AT&T rose to prominence due to their patent of the telephone that expired in 1894. The dominant paradigm in business at the time was to create a monopoly (see Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, etc.). Once AT&T achieved de factor monopoly status, Federal regulators sued AT&T for violating anti-trust laws and in 1913 reached an agreement with AT&T that placed restrictions on what companies they could purchase and guaranteed that all long distance companies would have access to their network. Unfortunately, the Interstate Commerce Commission was lax in its approval of mergers and AT&T eventually achieved a near completely monopoly position. To say that government action led to the AT&T monopoly is disingenuous at best.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I respectfully disagree. It has been my experience that Florian Mueller has an agenda and it is not for the betterment of FOSS. In the cases I have read on his blog, his analysis is wrong at least as much as it is right. That said, he is not a journalist, nor a lawyer, but a blogger and entitled to his opinion. Like any blog, I would recommend you read it with some skepticism.
The U.S. Department of Justice successfully sued Standard Oil, which led to its dissolution in 1911 (when it lost its case at the Supreme Court). The Oil companies to emerge out of the dissolution included Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron. The DOJ also sued to break up AT&T in 1974, from which Verizon, the current AT&T, and CenturyLink emerged. While in both cases their has been rampant reintegration, it was regulators who forced them apart.
I feel like you're making my argument for me, but this isn't your intention. I can see what Nokia gets out of this, money. What does Apple get out of this? I don't believe Apple chooses to spend time and money for purely altruistic motives. So, Apple is gaining something significant out of this, either now or in the future. if your contention is that the only benefit to Apple is a slightly thinner sim card, I'm not buying it.
The concern for me is this: Apple has proven that they are not for open standards. They have demonstrated that they will do whatever is necessary to feed their bottom line. So, the question I immediately ask is what are they getting out of this and will it eventually hurt me? If this was a company with a history of support for open standards and opposition to patents, I wouldn't be as inclined to question their motives.
There have been many articles lately about the effects of wealth concentration and the Economist has repeatedly pointed out things like how the American healthcare system is flawed, etc. This is red meat to the American Right. I see the Economist as conservative American in the vein of William F Buckley, etc (thinking conservatives instead of purely dogmatic conservatives). American Conservatives would be unrecognizable to their ilk even 20 years ago. The Economist has remained fairly consistent, but the right wing of American politics has drifted significantly. I bet even Reagan would be a Democrat if he lived today.
Actually, I was responding to the anonymous coward, not directly to you. I would contend that the idea of people building upon others ideas in order for progress to occur would naturally lead to a very limited copyright system. The AC's contention was that copyright encourages the creation of new "original" ideas, juxtaposed with my contention that it could allow for more progress by "taking someone else's IP and making some changes." In my system, a short copyright length would be ideal because it would allows ideas to coalesce more quickly. In the AC's world, if creation of original content is not predicated on existing knowledge then the indefinite extension of copyright would have no ill effects. In other words, I suspect you and I agree on this point.
Perhaps I hold a less than optimistic view of the American public, but I doubt readers of the Economist are "average Americans." The Economist is left leaning by U.S. standards and has much higher intellectual standards that most media consumed by the "average American."
I challenge you to name one truly "new" idea. Not an incremental change to an older idea, but something done without "taking someone else's IP and making some changes."?
I can't think of one.
Human ideas seem to me to be more about incremental improvement and changes. This is what makes the concept of copyright so valuable. It encourages people to release their changes so others can build upon them. If people are no longer allowed to generate thought through incremental changes to others ideas however, I would view this as damaging to long term human progress.
In your example, the company could still patent any novel methods for identifying or using the "law of nature", just not the law itself. Anyone else could still make use of the law, just not using the methods in the patent. The important thing here is that the method is novel. Prometheus was trying to use a product of nature, mixing it with widely used methods, then calling it something new. If Prometheus had implemented a novel method for testing then the patent might have been valid, but it wouldn't have prevented the Mayo clinic from continuing to use widely used methods in respect the drug and human metabolism.
The cancer curing genes could still be patentable if the method for using or purifying them was novel. In this case though, it would be the process and not the genes that would get the patent.
As for the bacteria lamp, if the new gene was just the splicing of two naturally occurring genes using standard techniques, would it still qualify?
This ruling seems to agree with you. I only read the article and not the ruling, so I don't know all the details. However, the Supremes seem to be saying that once you strip away the naturally occurring elements to the patent, then strip away the processes that are already widely used or obvious, then you'd better still have something left. That leftover is what is really being patented. If I am reading it correctly, it would suggest that gene themselves are not patentable, nor are genes mixed with widely used isolation techniques, but genes mixed with a novel way of isolating or purifying them could still be patentable. However, someone else could still work on the same gene, so long as they found another method of doing so. (And I am not a patent attorney).
While I disagree that usage rates would rise with decriminalization, would you argue that prohibition doesn't also cause its own problems, particularly crime? Street gangs in the U.S. are primarily funded by drug dealing. Al Qaeda is funded primarily by drug dealing, FARC is funded primarily by drug dealing, etc. While there may not be a high profile Al Capone right now, most of the worlds criminal elements fund their efforts through drugs. Decriminalization would lower the cost of drugs substantially and remove any ability for criminal elements to make significant money from the trade thereby crippling international crime. Is a small reduction in use worth funneling so much money to criminals?
This presumes that the clause in the contract is legally enforceable. Have tethering clauses been ruled on by the courts(I don't know, but it would be relevant)? I can place a clause in a contract that you will give me your first born as breach of contract. Fortunately, selling or trading humans as chattel is illegal in most countries and so that clause would not be enforceable.
I think the business decision comes down to when the sales guy or executive pulls out the iPad it will make a greater impression than a eeePC. I put this into the same category as why we needed a marble fountain in the lobby. There are some jobs where image is more important than function.
The big loser here seems to be standards. If Apple and Microsoft can extort large amounts of money for essentially fringe patents, what incentives do companies like Motorola and Samsung have to join their core technology patents to standards? This wasn't a big deal when it was just a few patent trolls, but the game has changed. The reason companies like standards and patent pools is to mitigate risk, especially legal risk. If standards no longer encourage everyone to play nice, then I fear for a more fragmented system, where tech moves slowly because everyone is developing against each other instead of with each other. But we now live in a world where a bouncing screen effect is worth billions, but the hardware implementations it runs on are worth much less.
I think it will be interesting to see if that gap closes this year. A big part of the problem for AMD is that the current compilers do not optimize properly for bulldozer chips. GCC promised it in the latest release and Microsoft has promised it when they release Windows 8. I have read some places that the performance gains can be more than 30% even on current chips. This is the problem of moving to a new architecture without the market clout to move the market with you.
He has agreed to questioning, in the UK. The two women agreed to have sex with him, but during the night they had unprotected sex despite Assange's assurances that he was wearing a condom. This is a pretty minor crime in Sweden. Both women have since dropped the charges and say they only wanted Assange to get an STD test. Whatever else is going on in this case, Sweden pressing this hard for extradition just to ask a few questions (he hasn't been charged with a crime), is anything but common. Assange is certainly an immoral person in my book and women should be very aware of the kind of man he is, but that alone doesn't change the fact that this extradition request is highly unusual. I am not certain why Sweden has decided to expend such resources on Assange, but this is not exactly a "simple police followup."
I should have limited myself to this specific situation. Apple is a disruptive technology in smartphones. It's disruptive not because it is a new idea, I can't think of a single element of the Apple ecosystem that didn't exist prior to the iPhone, but rather because they are an industry outsider (which took the idea of the smartphone and did it better than the insiders). From the perspective of a company like Motorola, FRAND is good because it causes all their competitors to swap patent agreements and prevent mutually assured destruction in the court room. They might make a little money from the patents, but their business is hardware, not research. Enter Apple, which does not have any patents in this space to share. The first efforts by Nokia, Motorola, etc. were to try to get Apple to cross-license other patents that could be used against them for smartphones. This became a problem when the established companies and Apple couldn't agree on how to value "slide to unlock" or "photo bouncing on edge of screen" compared to, say antenna design. So, instead of cross-licensing, these companies offered Apple rates far above what their other competitors were getting because the real value in FRAND was not the money, but the assurance that their competitors won't try to force them from the markets through lawsuits, and this is something that Apple wouldn't give them. Without that consideration from Apple, they viewed these patents as far more valuable on a purely dollar basis.
This can be difficult to ascertain. Take, for example, the spat between Apple and Nokia last year. Apple approached Nokia about licensing their FRAND patents. Nokia responded that its FRAND prices were based on patent cross-licensing deals (after all, to Nokia cross-licensing and market stability is the reason for contributing to FRAND in the first place). Since Apple didn't have any relevant patents, they would accept Apple software patents in lieu of hardware patents. Apple responded that that Nokia was undervaluing their software patents vis-a-vis Nokia's hardware patents and refused. In the end, they settled for no patent cross-licensing, but Apple paying a higher than "FRAND" rate. So, the big question here is what is a patent cross-licensing deal worth? Apple and Microsoft are saying very little; while Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, etc. are saying that these cross-license deals are worth much more to them than the cash. Who is right? It is important to remember why a company like Motorola contributes to FRAND in the first place. It isn't about the royalties (which aren't that much money), but about market stability. It is an agreement that all the relevant parties are going to compete with their products and services and not in the court room. So, cross-licensing is what they really want from Apple and Microsoft, but nobody knows how to value a software patent compared to a fundamental hardware patent.
Slashdot Mirror
AT&T rose to prominence due to their patent of the telephone that expired in 1894. The dominant paradigm in business at the time was to create a monopoly (see Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, etc.). Once AT&T achieved de factor monopoly status, Federal regulators sued AT&T for violating anti-trust laws and in 1913 reached an agreement with AT&T that placed restrictions on what companies they could purchase and guaranteed that all long distance companies would have access to their network. Unfortunately, the Interstate Commerce Commission was lax in its approval of mergers and AT&T eventually achieved a near completely monopoly position. To say that government action led to the AT&T monopoly is disingenuous at best.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I respectfully disagree. It has been my experience that Florian Mueller has an agenda and it is not for the betterment of FOSS. In the cases I have read on his blog, his analysis is wrong at least as much as it is right. That said, he is not a journalist, nor a lawyer, but a blogger and entitled to his opinion. Like any blog, I would recommend you read it with some skepticism.
The U.S. Department of Justice successfully sued Standard Oil, which led to its dissolution in 1911 (when it lost its case at the Supreme Court). The Oil companies to emerge out of the dissolution included Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron. The DOJ also sued to break up AT&T in 1974, from which Verizon, the current AT&T, and CenturyLink emerged. While in both cases their has been rampant reintegration, it was regulators who forced them apart.
I feel like you're making my argument for me, but this isn't your intention. I can see what Nokia gets out of this, money. What does Apple get out of this? I don't believe Apple chooses to spend time and money for purely altruistic motives. So, Apple is gaining something significant out of this, either now or in the future. if your contention is that the only benefit to Apple is a slightly thinner sim card, I'm not buying it.
The concern for me is this: Apple has proven that they are not for open standards. They have demonstrated that they will do whatever is necessary to feed their bottom line. So, the question I immediately ask is what are they getting out of this and will it eventually hurt me? If this was a company with a history of support for open standards and opposition to patents, I wouldn't be as inclined to question their motives.
There have been many articles lately about the effects of wealth concentration and the Economist has repeatedly pointed out things like how the American healthcare system is flawed, etc. This is red meat to the American Right. I see the Economist as conservative American in the vein of William F Buckley, etc (thinking conservatives instead of purely dogmatic conservatives). American Conservatives would be unrecognizable to their ilk even 20 years ago. The Economist has remained fairly consistent, but the right wing of American politics has drifted significantly. I bet even Reagan would be a Democrat if he lived today.
Actually, I was responding to the anonymous coward, not directly to you. I would contend that the idea of people building upon others ideas in order for progress to occur would naturally lead to a very limited copyright system. The AC's contention was that copyright encourages the creation of new "original" ideas, juxtaposed with my contention that it could allow for more progress by "taking someone else's IP and making some changes." In my system, a short copyright length would be ideal because it would allows ideas to coalesce more quickly. In the AC's world, if creation of original content is not predicated on existing knowledge then the indefinite extension of copyright would have no ill effects. In other words, I suspect you and I agree on this point.
Perhaps I hold a less than optimistic view of the American public, but I doubt readers of the Economist are "average Americans." The Economist is left leaning by U.S. standards and has much higher intellectual standards that most media consumed by the "average American."
I challenge you to name one truly "new" idea. Not an incremental change to an older idea, but something done without "taking someone else's IP and making some changes."?
I can't think of one.
Human ideas seem to me to be more about incremental improvement and changes. This is what makes the concept of copyright so valuable. It encourages people to release their changes so others can build upon them. If people are no longer allowed to generate thought through incremental changes to others ideas however, I would view this as damaging to long term human progress.
Time runs faster in my freezer than in my basement mini-fridge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
In your example, the company could still patent any novel methods for identifying or using the "law of nature", just not the law itself. Anyone else could still make use of the law, just not using the methods in the patent. The important thing here is that the method is novel. Prometheus was trying to use a product of nature, mixing it with widely used methods, then calling it something new. If Prometheus had implemented a novel method for testing then the patent might have been valid, but it wouldn't have prevented the Mayo clinic from continuing to use widely used methods in respect the drug and human metabolism.
The cancer curing genes could still be patentable if the method for using or purifying them was novel. In this case though, it would be the process and not the genes that would get the patent.
As for the bacteria lamp, if the new gene was just the splicing of two naturally occurring genes using standard techniques, would it still qualify?
This ruling seems to agree with you. I only read the article and not the ruling, so I don't know all the details. However, the Supremes seem to be saying that once you strip away the naturally occurring elements to the patent, then strip away the processes that are already widely used or obvious, then you'd better still have something left. That leftover is what is really being patented. If I am reading it correctly, it would suggest that gene themselves are not patentable, nor are genes mixed with widely used isolation techniques, but genes mixed with a novel way of isolating or purifying them could still be patentable. However, someone else could still work on the same gene, so long as they found another method of doing so. (And I am not a patent attorney).
While I disagree that usage rates would rise with decriminalization, would you argue that prohibition doesn't also cause its own problems, particularly crime? Street gangs in the U.S. are primarily funded by drug dealing. Al Qaeda is funded primarily by drug dealing, FARC is funded primarily by drug dealing, etc. While there may not be a high profile Al Capone right now, most of the worlds criminal elements fund their efforts through drugs. Decriminalization would lower the cost of drugs substantially and remove any ability for criminal elements to make significant money from the trade thereby crippling international crime. Is a small reduction in use worth funneling so much money to criminals?
This presumes that the clause in the contract is legally enforceable. Have tethering clauses been ruled on by the courts(I don't know, but it would be relevant)? I can place a clause in a contract that you will give me your first born as breach of contract. Fortunately, selling or trading humans as chattel is illegal in most countries and so that clause would not be enforceable.
I think the business decision comes down to when the sales guy or executive pulls out the iPad it will make a greater impression than a eeePC. I put this into the same category as why we needed a marble fountain in the lobby. There are some jobs where image is more important than function.
The big loser here seems to be standards. If Apple and Microsoft can extort large amounts of money for essentially fringe patents, what incentives do companies like Motorola and Samsung have to join their core technology patents to standards? This wasn't a big deal when it was just a few patent trolls, but the game has changed. The reason companies like standards and patent pools is to mitigate risk, especially legal risk. If standards no longer encourage everyone to play nice, then I fear for a more fragmented system, where tech moves slowly because everyone is developing against each other instead of with each other. But we now live in a world where a bouncing screen effect is worth billions, but the hardware implementations it runs on are worth much less.
I thought Global Foundries was owned by the King of Dubai (seriously, they sold it to the government/royal family of Dubai).
"Real men have fabs." -Jerry Sanders, founder AMD.
I think it will be interesting to see if that gap closes this year. A big part of the problem for AMD is that the current compilers do not optimize properly for bulldozer chips. GCC promised it in the latest release and Microsoft has promised it when they release Windows 8. I have read some places that the performance gains can be more than 30% even on current chips. This is the problem of moving to a new architecture without the market clout to move the market with you.
It seems like VIA has been more interested in HTC for the time being (they are run by a husband and wife team).
He has agreed to questioning, in the UK. The two women agreed to have sex with him, but during the night they had unprotected sex despite Assange's assurances that he was wearing a condom. This is a pretty minor crime in Sweden. Both women have since dropped the charges and say they only wanted Assange to get an STD test. Whatever else is going on in this case, Sweden pressing this hard for extradition just to ask a few questions (he hasn't been charged with a crime), is anything but common. Assange is certainly an immoral person in my book and women should be very aware of the kind of man he is, but that alone doesn't change the fact that this extradition request is highly unusual. I am not certain why Sweden has decided to expend such resources on Assange, but this is not exactly a "simple police followup."
I should have limited myself to this specific situation. Apple is a disruptive technology in smartphones. It's disruptive not because it is a new idea, I can't think of a single element of the Apple ecosystem that didn't exist prior to the iPhone, but rather because they are an industry outsider (which took the idea of the smartphone and did it better than the insiders). From the perspective of a company like Motorola, FRAND is good because it causes all their competitors to swap patent agreements and prevent mutually assured destruction in the court room. They might make a little money from the patents, but their business is hardware, not research. Enter Apple, which does not have any patents in this space to share. The first efforts by Nokia, Motorola, etc. were to try to get Apple to cross-license other patents that could be used against them for smartphones. This became a problem when the established companies and Apple couldn't agree on how to value "slide to unlock" or "photo bouncing on edge of screen" compared to, say antenna design. So, instead of cross-licensing, these companies offered Apple rates far above what their other competitors were getting because the real value in FRAND was not the money, but the assurance that their competitors won't try to force them from the markets through lawsuits, and this is something that Apple wouldn't give them. Without that consideration from Apple, they viewed these patents as far more valuable on a purely dollar basis.
This can be difficult to ascertain. Take, for example, the spat between Apple and Nokia last year. Apple approached Nokia about licensing their FRAND patents. Nokia responded that its FRAND prices were based on patent cross-licensing deals (after all, to Nokia cross-licensing and market stability is the reason for contributing to FRAND in the first place). Since Apple didn't have any relevant patents, they would accept Apple software patents in lieu of hardware patents. Apple responded that that Nokia was undervaluing their software patents vis-a-vis Nokia's hardware patents and refused. In the end, they settled for no patent cross-licensing, but Apple paying a higher than "FRAND" rate. So, the big question here is what is a patent cross-licensing deal worth? Apple and Microsoft are saying very little; while Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, etc. are saying that these cross-license deals are worth much more to them than the cash. Who is right? It is important to remember why a company like Motorola contributes to FRAND in the first place. It isn't about the royalties (which aren't that much money), but about market stability. It is an agreement that all the relevant parties are going to compete with their products and services and not in the court room. So, cross-licensing is what they really want from Apple and Microsoft, but nobody knows how to value a software patent compared to a fundamental hardware patent.
Fortunately, Mr. Toews gave a lot of wiggle room on this. For instance, I can state unequivocally that I stand with this convicted child molester: http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2007/10/28/georgia-supreme-court-releases-wilson.htm.