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The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars

Posted by Soulskill on from the is-there-a-light-side dept.

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."

15 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Dark side? by Vectormatic · · Score: 4, Funny

    is the a bright side then?

    --
    People, what a bunch of bastards
    1. Re:Dark side? by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Dark side? by spikenerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Dark side? by networkBoy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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

      --
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    4. Re:Dark side? by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Dark side? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Dark side? by Necroman · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Its not what it is, its something else.
    7. Re:Dark side? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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      http://saveie6.com/
    8. Re:Dark side? by cgenman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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      The ______ Agenda
  2. positive feedback increasing number of lawyers by RichMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers by nomadic · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    2. Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    3. Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers by Bob9113 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  3. This is what happens. by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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    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
  4. Surprisee surpriseee by unity100 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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