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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.
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.
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.
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.
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