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Patent System Not Broken, Argues IBM's Chief Patent Counsel
New submitter TurinX writes "Unsurprisingly, IBM's Chief Patent Counsel, Manny Schecter, thinks the patent system isn't broken. He says, 'Patent disputes like [the Apple-Samsung case] are a natural characteristic of a vigorously competitive industry. And they're nothing new: Similar skirmishes have historically occurred in areas as diverse as sewing machines, winged flight, agriculture, and telegraph technology. Each marked the emergence of incredible technological advances, and each generated similar outcries about the patent system. We are actually witnessing fewer patent suits per patent issued today than the historical average.'"
Regarding software patents, he argues, "If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world." His recommendation is that we should be patient and "let the system work." Schecter's editorial at Wired is one of a series of expert opinions on the patent system; we've already discussed Richard Stallman's contribution.
The title is all you need to know...
Patent System Not Broken, Argues IBM's Chief Patent Counsel
Of course he will say that, his job depends on there being patents to work and litigate with.
"[Big] U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
This is not an argument at all. It's possible they stifle innovation as it is now, so they would be even better off without the patent system.
Or, another possibility: Perhaps the patent system is not stifling software companies as much as other businesses as of yet. Do you want it to become as difficult to create a new software company as it currently is to create a new company in any other industry?
Hen house "perfectly secure", proclaims fox.
I'm sorry, but when you can patent swinging side to side (US6368227) or teasing your cat with a laser pointer (US5443036), and the infamous rounded corners; it just proves that the system is broken. Whether it is broken beyond repair, needs a serious overhaul, or just needs a bit of tweaking, is up in the air.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Of course there are fewer suits per patent, because there are literally 5 times the number of patent applications as there were 30 years ago. That means nothing. Deceitful bastard of a lawyer... but I repeat myself.
And of course I don't need to address the "if it wasn't a good idea, we wouldn't be succeeding", around here, do I? So damned fallacious. It's like saying being fat isn't bad for you because people now live longer than they did 100 years ago. A does not follow from B.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"We are actually witnessing fewer patent suits per patent issued today than the historical average." And we have more people settling out of court so they don't have the expense because is actually cheaper to "license" the patent that to try to fight it for 8 years against a patent troll. Or the fact we now have tens of million patents each year for stuff as inane as a square with rounded corners. And that if we actually tried to fight in court would have the courts stuffed for the next 300 years for just this years patents.
Next you'll be telling that accountants don't think the tax system needs simplifying.
... says the ass-troll laughing all the way to the bank.
You mean the skirmishes that left Europe doing all the innovating in winged flight for 20 years? The ones that resulted in the US entering World War I with airplanes that weren't much better than the Flyer III?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
for your health. More at 11.
What a crock of shit. Of couse a man who gets paid $1000/hr doesn't think the system is flawed.
http://www.patentdocs.org/2012/06/ipo-releases-list-of-top-300-patent-holders-for-2011.html
Maybe he just wants to keep his job.
The navigation on IBM.com violates US patent #7353460 "Web site navigation under a hierarchical menu structure" as well as US patent # 5251294 "Accessing, assembling, and using bodies of information"
When patent trolls lay in wait for a successful business and then litigate them into submission, the system is broken. When companies amass patents simply for use as leverage and profit from other companies, the system is broken. When it is necessary to pay thousands of dollars to lawyers, researchers and fees thereby removing the system from the average garage inventor, the system is broken. And finally, when patents become so universal to every breath, every step, every device, and every thought we may have now or in the future, the freaking system is broken. In fact, it is hard to think of ways the system is actually not broken, come to think of it.
"Patent disputes like [the Apple-Samsung case] are a natural characteristic of a vigorously competitive industry."
And that only companies on a scale like Apple, Samsung, and... IBM can be competitive in any patent-portfolio showdown, is not.
Though, he seems to like using terms that can't actually fail to be the case, given how he uses them. Yes, there is "industry". Yes, it is "competitive"--increasingly within an oligopoly.
The next one is better, though.
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
a) The broad software industry did not reach the point it is at with such patent battles being mainstream, and...
b) If we had a single software company in the U.S., that is "most successful" compared to its equivalent in each other country, is that satisfactory, in reality, as opposed to per how his sentence is phrased?
Unfortunately, per usual, the worst enemy of free-market capitalism, is capitalists, as it's almost always to a large company's net advantage to have a general impediment applied to everyone--which will cost them, but also eliminate the smaller competition via those costs. The cost of lawyers, handily, being among such general impediments.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'm sorry. But no. All of these "on a computer" and "over the internet" patents have got to go. And making a product design so simple that its design is completely utilitarian does not a design patent make.
Companies suing each other into oblivion is no way for competition to reign. It's supposed to be about marketing, customer service and product quality... isn't it?
US patent system is broken because only big companies can afford that kind of litigation. Small companies only have the option to be bought by someone big enough before they are attacked by patent trolls or competitors that don't want a new actor in their area. But it is understandable that Big IBM want the current state because it is in favor of them, that doesn't means the system is right
...says corporation with the most patents ever.
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
He is right. Patent litigation doesn't stifle innovation, it stifles competition.
And IBM know that because they've stomped enough businesses back in the days when they were the big evil monopoly.
Innovation happens as byproduct on working on a given problem. It will happen despite somebody having patented portion or the whole of it. However the patent may prevent the innovative company from selling its product or increase the cost. The innovation then could be bought or outright stolen. Then the big and successful patent holders would become bigger and even more successful.
Yeah, you may want to go ahead check the totals on that one instead of the marginal rate, since that's where the costs come from.
Each marked the emergence of incredible technological advances, and each generated similar outcries about the patent system.
So he is arguing that because the system has been around a long time it must good? Why can't the same statement be used to claim that the patent system as been broken for a long time and we just haven't gotten around to fixing it?
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't consider that many other factors may be involved. It doesn't even consider the fact that a 'better' patent system may allow for more innovation. The fact that U.S. software companies are supposedly the most successful in the world doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If Mr. Schechter really wants us to believe the patent system isn't broken, then why doesn't he step aside from IBM and maybe handle a few pro bono cases for small inventors. Then he can come back here and tell us all what a wonderful patent system we enjoy!
As someone actively attempting to game the system, having spent over a month working on something that would be called a patent troll, I can guarantee you the patent system is ridiculous and should be abolished entirely. The things I've seen just in research alone for my own attempt. Pages of the purest garbage language you've ever seen, descriptions of things take one sentence strung out by lawyers into PHD like thesis on how to do everything from give someone a gift via the internet to how the internet itself works.
Questions like, how do I read a QR code if the camera can't get a good picture? With patented answers that are literally along the lines of "move the damned camera". And for those arguing against the entire abolishment of patents, I doubt you have more qualification of informed and important opinion than the entire St. Louis Federal Bank: http://bit.ly/S6aNCp
There's no real question that the entire US patent system is in desperate need of major changes. The only thing remaining is to expose it as such to the right people. Probably to the US public in general, enough that the general average corruptness, laziness, and ignorance of Congress can be overcome.
He wouldn't see it as 'broken' because from his perspective it's 'working as designed' - to make sociopathic scumbag lawyers like him rich and to allow big companies to use patent cross-licensing and ring-fencing to destroy potential upstart competitors. A more important question would be if the patent system was immoral, and it is. It's effectively the initiation of violence against, and theft of property of, 'second inventors', for merely using their minds to create something. Those of who aren't lacking a conscience find the software patent system morally repugnant, and all software developers with a moral conscience should reject the software patent system as a matter of principle.
Lawyer argues court is better.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Did someone tell this guy that an asshat was the cure for baldness?
With the number of patents issues and the escalating cost of justice, for this to not be true would pretty much double-down on the trillion dollar a year fiscal cliff.
Sorry dude, we invaded Iraq. There just aren't enough litigation dollars free for the taking, so either the ALP (average litigation price) or the ALR (average litigation rate) has to go down. Teach a lawyer to fish, he buys himself a drift net. If the net is to heavy with fish to pull into the boat, he doesn't fish with a smaller net, he makes the holes bigger. Whales, we call them. The whales eat the small fish, and we eat the whales.
"The Rich Are Getting Richer" argument is not semantically equivalent to "The System Is Working".
Although it may be equivalent to "The System Is Working AS DESIGNED".
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
In other words, "Software businesses should continue to pay people like me princely salaries year after year to litigate absurd claims, instead of being able to invest that money in research."
It's not just the patent system that's broken. Software patent law is nothing more than binary ambulance chasing.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- quote from "I, Candidate for Governor" by Upton Sinclair (1935)
I once asked an IP & technology patent lawyer who was speaking at seminar what he though of software 'click through' agreements in light of all the problems that they have as a legitimate contract, and I go a half assed response about how they were legally sound because, 'everybody was using them'.
Just because someone is an expert in a field doesn't mean that they have any useful opinions or ideas about the field.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Works for me.
Although it's no surprise to hear a large company's Chief Patent Counsel making such statements, it is surprising to hear it coming from IBM. I wonder if that guy isn't a loose canon that's going to get strongly told off behind closed doors.
This isn't because IBM is non-evil on patents or anything like that, but only because they've tried to keep their image clean in recent years and to look relatively friendly. Lest youngsters don't remember, IBM used to be the Big Blue Evil some decades ago, and it took them a long time to cure that tarnished reputation.
I doubt that the board is very happy when a clueless company lawyer, no matter how senior, spouts off and makes the company look bad again. Particularly when he uses logic so faulty that only a lawyer could say it with a straight face.
It's like a pedo saying sex with minors isn't a bad thing. Of course he'd say that.
"Economists also tell us that 75 percent of a company’s value is attributable to its intellectual property (IP) — and that IP-intensive industries contribute $5 trillion per year to the U.S. economy. These industries account for about 35 percent of gross domestic product and 40 million jobs, including 28 percent of the jobs in the United States."
The report linked in the article discusses copyright, trademark, and patent-intensive industries. Patent-intensive industries are the *lowest* employer of the three, around 4 million as opposed to the 40 million jobs cited. It's misleading to lump all three industries together.
The same report lists another interesting metric, which is percentage of self-employed workers for each industry. Patent-intensive industries have the lowest number of self-employed workers, at 2.2% (vs 16% for copyright-intensive industries). This indicates to me that patent-intensive industries do not support capital-poor startups very well.
Of course I would expect counsel for the top patent recipient in the U.S. for two decades running to have differing opinions from my own.
Source: http://www.uspto.gov/news/publications/IP_Report_March_2012.pdf
There are fewer lawsuits per patent because there are so many invalid patents issued. Also, this doesn't take into consideration all the extortion that goes on without lawsuits being filed. This article is a self-interested load of crap.
Patents server large crony cartels like IBM and the lawyer class quite well - just the rest of us get screwed.
Case in point.
"Patent System Not Broken, Argues IBM's Chief Patent Counsel"
"Moore's Law Is Becoming Irrelevant, Says ARM's Boss"
Can we have a checkbox to hide "Corporate head makes self-serving statement" stories? They're depressing as hell.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
are the balance between ease of registration and objection/challenge and the length of the term. Do you like em light and fluffy or dark and charred ?
You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle.
Nice!
...it's always been broken doesn't mean it's not broken now. If it is used to block competition that is not actually stealing real, non-trivial, IP, it's broken.
Pedophiles don't think there's a child molestation 'problem' in America either.
Crooks defending a broken system they themselves designed and lobbied hard for. News at 11. Thus these silly argument aren't even wrong. These arguments are corrupt and should be dismissed as such. Having said that, I see more and more corporate parrots repeating this crap as pressure on fixing this (broken) system mounts. Expect more of them joining this chorus of lies and deceptions and more corporate money thrown at Congress to make sure US broken patent system won't go away.
The original intent of the system was that you share your idea, people don't re-invent the wheel and they pay you a reasonable fee for the pleasure. Unfortunately, and possibly inevitably, people begin to game the system. Governments, the slowest mover in the game, are always playing catch up. The result: monopolies, wasted capital on litigation, and increased lobbying to reinforce a bad system. What's the answer? FRAND? Compulsory Licensing? Mandatory Mediation? or Should we return invention to it's mother---Necessity!
Are patents legal or technical documents? If they are legal documents that happen to cover a technical area, then they're working (legal fees, political connections and court cases are part of doing law related business). If they are technical documents that happen to have legal standing then they are not working. The government has a whole suite of tools for doing technical reviews and oversight for research grants and it is telling that none of those tools are applied to patents.
I was reading Slashdot of two private secret meeting about IBM and MS deciding New Zealand Patent law legislation. Here is the story http://en.swpat.org/wiki/IBM_and_MS_deciding_New_Zealand_legislation
If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world
Perhaps the answer is little more complex and the stifling effects can be mitigated in various ways in a large market with common language, large funding and infrastructure development via war and other politically motivated efforts and the related strong public sector demand where the role of patents have been less emphasized. Additionally, the idea that failing customer commitment is always wrong, even under a nuclear war is from the IBM leadership. In other words, IBM has a long time been a service company. Customers value service and if the US firms have been better at it, they have won the deals.
I think the root of the problem is that the fellow countrymen vote lawyers in presidential elections. Therefore, lawyers write laws to favour lawyers, and as a result, the United States has slowly become a paradise for lawyers.
"Henhouse locks are just fine" says the fox.
Organization? You must be joking..
Meanwhile, Apple submits patents on all Platonic solids, golden ratio rectangles and the colors white and black.
Organization? You must be joking..