The USPTO gets most of the blame, but I you are pointing fingers in the wrong place. The USPTO tried repeatedly to deny these types of patents in the 80's and 90's and the courts kept forcing them to grant them. The courts were ordering the USPTO to issue these patents while giving the USPTO little guidance to determine what was and was not a software patent. Finally in 1994, I think the USPTO decided to just grant everything and let the courts figure it out because that was what was happening anyways. The Supreme Court didn't hear a software patent case from 1981 to 2008 and in those years the district courts essentially created software patents. When the Supreme Court finally opened its mouth in 2008, it didn't clear up anything. Part of the problem is Congress failing to fix the system, but most of the blame lies with the courts. While I wouldn't go so far as to say the USPTO is a victim here, they clearly have little real power over what gets patented.
I think you need to read the article. According the link above, this is about anti-trust allegations from last April and not the illegal data collection investigation.
I think this is about pressuring vendors, particularly Samsung and LG. Samsung is too big and influential for Naver to pursue directly, so they are attacking Google. If they can get the Korean government to mandate more search options on LG and Samsung phones, then Naver wins. Naver has revenues of about $2 billion per year, Samsung about $220 billion per year. The Korean government would never side with Naver against Samsung. Google, on the other hand, is much smaller than Samsung at about $30 billion, has little influence in South Korea, and, most importantly, is a foreign company. This looks to me like an indirect attack on Samsung (and to a lesser extent LG) in an effort to defend their turf.
Google is the smaller search provider in South Korea (with less than 10% market share). This is about Google taking market share from domestic search monopolies because Samsung and LG are selling android phones which default to Google. Naver can't take on Samsung for political reasons, so they are using the government to go after Google.
I hate to reply to myself, but I am mistaken. After further consideration, I think this is about monopolies. This about South Korean search monopolies Naver and Daum losing marketshare because Google Android directs mobile searches through their portal. This is South Korean using the law to try and protect Naver. I wonder what Samsung thinks of Naver pushing around their partner?
Interestingly enough, Google is not a monopoly in search in South Korea. In fact, I think they are third behind Naver and Daum. Google is in single digits in search market share (Naver has something like 60%). This clearly is not about monopolistic practices.
Price is a concept relative to the purchaser (which is why different groups pay different prices for the same good). Since the poster is unable to purchase this product, its price to them does not exist, hence "doesn't have a price." Now, I would agree with you that the object may have a price to someone, but the concept of price, in relation to this good and this individual, does not seem to exist.
As far as I could tell, you were both arguing the same point. This study takes a statistical outlier and uses it to make generalizations. It's a poor concept.
The problem is the concept of a union in the United States. Most of Europe and Asia use a collaborative union model. This is where the unions work with the companies to the benefit of each. In the U.S. the model is, almost exclusively, adversarial. Even the word union conjures up images of conflict between companies and workers to many people in the U.S.
Compounding the problem is the notion of a corporation espoused in U.S. business schools since the 1980's. The business model, often using the catch phrase "shareholder value," is that corporations exist for the sole benefit of their shareholders. This is very different from Europe or Asia that view corporations in a more expansive light. In this system, a union is always in direct conflict with the goals of a corporation as it might take profits from the shareholders.
I think this is just an example of the free market. Apple will make high profits, but lose marketshare, Android will make smaller profits,but gain marketshare. Econ 101. There is room in the world for both a Mercedes and a Toyota.
The German system of both unions and corporate governance are very different than America. In Germany, workers must have just under half of all seats on the board of directors (although the president of the board comes from the shareholders). This makes workers and unions influential in setting the corporate direction of all German companies above 2,000 people. The idea of a union in many countries is also very different. In the United States, unions are adversarial organizations. In many countries, however, unions are cooperative groups that work for the best of the workers and company as a whole. It is important to also note that the idea of companies existing solely to benefit shareholders is not the dominant paradigm in most countries.
The dichotomy is not the time period,but the absolutism of the statement "hasn't advanced". In your above quote, either software advances or doesn't. So, there really isn't an answer to your question, because innovation hasn't stopped altogether, but it does seem to be slowing. I offered one potential measurement of that.
Except that you haven't... You pointed to the rise in patent litigation, and hypothesized a connection between the two - if patent litigation increases, innovation must therefore decrease. I disagree with that conclusion. Litigation is a business decision, and is related to cost of licensing vs. potential for litigation. Innovation is almost unrelated.
Good attempt at making a connection, but its not the connection I was making. Never in my argument did I make a causal connection here. I did make a correlation between the two. If patents cover increasingly broad aspects of a particular field and the tendency to litigate does not decline, then the amount of litigation will increase. Its the increasing monopolization of ideas that I see as leading to reduced innovation. Litigation is a potential symptom.
Furthermore, litigation necessarily lags behind patent filing. It takes between 3-7 years to get a patent, with the current USPTO backlog. That means that most of the recent litigation are over patents filed during the late 1990s dotcom boom. There was certainly a ton of innovation going on then. If anything, the rise in litigation indicates that innovation was advancing quite a bit then. If true, and if it's true that innovation is currently increasing (which I think it is), then we should see more patent litigation over the next decade, rather than less (and I think we will).
This is an issue of critical mass. One bad patent doesn't hurt innovation too much. But many bad patents issued over a period of time will. The current mess stems from patents issued since the mid-1990's. On that we agree. As for increasing litigation, I am not quite following your connection between increased litigation and innovation. What sort of relationship do you see between the two?
I also believe we will see increased litigation. I would contend that the increase in litigation is a reflection of more and more ideas being locked down since the 1990's. I would speculate that if we had seen these types of patents issued in the 1980's, it would have impacted the innovation during the dot-com bubble.
The realization of potential innovation is not really measurable (if it was I suspect there wouldn't be much discussion on this issue). The sentiment of those skilled in the art seems to be another indicator. What evidence would you offer that software patents have fostered innovation?
Agreed that it's not measurable. However, the sentiment among those skilled in the art who file patents seems to be that they help encourage innovation. Perhaps those who don't file patents disagree, but as I said to someone else, everyone wants a monopoly for themselves, but no monopolies for everyone else. If 1 person of 100 comes up with an invention, and you poll all 100 people as to whether they should have royalty free access to that invention, you'll get 99 yeas and 1 nay... Does that mean that innovation is stifled, or that people want a free lunch?
Unless you care to present some data, this is one place will have to agree to disagree. Plenty of bias here, but the software developers I know are more often than not against software patents. I like patents, by the way, just not patents on ideas, only implementations. The purpose of patents is not to grant monopolies in order to enrich people, but this is a positive side effect. The purpose of patents is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". I view the monopolization of ideas as anathema to that purpose.
The dichotomy is not the time period,but the absolutism of the statement "hasn't advanced". In your above quote, either software advances or doesn't. So, there really isn't an answer to your question, because innovation hasn't stopped altogether, but it does seem to be slowing. I offered one potential measurement of that. The realization of potential innovation is not really measurable (if it was I suspect there wouldn't be much discussion on this issue). The sentiment of those skilled in the art seems to be another indicator. What evidence would you offer that software patents have fostered innovation?
The difference I see with the clock example, is that the the idea of gear ratios is not patentable "on clocks", so I can implement a new clock that does not violate the patent. Contrast that to software, where the patents typically cover the entire domain of "on a computer" for the core concept. In reading the BT patent, it seems to include the idea of communicating and getting user feedback on a communication system. This is an abstract idea, not an implementation. This is my core problem with software patents. Hardware patents cover implementation of an idea, software patents cover the idea itself.
The issue, in my mind at least, is allowing ideas and math to be patented simply by placing them on a computer (outside of any other context or machine). That idea comes to fruition in 1994 and 1995. Gottschalk upholds the idea that software, by itself is not patentable. Diamond says software can be considered in the context of an entire machine. Parker was similar. None of these cases would lead directly to software or Math simply "on a computer" being patentable. So no, I don't see them as relevant.
"So, your position is that software hasn't advanced in the past 17 years?" Thank you for the excellent example of the false dichotomy fallacy. While I don't think we can measure real versus potential innovation, we do have some indicators. For example, a rise in software patent litigation diverts resources that could otherwise be used for development.
I am curious, do you dispute that ideas and Mathematical algorithms are being patented "on a computer?"
I will take a crack at why software patents are bad.
#1 - Purpose. Patents, at least according to the U.S. Constitution, exist to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Traditional patents achieve this by requiring enough information in the patents application to allow a person skilled in the art to replicate the invention. Most modern software patents don't include code or other information that would allow someone to replicate their efforts. Therefore, they are not fulfilling the purpose of a patent.
#2 - Idea vs. Implementation. Since 1994 and Alappat, software patents have been granted on ideas and Mathematics. If I designed and built a new fusion engine for cars, would I be granted a patent on the very concept of fusion "on an automobile?" This is a problem with software. There is an infinite number of ways to create any piece of code. If patents only covered specific implementations (already covered by copyright), then circumventing the patent would be trivial. Only by granting patents on the idea itself, do patents on software have any relevancy.
#3 - A recent development. The nefarious kinds of software patents have only been widely issued since 1994. It takes time for there to reach a critical mass of these kinds of patents to begin to hinder innovation. The question for software patents is not "Have they hindered innovation?", but rather, "Are they hindering innovation?"
I like patents. I don' t like software patents because I can't conceive of a system that would be relevant and yet not grant monopolies on ideas. I believe as more and more ideas are monopolized, innovation, at least in the U.S, will become increasingly difficult. It is an important issue that needs to be addressed. For the record, I don't blame the USPTO for this mess. I blame the courts for issuing unconstitutional decisions and Congress for not rectifying the situation.
Software patents in their current form have only been around in the U.S. since 1994 and Alappat. Prior to that case, the kinds of software patents people are concerned about were not issued by the USPTO. It takes time to build up enough patents to start hindering innovation.
Apple's lawsuits in the Netherlands and, I believe, in Australia as well, were for both design issues and software patents. In fact, the court in the Netherlands threw out all of Apple's design claims, but upheld one of their "patents". In this case, for the bounce effect when scrolling a picture.
Samsung was just as likely competing with LG, also a Korean company. The LG prada came out before the Iphone and looks similar to both of them. Samsung has been making phones for decades, so it's not exactly a new business for them and Apple knew this when they went to them for their processors, memory, and LCD's. Apple is also suing HTC and Motorola, so apparently they feel more then just Samsung phones are violating their IP.
My understanding is that Samsung uses a complex circular ownership structure with Samsung Everland at the top. This allow Lee GunHee and family to completely control Samsung even while owning only a small piece of the pie. This form of ownership is not valid for a public company in the United States, but Korea has different rules. Other companies achieve this same effect in other ways. Newscorp, for example, uses a multiclass stock structure whereby the family owns a small minority of the stock, but retain near majority voting rights.
I seem to remember back in my university days (its been a little while) studying that their was an inverse relationship between the size of a black hole the temporal and gravitational effects at the event horizon. In effect, if the black hole was massive enough (million of stars), it could be theoretically possible to cross the event horizon with my atomic structure intact. I always imagined what a fate it would be to fall into such a monster and watch eternity pass before my eyes. I am not an astronomer, however, so my memory on this matter could be faulty.
You do realize that Samsung makes twice Apple's annual revenue and has 6 times the number of employees. These are all big companies competing in this market, but Samsung is without a doubt the biggest. Samsung's current market cap is around $140 billion for just the electronics division (the company itself is privately controlled due to a circular ownership system that would be illegal in the U.S.). Apple has a lot of money, but not enough to buy this marketplace. You are right though that this is far from over.
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The USPTO gets most of the blame, but I you are pointing fingers in the wrong place. The USPTO tried repeatedly to deny these types of patents in the 80's and 90's and the courts kept forcing them to grant them. The courts were ordering the USPTO to issue these patents while giving the USPTO little guidance to determine what was and was not a software patent. Finally in 1994, I think the USPTO decided to just grant everything and let the courts figure it out because that was what was happening anyways. The Supreme Court didn't hear a software patent case from 1981 to 2008 and in those years the district courts essentially created software patents. When the Supreme Court finally opened its mouth in 2008, it didn't clear up anything. Part of the problem is Congress failing to fix the system, but most of the blame lies with the courts. While I wouldn't go so far as to say the USPTO is a victim here, they clearly have little real power over what gets patented.
I think you need to read the article. According the link above, this is about anti-trust allegations from last April and not the illegal data collection investigation.
I think this is about pressuring vendors, particularly Samsung and LG. Samsung is too big and influential for Naver to pursue directly, so they are attacking Google. If they can get the Korean government to mandate more search options on LG and Samsung phones, then Naver wins. Naver has revenues of about $2 billion per year, Samsung about $220 billion per year. The Korean government would never side with Naver against Samsung. Google, on the other hand, is much smaller than Samsung at about $30 billion, has little influence in South Korea, and, most importantly, is a foreign company. This looks to me like an indirect attack on Samsung (and to a lesser extent LG) in an effort to defend their turf.
Google is the smaller search provider in South Korea (with less than 10% market share). This is about Google taking market share from domestic search monopolies because Samsung and LG are selling android phones which default to Google. Naver can't take on Samsung for political reasons, so they are using the government to go after Google.
Samsung is not pushing this, Naver is behind this.
I hate to reply to myself, but I am mistaken. After further consideration, I think this is about monopolies. This about South Korean search monopolies Naver and Daum losing marketshare because Google Android directs mobile searches through their portal. This is South Korean using the law to try and protect Naver. I wonder what Samsung thinks of Naver pushing around their partner?
Interestingly enough, Google is not a monopoly in search in South Korea. In fact, I think they are third behind Naver and Daum. Google is in single digits in search market share (Naver has something like 60%). This clearly is not about monopolistic practices.
Price is a concept relative to the purchaser (which is why different groups pay different prices for the same good). Since the poster is unable to purchase this product, its price to them does not exist, hence "doesn't have a price." Now, I would agree with you that the object may have a price to someone, but the concept of price, in relation to this good and this individual, does not seem to exist.
As far as I could tell, you were both arguing the same point. This study takes a statistical outlier and uses it to make generalizations. It's a poor concept.
The problem is the concept of a union in the United States. Most of Europe and Asia use a collaborative union model. This is where the unions work with the companies to the benefit of each. In the U.S. the model is, almost exclusively, adversarial. Even the word union conjures up images of conflict between companies and workers to many people in the U.S.
Compounding the problem is the notion of a corporation espoused in U.S. business schools since the 1980's. The business model, often using the catch phrase "shareholder value," is that corporations exist for the sole benefit of their shareholders. This is very different from Europe or Asia that view corporations in a more expansive light. In this system, a union is always in direct conflict with the goals of a corporation as it might take profits from the shareholders.
I think this is just an example of the free market. Apple will make high profits, but lose marketshare, Android will make smaller profits,but gain marketshare. Econ 101. There is room in the world for both a Mercedes and a Toyota.
You do realize that Samsung has passed Apple in smartphone sales.
The German system of both unions and corporate governance are very different than America. In Germany, workers must have just under half of all seats on the board of directors (although the president of the board comes from the shareholders). This makes workers and unions influential in setting the corporate direction of all German companies above 2,000 people. The idea of a union in many countries is also very different. In the United States, unions are adversarial organizations. In many countries, however, unions are cooperative groups that work for the best of the workers and company as a whole. It is important to also note that the idea of companies existing solely to benefit shareholders is not the dominant paradigm in most countries.
Of course, you don't get to decide what constitutes fair market value.
The dichotomy is not the time period,but the absolutism of the statement "hasn't advanced". In your above quote, either software advances or doesn't. So, there really isn't an answer to your question, because innovation hasn't stopped altogether, but it does seem to be slowing. I offered one potential measurement of that.
Except that you haven't... You pointed to the rise in patent litigation, and hypothesized a connection between the two - if patent litigation increases, innovation must therefore decrease. I disagree with that conclusion. Litigation is a business decision, and is related to cost of licensing vs. potential for litigation. Innovation is almost unrelated.
Good attempt at making a connection, but its not the connection I was making. Never in my argument did I make a causal connection here. I did make a correlation between the two. If patents cover increasingly broad aspects of a particular field and the tendency to litigate does not decline, then the amount of litigation will increase. Its the increasing monopolization of ideas that I see as leading to reduced innovation. Litigation is a potential symptom.
Furthermore, litigation necessarily lags behind patent filing. It takes between 3-7 years to get a patent, with the current USPTO backlog. That means that most of the recent litigation are over patents filed during the late 1990s dotcom boom. There was certainly a ton of innovation going on then. If anything, the rise in litigation indicates that innovation was advancing quite a bit then. If true, and if it's true that innovation is currently increasing (which I think it is), then we should see more patent litigation over the next decade, rather than less (and I think we will).
This is an issue of critical mass. One bad patent doesn't hurt innovation too much. But many bad patents issued over a period of time will. The current mess stems from patents issued since the mid-1990's. On that we agree. As for increasing litigation, I am not quite following your connection between increased litigation and innovation. What sort of relationship do you see between the two?
I also believe we will see increased litigation. I would contend that the increase in litigation is a reflection of more and more ideas being locked down since the 1990's. I would speculate that if we had seen these types of patents issued in the 1980's, it would have impacted the innovation during the dot-com bubble.
The realization of potential innovation is not really measurable (if it was I suspect there wouldn't be much discussion on this issue). The sentiment of those skilled in the art seems to be another indicator. What evidence would you offer that software patents have fostered innovation?
Agreed that it's not measurable. However, the sentiment among those skilled in the art who file patents seems to be that they help encourage innovation. Perhaps those who don't file patents disagree, but as I said to someone else, everyone wants a monopoly for themselves, but no monopolies for everyone else. If 1 person of 100 comes up with an invention, and you poll all 100 people as to whether they should have royalty free access to that invention, you'll get 99 yeas and 1 nay... Does that mean that innovation is stifled, or that people want a free lunch?
Unless you care to present some data, this is one place will have to agree to disagree. Plenty of bias here, but the software developers I know are more often than not against software patents. I like patents, by the way, just not patents on ideas, only implementations. The purpose of patents is not to grant monopolies in order to enrich people, but this is a positive side effect. The purpose of patents is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". I view the monopolization of ideas as anathema to that purpose.
The difference I see with the
The dichotomy is not the time period,but the absolutism of the statement "hasn't advanced". In your above quote, either software advances or doesn't. So, there really isn't an answer to your question, because innovation hasn't stopped altogether, but it does seem to be slowing. I offered one potential measurement of that. The realization of potential innovation is not really measurable (if it was I suspect there wouldn't be much discussion on this issue). The sentiment of those skilled in the art seems to be another indicator. What evidence would you offer that software patents have fostered innovation?
The difference I see with the clock example, is that the the idea of gear ratios is not patentable "on clocks", so I can implement a new clock that does not violate the patent. Contrast that to software, where the patents typically cover the entire domain of "on a computer" for the core concept. In reading the BT patent, it seems to include the idea of communicating and getting user feedback on a communication system. This is an abstract idea, not an implementation. This is my core problem with software patents. Hardware patents cover implementation of an idea, software patents cover the idea itself.
The issue, in my mind at least, is allowing ideas and math to be patented simply by placing them on a computer (outside of any other context or machine). That idea comes to fruition in 1994 and 1995. Gottschalk upholds the idea that software, by itself is not patentable. Diamond says software can be considered in the context of an entire machine. Parker was similar. None of these cases would lead directly to software or Math simply "on a computer" being patentable. So no, I don't see them as relevant.
"So, your position is that software hasn't advanced in the past 17 years?" Thank you for the excellent example of the false dichotomy fallacy. While I don't think we can measure real versus potential innovation, we do have some indicators. For example, a rise in software patent litigation diverts resources that could otherwise be used for development.
I am curious, do you dispute that ideas and Mathematical algorithms are being patented "on a computer?"
I will take a crack at why software patents are bad.
#1 - Purpose. Patents, at least according to the U.S. Constitution, exist to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Traditional patents achieve this by requiring enough information in the patents application to allow a person skilled in the art to replicate the invention. Most modern software patents don't include code or other information that would allow someone to replicate their efforts. Therefore, they are not fulfilling the purpose of a patent.
#2 - Idea vs. Implementation. Since 1994 and Alappat, software patents have been granted on ideas and Mathematics. If I designed and built a new fusion engine for cars, would I be granted a patent on the very concept of fusion "on an automobile?" This is a problem with software. There is an infinite number of ways to create any piece of code. If patents only covered specific implementations (already covered by copyright), then circumventing the patent would be trivial. Only by granting patents on the idea itself, do patents on software have any relevancy.
#3 - A recent development. The nefarious kinds of software patents have only been widely issued since 1994. It takes time for there to reach a critical mass of these kinds of patents to begin to hinder innovation. The question for software patents is not "Have they hindered innovation?", but rather, "Are they hindering innovation?"
I like patents. I don' t like software patents because I can't conceive of a system that would be relevant and yet not grant monopolies on ideas. I believe as more and more ideas are monopolized, innovation, at least in the U.S, will become increasingly difficult. It is an important issue that needs to be addressed. For the record, I don't blame the USPTO for this mess. I blame the courts for issuing unconstitutional decisions and Congress for not rectifying the situation.
Software patents in their current form have only been around in the U.S. since 1994 and Alappat. Prior to that case, the kinds of software patents people are concerned about were not issued by the USPTO. It takes time to build up enough patents to start hindering innovation.
Apple's lawsuits in the Netherlands and, I believe, in Australia as well, were for both design issues and software patents. In fact, the court in the Netherlands threw out all of Apple's design claims, but upheld one of their "patents". In this case, for the bounce effect when scrolling a picture.
Samsung was just as likely competing with LG, also a Korean company. The LG prada came out before the Iphone and looks similar to both of them. Samsung has been making phones for decades, so it's not exactly a new business for them and Apple knew this when they went to them for their processors, memory, and LCD's. Apple is also suing HTC and Motorola, so apparently they feel more then just Samsung phones are violating their IP.
My understanding is that Samsung uses a complex circular ownership structure with Samsung Everland at the top. This allow Lee GunHee and family to completely control Samsung even while owning only a small piece of the pie. This form of ownership is not valid for a public company in the United States, but Korea has different rules. Other companies achieve this same effect in other ways. Newscorp, for example, uses a multiclass stock structure whereby the family owns a small minority of the stock, but retain near majority voting rights.
I seem to remember back in my university days (its been a little while) studying that their was an inverse relationship between the size of a black hole the temporal and gravitational effects at the event horizon. In effect, if the black hole was massive enough (million of stars), it could be theoretically possible to cross the event horizon with my atomic structure intact. I always imagined what a fate it would be to fall into such a monster and watch eternity pass before my eyes. I am not an astronomer, however, so my memory on this matter could be faulty.
In his defense, the LCD's, nand, and processors are the same. Of course that's because they are all made by Samsung.
You do realize that Samsung makes twice Apple's annual revenue and has 6 times the number of employees. These are all big companies competing in this market, but Samsung is without a doubt the biggest. Samsung's current market cap is around $140 billion for just the electronics division (the company itself is privately controlled due to a circular ownership system that would be illegal in the U.S.). Apple has a lot of money, but not enough to buy this marketplace. You are right though that this is far from over.