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Feed Magazine Commentary on Patent Insanity
roger writes "Feed Magazine has an interesting column on etoy/eToys, Leonardo, etc., and the recent patent law insanity in the United States." Cogent commentary on *why* so many big companies are doing such dumb stuff from Hunter College Professor Clay Shirkey.
While your point is a very good one, I'll note the reason why railroads are hampered the way they are is because of the anti-trust acts that were brought onto the railroads about a century ago.
My father used to work for the railroads, and the amount of regulatory wierdness that surrounds the railroads because of their actions a century ago is just absolutely bizarre. For example, as of a few years ago it was a federal capital crime (read: death penalty) to cause the derailment of a train in a way which caused the death of any passengers on that train. Needless to say many of these laws are not enforced.
Your retort doesn't apply to patents concerning business models, because the method employed is transparent to everyone
Well, if you look at current patent law, it actually has a stipulation against patenting business processes. The problem is that the courts have mangled the interpritation of process patents in general so that with a little careful wording conventional process patent law can be streached to cover business processes. This is really a screwed up situation that needs to be fixed; patents were never intended to cover business processes.
And the USPTO isn't about to stop giving out trivial patents, because every patent issued by the USPTO to an American company/citizen is one fewer international patent that can be handed out to a foreign company/citizen. Nevermind that Americans suffer from this practice just as much as the rest of the world.
Your point is completely spurious because USPTO patents can and are in fact routinely given to to foreign companies and citizens; in fact on the order of 1/2 of US Patents over the past decade were assigned to foreign citizens and companies. There is no restriction on non-US citizens being granted US Patents.
If Sony wants to gain patent covereage on something they sell in the US they have to get a US Patent. If I want to get coverage on something I sell in Japan, I need a Japanese Patent. A US Patent has no standing outside the US except perhaps as prior art. In fact if I file a US Patent on MY INVENTION I have to file a European Patent about the same time to prevent my own US Patent being used against me as prior art.
Original Post: But by not allowing dissemination and wide spread adoption of these business models it will only serve to retard the overall evolution of our economy.
Post I'm replying: Your retort doesn't apply to patents concerning business models, because the method employed is transparent to everyone -- humanity doesn't need anyone to spell it out on paper, because anyone in the business knows what business model
One question: So what if everybody knows what they are if they cannot use the patented business methods? The problem with patents now is that they are being used as a weapons: thus companies would rather not license patented processes so that their competition is overly handicapped or non-existent. e.g. Priceline vs. Expedia or Amazon vs. BN. This can only harm consumers in the long run because it limits choice and grants a natural monopoly to the patent holder. And we all know monopolies are a bad thing.
This is an International Patent
In a pig's eye it is.
THIS IS NOT A PATENT It is an application that was rejected by the European Patent Office.
WO series numbers are APPLICATIONS. If you even took the time to look at it you would see that it saya APPLICATION right along the top.
The ones who are pushing this insanity are the lawyers, in the long run, they are the ones who will be making the most money, reguardless of which side they are representing.
It's a damn shame that the great inovational spirit we had in the 20's 30's and even up through the 80's is getting stifled because people are so afraid of getting sued.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
My position on business model patents has always been quite simple. You shouldn't be able to get them. At all. It's a process patent (how to get from here to there). It should be considered a trade secret by the company in the sense that they keep their mouths shut and don't have to tell anyone how they do it (except monopolies?). But if someone else figures it out, good for them.
:-). I can serve it for years without others figuring out how to make it and make money on it until someone else smartens up (think KFC's secret recipe) or I can tell everyone ... either way, my right.
...!
Say I figure out how to mix a new drink that everyone loves at Christmas and call it "eggnog"
No legal protection of the process itself
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING AN ANTIGRAVITATIONAL FORCE
It's not only the companies, the patent office itself is loony tunes, allowing patents on anything and everything (this is an International Patent). Given the power they are handing out (authority to kick the ass of anybody using their "patented" technology) some checks and balances are in order. Peer review at least.
What if Henry Ford had patented the assembly line as his business model and prevented other manufacturers from adopting this process for making their goods? How would that have affected the history of the 20th century? Anyone care to speculate?
It seems to me that this is basically what is happening with the Dell and Amazon patents and all the "business model" patents if they are enforced. I can't help but think that it would ultimately be detrimental to the public good (and to the patent holders themselves). Sure some of these companies will maybe make even more money than they already do in the short run. But by not allowing dissemination and wide spread adoption of these business models it will only serve to retard the overall evolution of our economy.
Sharing knowledge multiplies its power and benefits everyone, including those who create it. Hoarding knowledge impoverishes us all.
What a stupid world we are living in.
**sigh**
Merry Christmas everyone.
Ideology is for ideots.
These big companies would do anything to find a way to use what they have -- resources -- to make up for what they lack -- drive -- and they may have found an answer to their prayers in lawsuits.
These two quotes cover just about 90% of current patent problems and about 75% of trademark problems (squatting for greed is a factor in domain trademark wars, even if we don't like to admit it). We should also add in requests by large businesses to regulate the internet (especially things like domains).
More importantly we can see a larger issue at work here: the use of 'good' government to hurt economic competition. Generally, most people see patents, trademarks, and regulation as government working to protect rightful owners and the public. To some degree this is true. Often, however, these same things are encouraged by larger companies to weed out competition.
Some examples outside of computer patents and internet trademarks from the US in recent years include:
That these issues and tactics are now appearing in the Internet world is new. That they exists and endanger inovation and decreasing costs isn't.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
How can a company trademark a person's name?
Like this is new. Trademarks based on names have been around since the beginning of trademarks. Ford Motor. McDonald's. Bell Telephone. Hoover vacuum cleaners.
On the internet we have ONE namespace, and result is conflict. Until the regulatory bodies fix the internet namespace problem, there will be name conflicts. It isn't the fault of trademark law - it is simply due to the intersection of new technologies never intended for commercial activity intersecting with the business world.
You can read about the Leonardo case at http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leo nardo/ Whats worse is that the founder's widdow of the Leonardo journal (the people being sued) home got raided by the french police. Seriously.
This article was right on the money. Somehow, we've turned into a combative culture where the power of the judiciary is being used as a weapon-- against democracy and free markets.
Nowadays, rather than saying "this should be legal" and then getting together with people you agree with and supporting a law to legalize something, it is easier to hire a lawyer and declare that someone's rights somewhere are being violated. Then a court rules in your favor, and no debate or legislation can overturn you. It is because a right trumps everything in this country-- including democracy itself. I'm not saying this is bad-- quite the contrary, it is a wonderful system when it is used in good faith. But right now, it is being shockingly abused.
For one thing, people are suing each other over things they would never have bothered with before. There is a reflex now that you might as well try-- and the jackpots (monetary or ideological) that await people or corporations who do are irrestible. In this country, sometimes not suing is considered tacit permission when your rights are violated, encouraging still more knee-jerk lawsuits.
Another factor is that the judiciary has begun to blur what a right is. There is a difference between "this is a right" and "people should be free to do this, but it isn't a right because it isn't in the constitution yet". But this distinction is disappearing-- now a judge basically gets to make our liberties up as he goes along. Because the specification for what a right is isn't being adhered to, spurious lawsuits can make up rights and hope for a judge that agrees with them.
It's dangerous because when the backlash comes (and we are still a democracy-- when enough people's real rights are violated a la Amazon or etoy, there will be a backlash), I am afraid that our real rights and the great judical system we have will get thrown out with the bathwater. The judiciary can't be completely arbitrary for long before people lose all faith in it.
It seems that in the UK, those who contribute may be liable for the costs of the other side. See the BBC news article about the backers of Hamilton being pursued for costs by Al-Fayed after the recent libel case. The danger is that funds that balance the resources available to the richer party end up pushing up the total cost so lawyers get much richer, and everyone else loses. I would much prefer some way to limit permitted expenditure to what the poorer party can afford, but I doubt if that can be made to happen (too many politicians are/were lawyers for a start).
I don't know what the situation is in the US, or elsewhere, but the international nature of the net means that people will try to fight their legal battles in the most favourable jurisdiction.
They do it because they can. I didn't learn anything new from the article other than that etoy.com was not-for-profit, and they registered their domain before etoys even started. It just states the obvious, which is best summarized by the closing line:
If this spate of foolish lawsuits continues -- and there is every indication that it will -- the next few years will see a web where the law becomes a tool for the slow to retard the fast and the big to stymie the small.
Your retort doesn't apply to patents concerning business models, because the method employed is transparent to everyone -- humanity doesn't need anyone to spell it out on paper, because anyone in the business knows what business model the patent-holder is using. All these patents do is give the patent-holder an exclusive right to that model. It's rather one-sided.
And the USPTO isn't about to stop giving out trivial patents, because every patent issued by the USPTO to an American company/citizen is one fewer international patent that can be handed out to a foreign company/citizen. Nevermind that Americans suffer from this practice just as much as the rest of the world.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Legislative action: the corporation has the money to bribe better politicians.
Executive-agency action: police are perpetually more interested in helping corporate monied interests than in helping the little guy.
Gladiator contest: the corporation has the money to hire better gladiators than does the artist.
Ordeals: the corporation has the money to get the priests on its side and rig the ordeals in favor of the corp. And that's not assuming the corporation is given an ordeal like "swallow this glass of wine without choking" while the artist is given an ordeal like "carry this hot coal from here to there without burning yourself".
Arbitration: maybe the artist will come away with something, but again because of money, it will be less than what ought to be.
Our legal system has (more or less) successfully given the state a monopoly on violence. But, it has a long way to go before it can achieve any manner of institutional justice.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Actually, it's only because we hear about them faster in the US that we know about these things. But I do remember several silly things going on in Europe, including the UK court system upholding (!!!) the patent on the alpha channel, dispite expert testimony from several experts in computer graphics who said that the technique was actually invented almost a decade before the application was made.
Second point: Where has he been for the last two decades if he's only now noticing a lot of foolish lawsuits being filed? Forget just being filed, look at all the foolish lawsuits in the past twenty years in which the plaintiffs actually won. Hot coffee on your crotch, anyone?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
These big companies would do anything to find a way to use what they have -- resources -- to make up for what they lack -- drive -- and they may have found an answer to their prayers in lawsuits.
An age-old method of preventing small organizations and individuals from operating.
As for the Scum Known as eToys (SKeT). The scenario, as I've read it, indicates that SKeT, decided in their initial planning stages, to use capital to claim surrounding domain space, rather than actually performing the research, or doing the legwork required, to find a "safe" domain name. This implies that SKeT is a company based on a domain name(eToys), instead of a concept(retailing).
I.E., SKeT seems to be a gimmick, with little potential other than to cause trouble and separate fools from their money. Not to say that they won't succeed in the marketplace, given the amount of guppies running around today.