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."

Comments

How many small businesses were invited?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess: none.

Why? They have severely contrasting views.

My point? Nothing is going to change when your approach is biased.

Re:How many small businesses were invited?

[WaywardGeek]

One thing we can be sure of: any company earning less than $1B/year is going to be shut out of future intellectual property rights. It'll all be owned by the oldest, least innovative firms, and the rest will have to pack up and go home, because they wont be allowed to legally innovate.

Re:How many small businesses were invited?

[Luckyo]

Looking at the history, they will innovate and invent in countries not constrained by these rules. It's going to be rise of the New World yet again, only this time in the East instead of West.

Re:How many small businesses were invited?

[dwater]

Nokia's getting pretty small these days.

Re:How many small businesses were invited?

[shentino]

The root problem isn't patents.

It never was, that is a mere symptom of the same corruption of big business ass-raping the government and forcing it to give out goodies to their lobbyists.

Get business out of government and everything else will take care of itself. Keep business in government and no solution is going to work anyway.

Fox..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. say hello to the hen house.

Let's hope

[kiriath]

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.

Re:Let's hope

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a step. Note the players involved: big, moneyed interests. They will probably say "maximum patent licensing cost is $10M/year per licensor" and be done with it. Two birds with one stone -- no more infighting amongst themselves, while small, disruptive players are barred from the market place.

Re:Let's hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents are, I think, supposed to give you a limited time monopoly in order for you to share your technological process with everyone else. This is to combat the rest of us being unable to reproduce your product after you've passed on; an example being the process in making some stained glasses are apparently lost to ages. This should mean that in order to be granted a patent your process should be:-

Non-obvious - your patent shouldn't be part of natural progression.
Difficult to reproduce - It shouldn't be resonably possible for someone else to copy your idea just from seeing the end product.
Be a viable trade secret - as in, if patents didn't exist, you should still resonable be able to maintain your monopoly, possibly forever.
Be a working product - use it or lose it.

Obviously thats nothing like how the system works as the vast majority of patents are wielded against people who have seemingly implemented an idea without prior knowledge of the other patent existing. This would also pretty much make design ideas unpatentable. Put shortly I guess the two problems are a) the length of term and b) the bar of what is an accepted patent.

Of course, if you believe patents are working as intended, you probably disagree on the why they exist. Personally I don't think anyone should be granted any monopolies unless it somehow benefits the commons.

Re:Let's hope

[kiriath]

In a perfect world a patent system would protect the 'little guy' who invented something awesome and wants to safely 'shop it around' to the 'big guys' who have the potential to release it. It should be a tool that allows and promotes the drive to 'get something patented' for mere mortals.

Like I said, what we've got is a far cry from what a patent system should be... and this is probably not the best way to make any good changes but it is a step.

Re:Let's hope

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he was suggesting that the idea was good. He was suggesting that the idea would be good for large corporations so that they can maintain their oligopolies (at the expense of everyone else).

Abolish

[Meneth]

It's simple: get rid of them all.

Hurting everyone

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Karma, tastes good

[interval1066]

the UN should tell the USA to get lost until they pay their fees

The US is not paying those fees becuase its telling the UN to get lost on its inaction on Syria, Iraq, Central Africa, Yugoslavia... I have to say I don't feel very charitable to idiots either.

The goal is imprecise and subjective

[erroneus]

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.

What is Wrong with RAND?

[dgharmon]

"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?

Re:Patent are not international

[Dynedain]

STFU and learn how to use google before spouting off:

Here's just one example of a ratified patent treaty.

Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks

[msclrhd]

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.

If your product can't be released without

[Anonymous Coward]

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.