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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."
is the a bright side then?
People, what a bunch of bastards
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.
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
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.
This is what happens when businesses and government consider "intellectual property" to be a great base for an economy.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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.
Read radical news here
"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.
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
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.
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.
You are confusing your magical utopia where everything works perfectly according to you and the real world.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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.