Slashdot Mirror
Tech Firms and Regulators Meet At UN About Patents
another random user writes "Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung and others tech firms met with regulators and patent officials in Geneva to discuss changes to intellectual property laws. The event follows a flurry of lawsuits involving smartphone makers. It is set to focus on how to ensure license rights to critical technologies are offered on 'reasonable' terms. Companies are split over whether they should be allowed to ban rivals' devices if they do not agree a fee. The talks have been organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency responsible for ensuring phone-makers agree standards so that their devices can interact with each other."
My guess: none.
Why? They have severely contrasting views.
My point? Nothing is going to change when your approach is biased.
.. say hello to the hen house.
They can come up with something that will keep the patent BS from happening... I understand a need for some form of patent system, but what we've got and what we need are dramatically different things.
It's a step... but it's a long way from a step in the right direction.
It's simple: get rid of them all.
the UN should tell the USA to get lost until they pay their fees,
its not as if their patents are valid anywhere else but the USA, its an internal domestic problem thats hurting only themselves, which as far as the rest of the world is probably a good thing
Motorola just had to pull out devices from Germany. This is not a local issue, this is a GLOBAL problem for consumers and companies alike.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why is the company holding the largest number of worthless patents not at the discussion table? It's unfathomable.
Patents should need to meet similar requirements and scrutiny as trademark law.
It can never happen right. They want "reasonable" terms? That's not exactly something you can lock down. The problems are not because of something no one can completely agree with everyone else means. Apple is "unreasonable" and yet a judge has recently ruled that Apple's notion of reasonable is unreasonable.
If they can't fight nicely, it's time to take away their weapons. It's as simple as that.
The oddity is that there is no international treaties about patents. They are only backed by national laws. The ITU will not be able to talk about what is patentable, for instance.
This feels much like watching those bad horror movies where it feels like main character is either intentionally ignoring you, or is really stupid.
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
By its very nature, a "standard" should be free for anyone to implement.
If I can do a better job of implementing a standard than you can, then I win. Until you leapfrog me, of course, and that's what we call innovation and progress!
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
"It is set to focus on how to ensure license rights to critical technologies are offered on "reasonable" terms".
..
US tech firms lean on UN to legalize stealing stuff from companies and then selling it back to them under RAND terms
What is Wrong with RAND?
AccountKiller
You would think Romney would learn the lessons of the Bush Administration and Vietnam, but nooooooo.
Pay me or starve.
Prove your patent is so genuinely innovative that no one is likely to have come up with this during at least half, if not all, of the patent term being asked for (allow patents to be applied for with a shorter term of the applicant's choosing). Failure to prove means no patent.
The idea of patents in the first place was an incentive to invent or disclose the invention because we would have lacked these innovations without such incentives. Today, very few patents would fit that idea. Today, we only need very few patents. All the rest just puts a drag on the courts, economy, and real innovations.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You work for Monsanto or something?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The government has every right to set mandatory licensing fees for that privilege to ensure accessibility for others to build on. And furthermore, when a company no longer licenses a product, they should lose all rights to said product. Say, for instance, when Microsoft no longer licenses and/or supports Windows 2000, it should be automatically placed into the public domain, so somebody else can keep it up to date and distribute as needed. It is abandoned property. That's how it should be treated. If they want a hundred year copyright, they should have to license its use for that same hundred years. What we have now is absolutely unacceptable.
They're going to collaborate in a way that allows them more freedom to pull their crap and to force possible upstart competitors out.
OK, the world patent system is horribly broken. There should be no patents on software. Patents should last 15 years. Copyrights should last 20 years. Any sale of a patent or copyright halves the remaining time left on the patent. DONE!
To my knowledge, Computer software is the only industry that has both copyright (source code, graphics, music, etc.) and patents (design concept) applicable to it, and therein lies the problem. Trademarks are independent of these two as they apply to brand identity.
You don't have patents in the fiction world, you have copyright law on the published text. You are free to have tree men in your story as long as you don't call them "ents". Likewise having a story about wizards in school, or vampires, or other story elements. Otherwise, if story elements/concepts were patentable we would not have as many varied stories we do have.
The same applies to paintings/drawings, TV shows, films, music and other creative arts. You don't have the makers of Armageddon and Deep Impact sueing each other over who has rights to the asteroid impact disaster movie, instead you have two different interpretations of that concept.
With the creative arts, you can take themes and ideas from other works and use them in a different way in your own work. So you have many paintings in the impressionist style, each artist giving their own interpretation on what that means.
You realize that what the UN is discussion here is already based on the assumption that software is patentable.
Not just the HOW-is-works style patents, but the WHAT-it-does patents.
Successive changes by the Federal Patent Appeal Court in the US, and the EU Patent Appeal Court have eliminated most of the obviousness clauses and permitted patented on business methods.
BTW The EU Patent Appeal court, is really just some blokes from the EU Patent office that have labelled themselves as a court and pretend to have the right to modify patent laws. So the EU Patent office wasn't granted power to change patent laws, they create a court, the court says 'software must be patentable', the EU Patent office then 'bows' to the court (literally bows to itself) and started patenting software.
This is why today, we're discussion whether Apple should be allowed to block Google and Motorola (GOOG) block Microsoft, for patents on things THEY DIDN'T INVENT, when the badly issued patents are clearly doing serious harm, so much that Federal Reserves are questioning whether its harming the economy.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf
"By contrast, neither innovation nor R&D expenditure have exhibited
any particular upwards trend, not to speak of factor productivity. While patent litigation has increased,
few patents are actively used. Patent litigation typically involves dying firms, that have accumulated huge
stockpile of patents but are no longer able to produce marketable products, suing new and innovative
firms. A once proud firm – one of the first producers of microchips, and who in our generation can forget
7
their first TI calculator – Texas Instruments was unable to make the transition to the PC revolution and
became, for a while, the symbol of a dying company trying to stay alive by suing the newcomers. In more
recent times, Microsoft has become the chief among the patent trolls. Once the giant of the software
industry Microsoft has been unable to make the leap to portable devices such as telephones and tablet
PCs. Unable to create and produce for the marketplace, Microsoft now attempts to claim a share of the
profits Googles generates in this market through patent litigation. A firm that when it was young and
innovative had a strong position against software patents – Bill Gates said in 1991: “If people had
understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out
patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own
will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.” – now lobbies in Europe and Asia for
the introduction of software patents, which it already obtained in its home country."
The difficulty is allowing Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung to operate freely, yet still use SPLs (Stupid Patent Lawsuits) to keep smaller companies from eroding their well-earned oligopoly.
You may note that none invited represent "The General Public".
No.
AC
*crickets chirping*
If your product can't be released without giving away the patent without having to reverse engineer it, then that patent is not patentable.
Patents were the opposite to trade secret. Exposure of the trade secret was paid for by the monopoly grant.
If it can't be kept a trade secret, then it can't be patented.
My only question is who is representing consumers in this meeting of powers that be? Oh, wait, consumers don't have power... they are merely cattle.