Slashdot Mirror
Google Enlarges Warchest With 1023 IBM Patents
First time accepted submitter ElBeano writes "Google has continued to beef up its patent portfolio in the face of the onslaught from Apple and Microsoft. The best defense is a good offense. 'Google is building an arsenal of patents that the company has said is largely designed to counter a "hostile, organized campaign" by companies including Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. against the Android operating system for mobile devices. Google had already acquired 1,030 patents from IBM in a transaction recorded in July, and will obtain more than 17,000 with its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.'"
1023? That is a suspiciously round number...
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Google takes these patents subject to existing cross licenses. How many competitors (such as Apple and MS) already have cross licenses with IBM that cover these?
is there an easy way to get a basic understanding of what the 1023 IBM patents are for, are they mostly algorithm patents or?
I think what's really stupid about software patents is that you can't find out what part of your software is infringing on another company's patents. That's the idiotic part. Hardware patents, of course. Samsung can learn immediately what Apple's specific complaints are. But software patents remain hidden, so that Google can't go back and change whatever code is infringing on their competitor. You don't even need to get rid of patents. Just get rid of this ridiculous veil of secrecy garbage.
Russia have more nukes than us!
Hard to believe people get paid to sift through all these garbage patents looking for infractions. What a colossal waste of productive time.
OT - still better than having the same people turning politicians, don't you think?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
So when do they expire ? why are they selling ? after all IBM makes a lot from the research it did and licensing of said patents
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
It isn't "protection" so much as it is "ammunition" -- someone has come to Google pointing a gun and sticking them up. Google must then go out and acquire their own weapons so that they can negotiate peace from a stronger position.
There is no element of "backdating" -- Apple or Microsoft or whoever was always violating the patents that Google now has, it's just that the then-owner had not yet attempted to enforce them. After Google buys the patents, they can threaten to enforce the patents if the initial aggressor does not back down.
I don't understand why Google and Apple don't just sit down and agree to let each other use all their patents. Then they really could compete on the strength of their own innovations, rather than wasting all this money on lawyers. The customers will go to the one who implements the patents better.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I have a feeling that if I were to make my own cell phone from scratch, without looking at a single patent and using only obvious ideas off the top of my head, I'd owe a lot of people a lot of money.
Actually this is more likely to stop the patent wars in this part of the industry then set them off.
The thing with software patents is that their primary effect (other than to allow patent trolls to hold up people who make stuff) is to prevent a new player from entering an existing market. The existing players have a whole arsenal of software patents and anybody who wants to enter the market will be infringing a slew of them no matter what, so the existing players can sue them and enjoin them legally from entering the market. And most of the time the new entrant knows that ahead of time and just doesn't bother.
In this case the new entrant was Google, so what happened is that everybody who had been in the market for a while and had a patent arsenal started to shake them down and demand high royalties or try to keep their products off of the market, because Google has never been in the mobile device market before and so didn't have a relevant patent arsenal with which to ward of the incumbents' attacks.
What Google is doing now is buying their way into the club. (Notice that only large companies sitting on a mountain of cash can do this -- the little guy is fucked.) If they buy these billions of dollars worth of patents then they can threaten the incumbents in the same way that the incumbents are threatening them, and at the end of the day they all just end up cross-licensing and Google becomes one of the incumbents going forward.
At that point companies can go back to competing based on merit, but only those companies that can afford to buy their way into the market. The patent system excludes everyone else.
Id also buyout Kodak...then tell Apple they have remove cameras from their iphones :)
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", Section VI, Lines 1-2:
1. Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
2. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.
So now instead of paying protection money they are paying stupid money for Motorola and billions more buying patents from IBM and others
Fixed that for you. As for Google's motivation, probably "if once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane."
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Those of you who still believe there is value to "Intellectual Property", can you please think about where this "Patent Race" is leading us?
We've probably passed the point where any new product or innovation is safe from having an army of lawyers descend to destroy it.
Now tell me how patents "encourage innovation". Tell me how patents "protect innovators".
When the patent portfolios of a handful of the biggest corporations reaches critical mass, there won't be a single inventor or innovator who is safe or whose ideas are protected. It will stifle innovation in a much worse way than any "counterfeiting" or "piracy" ever could. There's a good chance that we've already reached that point.
No, I don't believe there is any longer a single valid argument for "intellectual property" laws, of any kind. Not trademark, not copyright, and certainly not patents.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But this is exactly what economic theory predicts. Intervene in the market with good intentions -- e.g. create monopoly profits for innovators -- and watch your "new" rules being exploited by rent-seekers, who then use the monopolistic profits to lobby for furthering the rules, further hampering the economy. The theory is very clear and explicit about it -- and has always been ignored in favor of patents.
The other prediction of the theory is that since the profit/loss is unevenly distributed (many people have a small loss, but few people reap enormous benefits), even in a democracy you're unlikely to see a change in the rules unless the loss becomes large enough that is painful to most individuals so that they take action. So, the crazy patent rules will be with us for a long time.
Why should they pay their competitors when they can pay similar money to someone who isn't trying to sue them out of the market?
Mel, the cook on Alice...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
You are assuming that Apple and Microsoft would be willing to license the patents to Google. But why should they? There's probably more money in having no competition from Google than Google could ever pay.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Nothing stifles technology better than a portfolio of patents.
Paying money as part of a cross license agreement is kinda standard practice in the technology industry. Google purchased Andriod and controls it's "free" distribution to hardware OEMs when they had virtually no patents apart from the origin PageRank patent (that they will not license to anybody else by the way). What's different from Google and Apple and Microsoft is they have been active in the research and development of software operating systems and hardware manufacture for ever. They already had a large number of patents and are also more than happy to pay FRAND fees for patents that are part of international standards.
As far as worrying about having to continue to pay more later thats a simple matter of contract negotiation. Google pays to license all current patents as at the date of the contract.
While you might not agree with software patents, they are in currently part of the legal system. There is an obligation on all corporations to follow the law until such time as the law gets changed.
Hey Google seeing as you don't agree with software patents can I please have a free license to use your PageRank search algorithm patents. More competition is good for everybody right so how about it.....Whats that? You want to use everybody else's patents for free but you are not prepared to share your own patents?? Doesn't that make you a hypocrite?
You clearly dont know much about this issue.
First, Google *is* paying Microsoft licensing for various things in their Android phones. However, this transaction only applies to the Android phones made by Google. They do not apply to the Android Phones made by others.
Google knew there was patent issues and they actually resolved them BY LICENSING THE VARIOUS PATENTS.
The evil part is that even though Google knew there were patent issues, they invited every other manufacturer to go ahead and just use the OS without getting their own licenses. Google fucked everyone.
"His name was James Damore."
Go back and look at the history. Nokia and Motorola started the patent wars attacking Apple. The only people currently directly suing Google is Oracle and judging by the Lindholm email they have very good reason to.
Microsoft and Apple both are sitting on many $10Billion's of cash. Paying a couple dollars to them to license technology which has obviously been copied isn't going to give with company and more of an advantage in the market place than they already have.
In fact Microsoft has already offered Google to join syndicates to purchase patents so they don't end up in the hands on non practicing patent trolls. The fact that Google refuses to join in and play nice says a lot about their evil litigious intentions.
Reminded me of IBM's siding with Oracle against Apache on the Java licensing dispute and backing OpenJDK. Then publicly lauding Oracle for putting Open Office under an Apache licence despite the disruption this would cause to the Document Foundation and Libre Office.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Windows Phone 7 is for the mentally disabled.
Haven't they suffered enough?
Looks like they're going for a Mutually Assured Destruction policy to me.
Does the patent war strike anyone else as being very similar to the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.?
"Look at us! Metaphorically-speaking, that is, because we don't want you looking too closely! We have lots of non-specific weapons we will never use because they would do as much damage to us as they would to you! We can't tell you exactly which of your assets they threaten, but just know that we have more of whatever we have than you have of whatever you have! So don't even think about using your... Whatever it is that you have!"
We either need someone to adapt Dr. Strangelove to this scenario (think "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Patent Office"), or perhaps we can persuade RMS to broker the first in a series of muti-generational patent-reduction treaties that will progressively reduce the number of times over the industry could potentially destroy itself from 18 million down to something more reasonable, like three.
Go back and look at the history. Nokia and Motorola started the patent wars attacking Apple.
And Apple, rather than finding some quiet resolution, got out their torches and spread the fire all over the place by suing everyone in the market, including the Android phone makers who had never sued Apple to begin with.
The only people currently directly suing Google is Oracle and judging by the Lindholm email they have very good reason to.
The Lindholm email stands for nothing but the proposition that Google at one time considered negotiating a license for Java. It has nothing to do with whether Dalvik infringes the same copyrights or patents or whether the patents are even valid.
Microsoft and Apple both are sitting on many $10Billion's of cash. Paying a couple dollars to them to license technology which has obviously been copied isn't going to give with company and more of an advantage in the market place than they already have.
As the other poster above pointed out, "once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane." It isn't a matter of driving your competitors out of business by depriving them of revenue, it's a matter of preventing them from shaking down your phone manufacturers. And in any event, why reward Apple and Microsoft for their hostile behavior? It would only encourage them.
In fact Microsoft has already offered Google to join syndicates to purchase patents so they don't end up in the hands on non practicing patent trolls. The fact that Google refuses to join in and play nice says a lot about their evil litigious intentions.
Google wants to acquire patents to use as leverage against Microsoft to prevent them shaking down Android phone makers. A patent jointly owned by Microsoft can hardly be used as leverage against Microsoft. And Microsoft forming a coalition to outbid Google on the Nortel patents can hardly be considered an effort to keep them out of the hands of "non practicing patent trolls" -- if that was their only concern then Google buying them by itself would have completely alleviated it and there would be no explanation for Microsoft's actions.
So Apple and others have Google exactly where they want it to be.... " hasten to battle will arrive exhausted." Or exhausting big money. Google is pumping huge money for licenses that will protect its mobile and tablet OS which are virtually free. How odd ....
While you might not agree with software patents, they are in currently part of the legal system. There is an obligation on all corporations to follow the law until such time as the law gets changed.
Then you had better look in a mirror, because if Apple and Microsoft were not currently violating a litany of third party patents then there would be nothing for Google to buy to use as leverage. But there is, because it is not feasible to produce nontrivial software that does not infringe arbitrary third party software patents.
No one follows the law. If you don't like it, change the law.
Google hasn't used it's patent portfolio to prevent competition, simply because apart from the PageRank Algorithm which it owns the patents on it hasn't invented anything.
Google is currently the verb meaning "to search thing internet for a subject", but outside search Google is a synonym for another company name that became a verb, Xerox.
Most of the Apple lawsuit by Samsung and Nokia (before they settled) where for patents that have been accepted into International Standards, under which the companies have agreed to license to 3rd parties under FRAND terms. Apple has simply said they are happy to pay under FRAND terms but will be be black mailed into cross-licensing technologies Apple independently invented and hold patents on.
To use a car analogy, Samsung supplied some of the structural supports used in creating a toll bridge used by the larger motoring community. They agreed to supply these structural supports in exchange for $x each time somebody cross the communities bridge. Along comes Apple in there new sports car with a smoking hot babe with big boobs in the passenger seat and try to drive over the now public bridge for $x per trip. Samsung likes the look of the sexy babe Apple has in its car and is demanding that Apple should let Samsung have sex with the sexy babe in exchange for letting it use the bridge.
The Bridge is patents which 100's of companies all placed into International Standards such as 3G and Wifi. The hot babe in Apple cars are it's iOS innovations and patents.
If all you where obligated to do was pay a small fee on the toll bridge would you just stand by and let the toll collector have sex with your girl, because he found her sexy and wanted her?
1023 patents, 17000 patents... with numbers like these, how many of those could possibly be inventions actually worthy of patent protection?
Any company that can publish more than, say, 1 patent per month, hasn't put in the effort or investment that patents are supposed to protect.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Paying money as part of a cross license agreement is kinda standard practice in the technology industry
So was paying money to mobsters back in the day.
While you might not agree with software patents, they are in currently part of the legal system.
Which is why I never said "patents are illegal", but said that patents are an immoral extortion racket. The fact that our legal system currently endorses immoral extortion rackets is a flaw, not a feature.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
interestingly till google entered mobile market companies that were there before were in some kind of peace or no-fighting mode. Apple came with its one asshole takes all attitude and see what happens. I could hardly believe they actually sued Nokia - I mean how stupid this IP thing can actually get? Is it not obvious that it actually (in its current form) is a hurdle not a help for the industry? Just wonder - when next well paid report on how good patent trolls are for human kind arrive.
Wasn't IBM the owner of the Jet Powered Surfboard Patent? I wonder if that was included in the deal...
Google knew there was patent issues and they actually resolved them BY LICENSING THE VARIOUS PATENTS.
The evil part is that even though Google knew there were patent issues, they invited every other manufacturer to go ahead and just use the OS without getting their own licenses. Google fucked everyone.
That's a pretty extrordinary claim. I'd really like to see some sort of proof. Specifically that (a) google licensed the relevant patents and (b) google encouraged others to violate them. That's no joke, a citation that backs up those claims would go right into my bookmarks.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Gotta spend money to make money. That's always been the case.
Sorta like the nuclear arms race and 'mutually assured destruction'; only the one who fires first doesn't necessarily gain the advantage.
I tend to concur with your perspective. Apple started its attacks on Nokia first and started the fire. It was fairly quiet before then.
But as for Google preventing an all-out software patent apocalypse, I suppose the GP's theory is just as good as my hopes that this will help bring an end to software patents in general.
But that said, it is not hard to imagine that the big players will agree to an armistice and the politicians will be paid to agree with the big players.
If you were mentally disabled, would you know you're mentally disabled? If not, why would it bother you?
Some of them look a lot happier than me, that's for sure.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is fighting evil done to you first, using the same evil as a weapon back, itself evil?
It was quiet because all the major players in the field are members of the GSM Alliance where they agree to cross-license patents in order to gain access to the GSM technologies at a cheap rate.
Apples open shots were due to them demanding the same rates as GSM Alliance members but refusing to put their patents into the pot like everyone else did.
because Google has never been in the mobile device market before and so didn't have a relevant patent arsenal with which to ward of the incumbents' attacks
That's not really true though, is it. Apple also hadn't really been in the mobile/cell market either, but they came out with a phone with a ton of new inventions in it. The existing players couldn't sue Apple because they needed to look and work like the iPhone. Apple invents new things.
The real problem Google had entering the mobile device market is that they didn't add anything new at all. They just copied existing phones (iPhone). Google is like Microsoft, just improving and executing on other people's ideas. Search, email, maps, phones... I can't think of any actual invention Google's made. They are opportunists not inventors and that's why they have to buy patents.
"...the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
When the patent portfolios of a handful of the biggest corporations reaches critical mass, there won't be a single inventor or innovator who is safe or whose ideas are protected. It will stifle innovation in a much worse way than any "counterfeiting" or "piracy" ever could. There's a good chance that we've already reached that point. No, I don't believe there is any longer a single valid argument for "intellectual property" laws, of any kind. Not trademark, not copyright, and certainly not patents.http://www.airmaxflagship.com/
See the happy moron,
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron.
My God! Perhaps I am.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
You've got to be joking or a troll.
Apple entered the mobile market screaming to everyone how unfair it was that they had to actually pay something for all those real inventions others like nokia were having.
They refused to cross license their "innovative" designs etc, sued everyone over those, while holding up real patentholders in any way they could, Nokia finally got something from apple after the iphone selling for over 3 years.
And now apple happily turns around and does the exact same thing to the newcomer android, bunch of hypocrites
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
There's also something to be said for simple strength in numbers, which is the same reason Google is crying foul to the anti-trust police.
And judging from Oracle trying to nuke stuff on the old Sun website and what archive.org found (http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110810152617279), I'd say that Oracle is trying to pull a fast one.
I wonder if Oracle failing to recover the old website (which was conveniently nuked on the eve of trial) counts as spoliation of evidence.
Come on, why not 1024? Seriously!
Apple have often refused to license their patents..
Microsoft probably would, but the fees they demand would make it impossible to give android away for free, and would make it more expensive than windows mobile.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Come closer, Larry Ellison, so that you might see. Pay attention, class.
Yeah because in your world open source should not exist. Only Dear Leader Jobs and his minions are the only ones should be able to write code. Fuck this 'all your code are belong to us' mentality. You Apple goons that are supporting this hostility towards open source should be ashamed of yourselves. When Apple takes from open source and builds upon it its ok with you goons, When Apple tries to sue open source to oblivion thats OK too. The hypocrisy is incredible. The notion that you cannot sit down in front of your computer and write code without Dear Leader Jobs treating you for patents is ludicrous. I HATE this shit.
posting on account of fat finger mod
Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ti Kwan Leep.
Boot to the head!
End of line..
Actually, no. I think the metaphor is falling apart - the companies are not yet in a battle. They are building their armies for one, and engaging in indirect warfare (see: the anti-trust actions), but they have not yet sued each other. Whichever company sues first will probably have better chances, but for some reason nobody has yet. Probably because, once one lawsuit goes out, other companies will pile on. If Google sues Apple, Apple will file countersuit, but which one will Microsoft sue? It's like Western Europe circa 1913 out there.
But it almost seems like a better metaphor would be the Cold War and MAD - they're all building up stockpiles for an exchange that they secretly hope will never come.
I hope that Google will make them regret their attacks. I hope Google will ask them to pay for some of their news patents. As to cover the costs of defending themself and a some more just to make their points about the affair.
It seems like Google is getting the short end of the stick here. The patents involved (listed here: http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=026894&frame=0001) all appear to expire within the next 5 years or so. It looks like IBM is just dumping soon-to-be-worthless patents.
We couldn't conduct honest business without it. Remember, trademark is about consumer protection, but it also protects a business.
You could spend years building up a product that the consumers love (say ice cream), obtaining a reputation for quality, and someone could come out with a cheap crap copy and sell it under your name. Now the reputation of your product is ruined, many consumers were screwed because they expected quality and got junk, you can't sell any more product because nobody will touch it, equating it with crap. He can't sell any either, but he doesn't care. He made a quick buck off of your name and can go onto the next.
Without trademark, this fraud is perfectly legal.
Whether patent or copyright should exist was already debated between Jefferson and Madison before the Constitution. And their concept of both was far less than what it is today.
The problem with that approach is that if foocorp doesn't have any relavent patents of their own and barcorp comes along and claims that foocorp violates their patents then barcorp has foocorp over a barrel. They may choose to grant a license at a reasonable rate, they may not. If they don't then afaict there is nothing foocorp can do about it.
OTOH if foocorp and barcorp both have relavent patent portfolios then a balance comes into play. Since neither side wants to be destroyed they have to agree not to destroy each other.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
So Samsung's patents are a toll bridge while Apple's patents are a girl? No, patents are patents. If Apple wants to use Samsung's patents then they had better be willing to let Samsung use Apple's patents. Because the alternative is that they can both go to court and get injunctions against each other, and then neither of them will be able to sell their products.
Find the waiting enemy, and bomb the shit out of them - USAF.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You might want to look at the agreement regard MS's 'deal' to google. Seriously, lets judge on actions, not on guessed intentions.
At this point, base on all the evidence and actions, Google is acting perfectly reasonable. Can that change? yes, of course.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That would be awesome if google owned that patent, but they do not. How about your next complaint actually be valid?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You have good points, but think about the other side of the coin. Without patents, innovation would slow down very significantly. So then do you want fast innovation, or do you want a completely unfettered market?
I once heard from Richard Stallman's mouth on a conference - "I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place." - and that was a life changing moment for me. Reading this kind of news makes me sad, I suffer for the souls of those who never had the opportunity to realize they are just loosing the chance to make the world fair and good.
You make it sound that a competitive market will not innovate, but for that [citation] is sorely [needed].
I can show you clearly the causal link between monopolistic rents from patents and other related rights and the coordinated effort of the big players to shift those to their advantage. IFPI, WIPO and other lawyers' organizations exist, lobby aggressively and get all kinds of arbitrary laws that protect their profits in harm to the society at large. The harm is there, is obvious and is often discussed in the media. Can you show a similarly clear link between patent monopolistic rents and innovation speed? And if you compare the magnitude of the two, which is larger?
Can you show that without patents, innovation would slow down very significantly? I think not. Take Apple for example -- they were innovative, came up with several very successful products in a very competitive market, and stayed on top for nearly a decade before the competition caught up with them. During that time, they did not really the threat of patents -- the advantage in know-how, marketing and product quality was enough. Now, when they seem relatively out of steam, and the competition is catching up, instead of innovating further, they fall back to a concerted, international legal campaign against it. It looks to me that the "IP" does not exactly work to promote innovation in this specific instance. The situation is the same in many other "knowledge economy" fields. Consider the rise of the web. It was relatively open from the start, competition was fierce. Is the pace of innovation any slower? Did relative dearth of patents prevent people from cashing in on the web? Why are people still innovating in this area, so contrary to your argument?
Your argument can be re-stated like this: in a world without patents, will people stop chasing business profits? Will product differentiation by quality and design stop working? What is a better incentive to innovate -- a constant pressure to be better in design and quality than your competitors, or several years of guaranteed rents? The answers are quite obvious, and not kind to your argument.
Good points, but my argument is really stated like this: in a world without patents, will businesses still invest as much money researching and developing new technologies if those new technologies can be freely copied the minute they put them on the market?
And unfortunately we don't have many recent examples of a patent-less modern economy. I guess the best example that could possibly be drawn would be China because I understand that their IP protections are not as strong as in the West. My understanding is that it's pretty much a free for all there where whenever someone creates a product that is popular everyone else comes out with a copy.
Didn't Apple wield the IP stick very early on, when Windows first came out? It was "look and feel" then, and it's patents now.
> Sun Tzu
Pulleeze. How 1980s, blase. A little more esoteria.
He who strikes first is off balance. --Miyamoto Musashi, Go Rin No Sho. That's a badass work.
in a world without patents, will businesses still invest as much money researching and developing new technologies if those new technologies can be freely copied the minute they put them on the market?
I understand the logic behind your argument, however I am asking about some facts that would prove your point. I gave you an example that shows your theory wrong - the Web. The most dynamic, most innovative business area of the past 20 years. Almost without patents, and routing around them when possible. What's your set of facts that counters this?
Didn't Apple wield the IP stick very early on, when Windows first came out?
And what did put Apple further ahead in terms of business results? The innovation, good marketing and strong competitiveness they showed in the past 5 years, or the epic legal battles of the early 90s that they lost?
Ah, yes, I forgot to address your web point. It doesn't prove my point wrong because it's a apples and oranges comparison. Perhaps I should have been more clear that I'm defending patents for physical inventions. I'm against software patents.
Anyway, getting back to websites, developing a website is not comparable to, for example, developing a completely new type of fancy technology like say, some kind of display, or battery, or lightweight strong material. Someone can develop an innovative website (or most other software) in their garage, while some high tech items require labs that run into the millions and millions of dollars.
Apple is actually not a good example either way because their game is design, quality, polish, and marketing, not technological innovation.
Unfortunately I can't prove my point in the end because I can't prove that not having patents would slow down innovation because we've never had a modern (Western) world without patents. The closest example that I could offer was China and I'm not knowledgeable enough about it to use it as concrete proof. I can only say that from the anecdotal evidence I've heard about China leads me to believe that they don't have as much innovation as the West or as strong brands because their IP protections are weak. It would be interesting to make a comparison between China, Japan, and South Korea sometime though.
developing a website is not comparable to, for example, developing a completely new type of fancy technology like say, some kind of display, or battery, or lightweight strong material.
Why? These days most of product development happens largely in software. If you get something good enough to prototype, you can usually get a patent for that even without actually making it. I have a friend who is an automotive engineer and has a few patents. His inventions were totally made "in his garage", and his design equipment to this day is a couple of 486DX machines, which he's been using for 20 years now. Not only that, he has patented his ideas without ever building a prototype, just describing it.
Apple is actually not a good example either way because their game is design, quality, polish, and marketing
On the contrary, it is a very good example, because their history reinforces all points I am making -- that innovation can pay out even without enforcing patents; and that patents will be the first "weapon" of choice against competition, before innovation. Besides, even if your opinion is that Apple does little technical innovation, that is not what the society at large thinks.
Unfortunately I can't prove my point in the end
It is not you. As I pointed out in the first post, "IP" is impossible to get right even theoretically. No matter how you start, the presence of monopolistic rents will bring in excess profits, and these will provide the incentive and means for abuse. And since inventing is much harder work than lobbying, the likelihood is that such systems will convert from one that mainly fosters innovation into one that primarily fosters lobbying and litigation.
The better argument you can make on theoretical grounds is that investment in knowledge in general will be less than optimal, and this should be corrected. But whether creating monopoly rents the right way to address this issue is by no means clear.
Perhaps I'm out of date with my impressions of how new technology gets developed. I still believe that it costs a lot more money to develop physical high-tech items than to develop software, until I see good evidence to the contrary. Your friend's situation is only one case.
I don't agree about Apple. They're a bad example for a variety of reasons. They were a minor player in the "few/no patent" days until the advent of the iPod and iPhone, when they did start to wield patents. Patents were a way to help enhance their reputation for unique design, quality, and polish.
Here is another analogy: if at exam time in school everyone was allowed to copy the answers of the A students without any adverse consequences, wouldn't that reduce the incentive for the A students to do so well? It wouldn't completely eliminate it, but it would certainly reduce it significantly.
Let me just mention here that I think that anti-patent folks have a very well justified argument that the patent system is being severely abused. But that is not an argument to completely eliminate patents, just to change them. For example, I think that something like 5 or 10 years protection would be more reasonable, and, obviously, stronger requirements and inspection for quality of patent applications.
I also understand and agree with your point that wealthy companies can twist the system, but that's the nature of the world we live in nowadays, and I share your frustration with this kind of situation. The only thing we can do is to fight that manipulation through whatever means we can. But I don't believe that completely killing patents is the way to do it.
I think that what we really need is to have complete campaign finance reform in the US to severely reduce the power of lobbyists, but unfortunately that's about as unlikely as the patent system being eliminated. So let's fight on however we can.
So apparently I might be wrong about patents' incentive to innovation after all. Today's slashdot post on patents has a link to this article: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-patent-overhaul-wont-help-innovators-2011-9
I will have to check out that book...
Thanks, looks like an interesting read. I have seen quite a few economics research papers that firmly establish harm from the patent system, and practically none that show clear and unambiguous benefits. It will be interesting to evaluate my thinking in the context of how benefits of patents in bio and chem are justified in it.
As to your previous post, you say that we must fight the attempts to subvert the system as best as we can. I agree, with the little caveat that while fighting them, we should always use the best tools available to analyze the sources of the problem, and keep an open mind for the best solution. It may not be obvious, traditional or even patentable.
No problem, yes, the article was an interesting read and the book looks like it too. The thing that I wonder is if they advocate that ANY patent system is counterproductive or doomed to failure (except pharma and chemical patents), or if they feel that the system could be fixed to be beneficial. In other words, are they saying that the system is bad as it is currently set up or if patent protections are bad in general.
The article itself posits that the problem is the fuzzy boundaries of patents other than chemical/pharmaceutical (because those have a clearly defined boundary), but it seems to leave the door open to the possibility that the system could be fixed by requiring better quality, more specific, narrow patents. However, I'm open to the possibility that the idea is hopelessly broken and will never work well for its intended purpose.
I agree about using the best tools to analyze the problem and keeping an open mind to the solutions!
Take care.