physical world, the other the virtual. Each with their pros and cons, as well as ideal applications. Each an expression of intellectual innovation.

Re:No that can't be right

[CBravo]

Your logic is failing you here:

An algorithm is no different than a mechanism. An algorithm is required to obtain a result, a mechanism is required to obtain a result.

An apple is a fruit, a pear is a fruit. They are no different?

I would say that copyright is enough to cover

(x / 2 = y)

or

((x - 3) >> 1) + 1)

. I presume the copyright is long gone. But to say that a mathematical formula is a mechanism: There is no intermediary so you cannot call it a mechanism (and please don't confuse math with how math is implemented on a cpu).

yes but no one proposes

[nimbius]

to use atomics here, its punishable by planetary annihilation. Besides, theres the spice melange to consider, and so long as the houses remain to gather it in service to CHOAM...

what...theres a good parallel here.

Re:yes but no one proposes

[sconeu]

The patents must flow....

Overreacting

[Bob9113]

Look, just because one of the world's most powerful companies tried to create new mobile products, and wound up having to pay $12.5 billion to be allowed the privilege is no reason to overreact. You see, $12.5 billion barriers to entry are good for innovation. Massive government fiat barriers to entry encourage entrenched incumbency, and entrenched incumbents are very inventive. Just look at the iPod and iPhone. Both of those devices are being produced by a company that is now the entrenched incumbent in the space, so it must have been an entrenched incumbent that invented them. Q.E.D.

Re:Overreacting

[Billly Gates]

Overeacting?

Did you see what Apple did to Samsung in Europe? They can't even enter the market because it has rounded edges and is rectangular?? Whats next Ford claiming having 4 weels is a right only Ford can have? Or a steering wheel on the right.

Since video standards require rectangular screens you can not have a round screen. Amazon also owns 1 click. That is not fair since Windows/Mac standardized on one click so I have to pay a patent fee for someone elses OS that has nothing to do with Amazon.

This is getting insane! I would say it is time we protested and let our politicans know this has to change. Email EFF or IEEE. I am not sounding extreme if you have been reading slashdot these past 2 months. It is a hazard to do business in this toxic environment where even the fonts being rendered on your screen to read my posts are owned by someone else that can sue you.

Re:Overreacting

[Bob9113]

Slashdot needs a 'sarcasm' tag.

Read the last sentence of my post again:

Both [the iPod and iPhone] are being produced by a company that is now the entrenched incumbent in the space, so it must have been an entrenched incumbent that invented them. Q.E.D.

'zat a little more obvious now?

My statement that $12.5 billion barriers to entry enhance innovation was meant to be equally obviously sarcastic. Barriers to entry are specifically interesting in economics because they cause the market to distort away from competition -- one of the chief advantages of competition is innovation. So barriers to entry are inherently harmful to innovation, and can only be justified by significant tangible counteracting benefits -- which many, including myself, would argue are not apparent in rapidly advancing technical spaces like mobile devices.

Patents vs. India.

[geekmux]

"Bill Snyder warns that the tech patent wars are going nuclear, and could vaporize tech jobs in the process.

Uh, "could" vaporize? Outsourcing has likely vaporized far more US tech jobs than any patent ever will.

Re:Patents vs. India.

[organgtool]

Outsourcing killed manufacturing jobs while leaving engineers relatively unscathed. However, the patent bubble WILL cost engineers their jobs. I'm not trying to be condescending or start a pissing contest on the importance of manufacturing jobs versus engineering jobs, I just think it's important to make the distinction so that the issue can be planned accordingly.

Re:Patents vs. India.

[HiThere]

Wouldn't bet on that. It will, however, probably be impossible to disentangle the effects. There's a synergistic combination.

E.g., As tech jobs are outsourced, more tech innovation evolves in the countries to which it was outsourced. (There's a time delay here, but it's probably not much more than a decade.) And it *might* have happened anyway. Anyway, these new innovators patent things where it's most profitable to do so. (This probably means the US, but it can also include other places. N.B. that innovators here doesn't refer to individuals, who probably can't afford US patents, but to the local companies that hire them.) The things don't even need to be patentable locally, in fact if they aren't, then local innovation will be faster. So they get the benefits of patents without the drawbacks.

Compare this to US copyright law before the 1970's, when a work published outside the country before being published within the country did not have copyright protection within the US. There are both similarities and differences.

Re:Patents vs. India.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone whose father works for a call center, let me just say: "Thanks for putting me through college, guys!"

Re:To hell with the war on Terror

[arth1]

(common sense and decency in the case of lawyers)

Now that's an even better oxymoron than military intelligence and Microsoft Works.

Also

[carrier lost]

...forcing companies to spend ever more money on patents and lawyers

Not to mention the amount spent on lobbyists and politicians to NOT fix the problem.

Lawyers, MBAs and Marketing People

[methano]

The USA is run by lawyers, MBAs and marketing people. The fix we're in is exactly what you would expect, given who is in charge. From now on, I'm only voting for scientists and engineers. Liberal ones only, of course.

Re:Lawyers, MBAs and Marketing People

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are you getting the MBAs and marketing people? I don't see those types elected or employed by the US government.

Re:Lawyers, MBAs and Marketing People

[Anguirel]

Who do you think runs the campaigns? The politician you elected?

Re:Lawyers, MBAs and Marketing People

[greg1104]

I thought the US was being run by liars and thieves, which you can find in any profession. The system is impossible to break as it's constructed right now for reasons more fundamental than the sleaze and past jobs of its current practitioners. To get into office, you need an expensive marketing campaign to gather votes. To get enough money for an expensive campaign, you need donations. And to get donations, you have to make promises and look out for the people who sponsored you after you're elected. That's the loop that needs to be broken before non-career politicians can hold office.

If I were to pick a single criteria for who I'd like to vote for, it wouldn't be "scientists and engineers"--it would be "didn't accept any campaign bribes". But without those, you can't afford the marketing needed to win an election.

most of the patents are in consortiums

[alen]

this is how everyone makes blu ray players or apple breaks into the cell phone market. you pool your patents into a consortium, cross license and for every device you sell you pay a fee back into the consortium that gets paid to all the members. just like the wifi consortium

a lot of these lawsuits have nothing to do with networking but with things like memory management and camera software. if apple or HTC doesn't want to pay kodak they should just write their own algorithms

Re:most of the patents are in consortiums

[0123456]

if apple or HTC doesn't want to pay kodak they should just write their own algorithms

So what happens when they do write their own algorithm and then some troll climbs out from under the bridge and says 'no, that's no good, I patented adding numbers together on a computer, you owe me a bazillion dollars'?

Re:most of the patents are in consortiums

[Urkki]

if apple or HTC doesn't want to pay kodak they should just write their own algorithms

So what happens when they do write their own algorithm and then some troll climbs out from under the bridge and says 'no, that's no good, I patented adding numbers together on a computer, you owe me a bazillion dollars'?

Now that's just unfair example. I think there's prior art on that from the '60's. The troll would need to innovate to get a patent, he'd need to patent something like "adding numbers together on a mobile computer". It's not like you can patent just anything, you have at least combine words in a new way...

Re:most of the patents are in consortiums

[Anonymous Coward]

if apple or HTC doesn't want to pay kodak they should just write their own algorithms

Many of the patents cover stuff that's required for compatibility with the rest of the world. Unless you're really, really huge, you really can't develop your own standard for optical media for movies, or for a wireless protocol or whatever, and expect to have a foothold in the market. You have to use the patented tech.

Another similar issue is with patents that are broad enough that it's pretty hard implement a conceptually similar thing even in a different way (better or worse) without stepping on the patent. I'm more or less okay with patents for tech that allows the developer of said tech to do something just better (say, better font antialiasing) without preventing others from making workable, compatible systems and figuring out their own ways of doing things or their own ideas giving them a competitive edge. But you really shouldn't have to pay in order to be compatible.

malpractice objectivity questioned

[arpad9]

To be clear, take it for what it's worth but the malpractice data is sourced from Stanford which relies on opinions and research from the Hoover Institution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Institution) a Conservative and Libertarian think tank. If ideology filled rhetoric is to be propagated, it should at least be identified. Similarly, I feel that Bill Snyder is tainting his perspective with a Conservative anti-small business, pro-corporate ideology. Patent law exists to protect smaller businesses from larger ones (not to empower patent trolls) and mergers and layoffs happen irrespective of patent holdings for the enrichment of the top tier of financiers.

Re:malpractice objectivity questioned

[randyleepublic]

>> Patent law exists to protect smaller businesses from larger ones
Uh, no. Patent law exists to encourage people to publish their inventions so that others may use them. In other words patent law is only doing its job if it is encouraging progress. If it is discouraging progress, it is not doing its job and needs to be modified or eliminated.

Re:To hell with the war on Terror

[Penguinisto]

...wouldn't it be easier to simply bar them from ever becoming an elected official of any kind outside of the judiciary branch (for federal, state, local, etc)?

Mod parent up

[RingDev]

Individuals like you give me hope for the future of our species and a strong desire for mod points.

-Rick

Defensive medicine / patents

[Tony Isaac]

If medical malpractice insurance is the author's example of Armageddon, then things could certainly be worse.

According to mymedicalmalpracticeinsurance.com, malpractice liability insurance for a general surgeon in Texas is in the neighborhood of $50-60K per year. That is a very small percentage of the total income from all of the surgeries done by that surgeon. Other types of physicians have different rates, but they all amount to a similar small percentage compared to the total fees for services rendered. The cost of malpractice insurance cannot by itself be blamed for the high cost of medicine.

The patent wars ARE a problem, and the patent system DOES need an overhaul (as does the medical malpractice system). But it's nowhere near approaching catastrophe or forcing mass layoffs of programmers.

Re:Defensive medicine / patents

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's double that for an ER doc who only makes about 250k a year... now factor in taxes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans and tell me how malpractice insurance is not so bad?

Re:To hell with the war on Terror

[arpad9]

I suggest the movie, "Hot Coffee." The Tort Reform Bush/Rove talking point should be recognized and citizens shouldn't be eager to give up their defensive options.

Where's Florian Müller?

[munozdj]

It's so common to find him in patent-related articles that I'm starting to miss him... What's happened to you, /., a sudden change of mind?

He's just now figuring this out???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bill Snyder warns that the tech patent wars are going nuclear, and could vaporize tech jobs in the process."

Not terribly on the ball if he is just now figuring this out...

How is this a prediction?

[bickle]

Wow, what a visionary. Other predictions include: the world economy may start to show signs of weakness,the Middle East will become an area of political unrest, and computers will become commonplace.

These and other predictions can be found in 'The Big Book of Things That Are Already Happening'.

This might have been noteworthy years ago, but this is pretty commonplace in the here and now.

Here's a list off of the top of my head

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Wozniak - Apple Computer.
Kramer? - the dude who invented that two wheeled electric scooter thing that mall cops use. He has a lot of inventions that made him rich.
Raymond Damadian - inventor of the MRI. Kicked GE's teeth in when they tried stealing it from him - thank GOd for Patents otherwise GE would have gotten away with stealing the idea and benefitted for free Ray's years of research and all of his own money he spent developing it.
The inventor of Sky Vodka - serial inventor and his patents allowed him to continue to finance other inventions.

Contrary to what many folks believe around here, patents are quite beneficial to inventors and do in fact promote innovation - real innovation.

"Intellectual Property" is an oxymoron

[trout007]

The whole concept of property is the ownership of a particular scarce resource such as land or object. The main word is scarce. It is something that your use precludes me using it. If you eat my cake I can't eat it. If you build a something on my land I can't build in it's place.

Ideas are not scarce. In fact they are the exact opposite. Ideas can be copied infinitely without destroying any copies.

The phrase "Intellectual Property" is an attempt to claim an idea is property which it can never be.

You have to recognize patents for what the are. Government granted monopolies on ideas. They should be eliminated. Great ideas have a natural monopoly based on how much of a technological leap they are because it takes the competition time and money to catch up.

Re:"Intellectual Property" is an oxymoron

[HiThere]

At one point this made sense, because the patent required the effective disclosure of the idea, including how to implement it. Sufficient that "one skilled in the art" could reproduce the invention. And also because there were only a few people working on developing any particular area.

Now, however, patents are designed to be incomprehensible to anyone but patent lawyers, inventors are cautioned to avoid reading existing patents, because if they have a chance of understanding what the patent is about they are subject to triple damages, even if they thing they've avoided it...as long as the patent holder's lawyer can convince the court that they didn't avoid it. And there's LOTS of people working on every feasible idea (and lots that aren't feasible).

Currently the only domain in which patents make ANY sense is where there are extensive up-front costs to development. Even there, the diminished requirement for effective disclosure makes their desirability quite questionable. Yes, they are desirable to the patent holder (in such a case), but it's not at all clear that they are in the public interest. There needs to be EFFECTIVE DISCLOSURE before patents are *ever* in the public interest.

Re:"Intellectual Property" is an oxymoron

[Paul Fernhout]

Great points. In general the idea of "artificial scarcity" through patents and copyrights is becoming immoral in the 21st century, IMHO. Richard Stallman talks about how copyright was not such a bad bargain when copies were hard to make. Now that copies are easy to make, copyright makes a lot less sense. Patents are a somewhat different issue because they are shorter, and 3D printers are still under initial development, but some of the same logic applies. In general, we need to stop funding creation of digital works through a lottery model of success (a few big winners). And as people point out, copyrights and patents are now slowing down innovation. Who can make a cell phone when it infringes on 200,000 patents? Who has time to negotiate that? We need to move beyond that model, A basic income can support inventors, as can a gift economy, or better government planning, or inventors printing consumer good for themselves via 3D printing or advanced robots. A different world is increasingly possible. A related site I made: http://artificialscarcity.com/

No Fast Paced Development w/o Patents

[BoRegardless]

If we didn't have patents, few companies would innovate and there would be little reason to spend the tons of money to develop the infrastructure and retail cell phone handsets.

After all, we have all those nice sturdy 5 pount black MaBell rotary dial phones. What else do we NEED!

People who might be bitching about losing a job (at HP, RIMM for instance or MotoM) merely decided to work for a company that decided to follow rather than diligently keep up or LEAD. In some cases they seem to have ignored the factual information coming from both engineers and the marketplace on both hardware speed and ecosystem, in the case of HP.

These things are NOT the fault of the patent system. They are the fault of top management and key engineering decisions.

Re:No Fast Paced Development w/o Patents

[quacking duck]

I wasn't lack of patents that held progress back, Bell had a government-granted MONOPOLY on the taxpayer-funded phone system, to the point where phones had to be rented from Bell itself. Then when 3rd party phones started becoming available, Bell argued they shouldn't be allowed to connect because it might damage the phone network. The telecom space was not free-market by any stretch.

Re:No Fast Paced Development w/o Patents

[Kartu]

Obviously companies would still innovate, to create better products and hence better sales.
Your point about Bell is about monopoly, not patents.

Re:No Fast Paced Development w/o Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, lets do a thought experiment. Apple has NO intellectual property protection of any kind. Anyone is free to build a copy/counterfeit iphone. What will happen?

Most people who want one will buy a real iphone instead of the copy. Why?

- Because of the brand prestige
- Because of access to the Apple App Store
- Because the copies might not work as well as the original
- Because they're rabid Apple fanboys with no sense of proportion

In fact, this is not far from the real world. Clone iphones exist in China and some Android phones are pretty close. But people who want an iphone generally buy one. I don't think Apple's innumerable lawsuits influence their decision very much. The availability of Android "copies" may influence a few people. But, to use the inevitable car analogy, BMW, Mercedes and Lexus can all exist together without the need for nuclear war. Each one has it's own customer base and relies on excellence and image to win over the others.

The only reason people would STOP buying like this is if Apple rested on their name and stopped innovating and producing superior (or at least competitive) products. So Apple has an incentive for innovation that has nothing to do with IP protection and everything to do with sales and technical excellence.

Patents are a bad idea in a fast moving market. And most markets are fast-moving these days--cars and phones alike.

Re:To hell with the war on Terror

[AlphaLop]

Actually, there was supposedly a "Missing" 13th amendment precisely with that in mind.

I don't know how accurate it is but here is one of many links that come up when you google search for banning lawyers.

http://www.constitutionalconcepts.org/13thamend-%20facts.htm

If true, I really wish that one would have been ratified.

P.A.D.

[ThatsNotPudding]

Patently Assured Destruction

The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars

[assertation]

"The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars"

Isn't that like writing

"The Dark Side of Adolph Hitler"?

tense matters

[kermidge]

Why is Mr. Snyder using the future tense?

Much of which he speaks is happening and has happened. The extrapolated trend seems.... obvious - just as so many patents do.

Well, many times, years ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you so. 8-|

If you think iguide has to meny ad's now

[Joe_Dragon]

If you think iguide has to many ad's now just wait for the google iguide HD with 30% more space for ad's only on digital cable

Re:This is what happens. Larry

[hierophanta]

Do you see what happens, Larry? Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?! [Proceeds to smash up what he wrongly believes is Larry's new Corvette] This is what happens, Larry! This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!

Fall Of The Empire

[WarwickRyan]

Between the best minds in the US being sucked up by the parasites in Wall Street and massive numbers increase in the number of law students (*) it really does look like the Empire is in the middle of its last greed-fuelled explosion, close to the point of spectacularly imploding in upon itself. Only the decay will likely be slower more insidious than that.

Time to move to Brazil.

(*) http://blueprintprep.com/lsatblog/law-school-admissions/big-law-we-have-a-problem/

Hope?

[morgauxo]

The pharmaceutical industry lives on despite the parasites because if people don't buy the product they die. In the tech industry things can get even worse because as companies stop innovating and patent cost margins rise people can just quit buying the product. If the corporate giants insist on playing patent warfare then maybe they will cause enough damage that we finally get a popular support behind patent reform, or just dumping the corrupted patent system altogether. If it's too late to fix things then maybe they can just be broken so bad that they get replaced.

Hospitals complain about "patient" abuse

[Dogtanian]

You have to ask yourself if it's a troll when someone is able to speak with apparent knowledge and insight yet is clearly under the impression that "patents" is spelled "patients". (*)

Or maybe they really *are* making a very strange point about patients? Who knows...

(*) Typo? Nope. It's consistently misspelled several times.

Let's tax the stockpiles of patent nuclear arsenal

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's make stockpiles of patent nuclear arsenals prohibitively expensive through tax, so that no one can afford to keep a large portfolio of patents just for the purpose of blowing someone else up with patent lawsuits. New patents get to enjoy a low filing fees and will be granted a few years of low tax rate in a range of a $10k/year. A patent is valid indefinitely as long as the patent holder can afford to pay the annual tax. But the rate will go into millions after say 5 or 6 years and increases 10 folds each year. When the cost of keeping the patent becomes too expensive and the patent holder stops paying the tax, the patent automatically goes to the public domain. And each time a patent changes hand the tax rate goes up by 10X. If a patent is used in a product, then the cost of keeping the patent can easily be absorbed as a cost of the product. So the bottom line is if a patent is not making money for you, then it should be in the public domain instead of being held as a weapon for extortion.

Re:To hell with the war on Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love people that mod stuff only by reading the title. The topic ultimately boils down to trouble with the legal system and hence lawyers.

Offtopic?

Not.

J.D., anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snyder is correct in that the tech patent wars are going nuclear. But at least one group will survive the fracas unscathed, or better: lawyers. If anyone out there is thinking about going back to school, now might be a decent time to invest in a J.D. :)