Lots of little guys can argue otherwise. Ask the author of Watson how flattered he was when Apple came out with Sherlock and it looked and acted a lot like his unpatented program.
Except given Apple had already started down the road to Sherlock 3 with Sherlock 2 it's equally likely that any patent would have been theirs, and he would have been the one litigated into submission.
Ok but you're presupposing that 'slide to unlock' is something that ought to be patentable. Slide to unlock isn't a feature that took man years of development, or required millions invested. Slide to unlock didn't require expensive safety testing. Your argument that the patent is necessary to promote hugely expensive R&D innovation is hard to apply in the case of something that can be implemented on a lazy afternoon.
Another way to ask this question, why is 'slide to unlock' patentable when 'plants versus zombies' isn't.
That's entirely unrelated to the question I was answering. Someone asked if copyrights provide the same protection as patents and I was pointing out some reasons why they don't. The validity of Apple's patent is irrelevant. Choose a patent that you you think is absolutely valid and the point is the same.
It is easy to determine if someone has infringed a patent. You read the claims and see if the alleged infringer does the same thing. If so, the patent is violated.
It is much more difficult to tell if someone has violated a copyright. If you use the narrow definition and require it to be a near-exact copy, then it's easy to tell, but useless. It's far to easy to simply code the same thing in a different language to get around that one. If you use a looser definition of copyright, it's hard to tell when someone infringes.
None of that has anything to do with whether any particular patent is valid or not. It simply points out that BY THEIR VERY NATURE, patents are easier to identify violations.
BTW, who's playing "Oh, look. There's a badger" now?
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer
The software 'little guy' won't have applied for a patent in the first place, because the cost for him to patent his idea will often be greater than the cost of implementing it.
Nonsense. You can apply for a patent for under a thousand dollars. Even using an attorney do to all the work, we've done it for well under $10 K.
Filing fee for a small entity can be as little as $165.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdonisSMU
I understand people should be paid to innovate but the government should not be in the habbit of granting patents to people who have no product on the market.
That simply ignores the entire premise of patents. A patent is my property. I can do what I want with it. If I can't afford to commercialize something, I can sell the patent to someone who can.
If you required commercialization, a small business would be unable to use patents in many fields where the investment required to commercialize a product is huge. Currently, inventors can get a patent and sell their invention to a business who wants to buy it. Your idea would make that impossible - and it would not be worthwhile for many individual inventors or small businesses to do anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdonisSMU
Secondly, they don't even allow you to exclude others from producing your patent.
Of course they do. Please do yourself a favor and learn something about the topic before posting any further.
As usual, FossPatents has a well-reasoned article on Google complaints about the patent system. Think glass houses and kettles. Perhaps the right idea but the wrong messenger.
That's entirely unrelated to the question I was answering. Someone asked if copyrights provide the same protection as patents and I was pointing out some reasons why they don't. The validity of Apple's patent is irrelevant. Choose a patent that you you think is absolutely valid and the point is the same.
No the issue isn't whether copyright provides the same protection as patents, the issue is does copyright in software provide adequate protection to safeguard innovation. As I've already said I think that in the very specific cases of encryption and compression perhaps it does not, but in the vast majority of the software domain it does - and I've yet to see a convincing counter-argument.
Quote:
It is easy to determine if someone has infringed a patent. You read the claims and see if the alleged infringer does the same thing. If so, the patent is violated.
Oh come now that's simply not true. First you have the question of validity, which entails considerable questions of non-obviousness as well as a potentially extremely expensive prior art search. In software the prior art search is particularly difficult, especially with patents from the 90s. If the patent is a continuation then there may be other ways in which validity can be attacked, etc.
Even once you have established validity there is claim construction because the exact meaning of the words in the claim invariably requires additional legal discussion before the question of infringement can even be arrived at.
None of these have any analogue in the copyright system.
Quote:
It is much more difficult to tell if someone has violated a copyright. If you use the narrow definition and require it to be a near-exact copy, then it's easy to tell, but useless. It's far to easy to simply code the same thing in a different language to get around that one. If you use a looser definition of copyright, it's hard to tell when someone infringes.
Except it demonstrably isn't useless, because there are a lot of software firms that protect or used to protect their works solely or mainly with copyright. Both historically and even today.
Quote:
None of that has anything to do with whether any particular patent is valid or not. It simply points out that BY THEIR VERY NATURE, patents are easier to identify violations.
You can't separate the two issues, because validity is a fundamental part of any infringement suit. There's really no comparable question of copyright validity, because establishing it is so trivially easy by comparison.
Quote:
BTW, who's playing "Oh, look. There's a badger" now?
It's not a badger it's a zombie and it's on your lawn, ok maybe it's a zombie badger. It's also relevant. The games industry is an entire sub-domain of software where patents are not used, yet there is still innovation in that domain - both in technology and in content.
Quote:
Nonsense. You can apply for a patent for under a thousand dollars. Even using an attorney do to all the work, we've done it for well under $10 K.
You could produce a 'slide to do something' software control for a lot less than $10k. Also I imagine that this $10k patent is in an area where you've already recently patented something, probably using the same lawyer, so you already have all the relevant patent searches and prior art searches done. Trying to do a patent 'cold' I find it hard to believe that you could do it for 10k on average. If I'm wrong though that's interesting, naturally enough I've never been involved in a patent application because I'm a software developer, and to this day most software isn't patented.
... and what do you find... Google is involved in at least as many lawsuits as Apple... but against it. Google seems to be infringing upon a lot of territory. Kent must be a very busy man these days.
A patent cannot "block innovation" by definition. It's embarrassing that he even said that. What a complete moron.
Besides which, they are the company that singlehandedly forced the price up to ridiculous levels. If not for them the patents would have went for less than half what they eventually did and if they don't belief in patents why did they even bid on them?
Besides which ... "sore losers" and "sour grapes" comes to mind.
Sore loser they may be, it is you who is the moron. Patents very much DO block innovation, and if you can't see that, you are the far greater moron here. Let's say you invent something fairly novel, whether it be software or hardware. It's pretty unique and you think you'll go far with it. Think again. If you are successful, someone WILL sue you because they hold some sort of broad, overreaching patent that you in some way inadvertently used. Either you wind up paying a bunch of trolls for licensing or you have to stop selling your product. Welcome to the US patent system. Please explain to me how patent trolls who do nothing but buy up patents to sue people are not blocking innovation. Please explain to me how patents that are so stupidly broad and obvious that you can't invent anything without stepping on one do not block innovation. Patents have become an extortion tool and little else. The little guy can't use them to protect himself. Need an example? Look up graphene and what happened when they guys who discovered it were about to patent it. They had just about everything in order and talked to a company about whether or not they'd want to license the patent. The guy flat out said (paraphrased), "No. We'd hire an army of lawyers to write a hundred patents a day to box yours in. You'd spend the rest of your life and all your money trying to sue us." Patents are just another way that the big guys have found to erect barriers to potential competition. It's getting harder and harder to get off the ground because of them. That is very much blocking innovation.
And Google bid on the patents as a defensive move. When you're that big, you NEED a warchest of patents as a deterrent, as in "You sue me over patents? Fine, I'll pull some out and sue you!", thus settling the case with patent licensing swaps and less money spent in the long run. Tell me, how many times has Google used patents as an offensive compared to a company like, say, Apple?
You obviously know absolutely NOTHING about how the patent system in the US works. Don't call people morons when you are this damned clueless.
Tell me, how many times has Google used patents as an offensive compared to a company like, say, Apple?
Hmmmm... remember, you're talking about a 34 year old comapny vs. a 13 year old company.
Give Google time, let its patent chest grow and then we'll talk.
As I mentioned before... Google has a lot of companies biting at its heels. This is what you get for ignoring the IP rights of other companies just because you consider your company above all of that corporate gobbledigook.
Except given Apple had already started down the road to Sherlock 3 with Sherlock 2 it's equally likely that any patent would have been theirs, and he would have been the one litigated into submission.
that is not true. go search through the history of it. apple is no better than microsoft, except, that they are good at fooling sheep into thinking they are with something somehow 'morally' better. people need to wise up.
Sadly, these days the "little guy" is usually called "John Lodsys"
Added: I really hope we could find a middle ground for protecting the innovators without feeding the patent trolls. Idealistic, I know, but one can dream...
It isn't that hard. A requirement for retaining a patent should either be manufacturing something out of it, or licencing it to someone who makes a device out of it, within a set number of years (2, maybe 3).
that is not true. go search through the history of it. apple is no better than microsoft, except, that they are good at fooling sheep into thinking they are with something somehow 'morally' better. people need to wise up.
... and the same could be said about Google. What's your point?
I agree with many others here. The patent system is screwed up, just like the unlawful de facto government that maintains it.
Excuse me while I come up with an ingenious idea, patent it, and then sit on it for 30 years hoping that someone ELSE will actually do the work to bring it to market.
Probably not, most people are pretty ignorant about the Constitution. For example, many people, including some current Supreme Court justices, seem to think that, if a right isn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution, we don't have it, despite the 9th Amendment.
Hmmmm... remember, you're talking about a 34 year old comapny vs. a 13 year old company.
Give Google time, let its patent chest grow and then we'll talk.
As I mentioned before... Google has a lot of companies biting at its heels. This is what you get for ignoring the IP rights of other companies just because you consider your company above all of that corporate gobbledigook.
Okay then, within the past decade. It still doesn't look too good. Google has been advocating patent reform for years now and I completely agree with them. Apple is just as bad as the rest of the tech giants when it comes to patent crapola. They sue with overly broad patents and they get sued with overly broad patents. And Google has who biting at their heels? There's Oracle with the Java case that's falling apart. It's already been whittled way down and now we've come to see that Sun was happy about Google's use of the tech. Oracle is trying to grab license fees from Google and it doesn't look like it's going to work nearly as well as they'd hoped. It seems that everyone in the tech sector gets sued whether their products are legit or not, which is precisely why the patent system needs a massive overhaul.
And Google isn't "my company", and you know what? Historically, they ARE above a lot of this patent garbage. I'll give credit where credit is due, and right now, Google's track record is a lot cleaner than Apple's.
There's Oracle with the Java case that's falling apart. It's already been whittled way down and now we've come to see that Sun was happy about Google's use of the tech.
If Sun was 'happy with google using the tech' why didn't they grant them a license? Easy enough to do.
Sorry but when your trial judge talks of your 'brazen attitude' your trial is not going well.
I'll give credit where credit is due, and right now, Google's track record is a lot cleaner than Apple's.
Oh, bullshit! I can't do your homework for you but let me give you a few hints... Oracle, Apple, Paypal, 1plusV, Skyhook, FTC, EU, NHN Corp. and Daum Communications (S. Korea), copyright violations - re: book scanning...
Google's short history is filled with alleged antitrust, spying, stealing... can all of these people be wrong about Google?!
Give Google another 20 years and they'll make Apple look like kids in the church choir.
[on edit: regarding the "your company" comment... it had nothing to do with "you"... I was talking about the beliefs of Page and Brin... now reread what I wrote.]
I hear this a lot but I have yet to hear anyone have a good argument for *why* patents don't fulfil the "original intention." It seems to me that they clearly protect the inventor of a device or process and only do so for a reasonable amount of time.
Now it's easy to see that *Copyright* on the other hand is way out of control, that the original creators have practically zero sway or say over what happens to their creations and that the entire industry is wildly tilted towards those companies that buy and sell IP as opposed to those individuals that create it. The original artists and writers gets basically nothing or next to nothing and the corporations own all the IP (that they didn't even create!) for something like a hundred years or more. This situation is quite clearly *not* the original intention of the law and quite clearly works almost in complete *reverse* of the way it's supposed to.
Patent laws on the other hand seem very straightforward to me and do in fact tend to protect the little guy that actually invents the process or whatever. There are cases all the time of inventors making millions off of an invention, sometimes years later. There are almost *no* cases of the same thing happening with copyright law or with books, paintings, drawings, comics, etc.
When it comes to art and literature, the corporations rule all and the original artists are usually screwed over. When it comes to invention, often the little guy wins.
More often then not that little guy invented the shape of a square or an alphabetical list of items or some other vague thing. The delay windshield wiper didn't take an act of genius. That is one of the most famous little guy cases. In reality he was just a good at selling an idea to GM. Unfortunately his version of the wiper was inferior so they didn't want to use it. The problem is that the patent system seems to just patent ideas and not all of the hard work and engineering to actually make something happen. All of us little guys get screwed when someone takes advantage of the system for a huge paycheck. Guess who is ultimately paying for it? You deserve to be paid fairly for your work. If that isn't happening then a system can be put in place that covers just that niche, but the current patent system is a huge joke. For copyright, times are changing. The content producer will have more power to self publish and stick to short term contracts as everything moves digital.
A patent cannot "block innovation" by definition. It's embarrassing that he even said that. What a complete moron.
Besides which, they are the company that singlehandedly forced the price up to ridiculous levels. If not for them the patents would have went for less than half what they eventually did and if they don't belief in patents why did they even bid on them?
Besides which ... "sore losers" and "sour grapes" comes to mind.
Gonna have to disagree about patents blocking innovation. Yeah, it sounds like sour grapes, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. If this is what it takes to help fix the absurdly broken patent system, then so be it.
Comments
Lots of little guys can argue otherwise. Ask the author of Watson how flattered he was when Apple came out with Sherlock and it looked and acted a lot like his unpatented program.
Except given Apple had already started down the road to Sherlock 3 with Sherlock 2 it's equally likely that any patent would have been theirs, and he would have been the one litigated into submission.
Ok but you're presupposing that 'slide to unlock' is something that ought to be patentable. Slide to unlock isn't a feature that took man years of development, or required millions invested. Slide to unlock didn't require expensive safety testing. Your argument that the patent is necessary to promote hugely expensive R&D innovation is hard to apply in the case of something that can be implemented on a lazy afternoon.
Another way to ask this question, why is 'slide to unlock' patentable when 'plants versus zombies' isn't.
That's entirely unrelated to the question I was answering. Someone asked if copyrights provide the same protection as patents and I was pointing out some reasons why they don't. The validity of Apple's patent is irrelevant. Choose a patent that you you think is absolutely valid and the point is the same.
It is easy to determine if someone has infringed a patent. You read the claims and see if the alleged infringer does the same thing. If so, the patent is violated.
It is much more difficult to tell if someone has violated a copyright. If you use the narrow definition and require it to be a near-exact copy, then it's easy to tell, but useless. It's far to easy to simply code the same thing in a different language to get around that one. If you use a looser definition of copyright, it's hard to tell when someone infringes.
None of that has anything to do with whether any particular patent is valid or not. It simply points out that BY THEIR VERY NATURE, patents are easier to identify violations.
BTW, who's playing "Oh, look. There's a badger" now?
The software 'little guy' won't have applied for a patent in the first place, because the cost for him to patent his idea will often be greater than the cost of implementing it.
Nonsense. You can apply for a patent for under a thousand dollars. Even using an attorney do to all the work, we've done it for well under $10 K.
Patents are expensive.
Why do people who have never applied for a patent insist on posting nonsense about a subject they don't understand?
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/...eptember15.htm
Filing fee for a small entity can be as little as $165.
I understand people should be paid to innovate but the government should not be in the habbit of granting patents to people who have no product on the market.
That simply ignores the entire premise of patents. A patent is my property. I can do what I want with it. If I can't afford to commercialize something, I can sell the patent to someone who can.
If you required commercialization, a small business would be unable to use patents in many fields where the investment required to commercialize a product is huge. Currently, inventors can get a patent and sell their invention to a business who wants to buy it. Your idea would make that impossible - and it would not be worthwhile for many individual inventors or small businesses to do anything.
Secondly, they don't even allow you to exclude others from producing your patent.
Of course they do. Please do yourself a favor and learn something about the topic before posting any further.
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/
Or stop behaving like a like a little child who missed out on some sweeties.
That's entirely unrelated to the question I was answering. Someone asked if copyrights provide the same protection as patents and I was pointing out some reasons why they don't. The validity of Apple's patent is irrelevant. Choose a patent that you you think is absolutely valid and the point is the same.
No the issue isn't whether copyright provides the same protection as patents, the issue is does copyright in software provide adequate protection to safeguard innovation. As I've already said I think that in the very specific cases of encryption and compression perhaps it does not, but in the vast majority of the software domain it does - and I've yet to see a convincing counter-argument.
It is easy to determine if someone has infringed a patent. You read the claims and see if the alleged infringer does the same thing. If so, the patent is violated.
Oh come now that's simply not true. First you have the question of validity, which entails considerable questions of non-obviousness as well as a potentially extremely expensive prior art search. In software the prior art search is particularly difficult, especially with patents from the 90s. If the patent is a continuation then there may be other ways in which validity can be attacked, etc.
Even once you have established validity there is claim construction because the exact meaning of the words in the claim invariably requires additional legal discussion before the question of infringement can even be arrived at.
None of these have any analogue in the copyright system.
It is much more difficult to tell if someone has violated a copyright. If you use the narrow definition and require it to be a near-exact copy, then it's easy to tell, but useless. It's far to easy to simply code the same thing in a different language to get around that one. If you use a looser definition of copyright, it's hard to tell when someone infringes.
Except it demonstrably isn't useless, because there are a lot of software firms that protect or used to protect their works solely or mainly with copyright. Both historically and even today.
None of that has anything to do with whether any particular patent is valid or not. It simply points out that BY THEIR VERY NATURE, patents are easier to identify violations.
You can't separate the two issues, because validity is a fundamental part of any infringement suit. There's really no comparable question of copyright validity, because establishing it is so trivially easy by comparison.
BTW, who's playing "Oh, look. There's a badger" now?
It's not a badger it's a zombie and it's on your lawn, ok maybe it's a zombie badger. It's also relevant. The games industry is an entire sub-domain of software where patents are not used, yet there is still innovation in that domain - both in technology and in content.
Nonsense. You can apply for a patent for under a thousand dollars. Even using an attorney do to all the work, we've done it for well under $10 K.
You could produce a 'slide to do something' software control for a lot less than $10k. Also I imagine that this $10k patent is in an area where you've already recently patented something, probably using the same lawyer, so you already have all the relevant patent searches and prior art searches done. Trying to do a patent 'cold' I find it hard to believe that you could do it for 10k on average. If I'm wrong though that's interesting, naturally enough I've never been involved in a patent application because I'm a software developer, and to this day most software isn't patented.
... and what do you find... Google is involved in at least as many lawsuits as Apple... but against it. Google seems to be infringing upon a lot of territory. Kent must be a very busy man these days.
What a lot of ridiculous nonsense.
A patent cannot "block innovation" by definition. It's embarrassing that he even said that. What a complete moron.
Besides which, they are the company that singlehandedly forced the price up to ridiculous levels. If not for them the patents would have went for less than half what they eventually did and if they don't belief in patents why did they even bid on them?
Besides which ... "sore losers" and "sour grapes" comes to mind.
Sore loser they may be, it is you who is the moron. Patents very much DO block innovation, and if you can't see that, you are the far greater moron here. Let's say you invent something fairly novel, whether it be software or hardware. It's pretty unique and you think you'll go far with it. Think again. If you are successful, someone WILL sue you because they hold some sort of broad, overreaching patent that you in some way inadvertently used. Either you wind up paying a bunch of trolls for licensing or you have to stop selling your product. Welcome to the US patent system. Please explain to me how patent trolls who do nothing but buy up patents to sue people are not blocking innovation. Please explain to me how patents that are so stupidly broad and obvious that you can't invent anything without stepping on one do not block innovation. Patents have become an extortion tool and little else. The little guy can't use them to protect himself. Need an example? Look up graphene and what happened when they guys who discovered it were about to patent it. They had just about everything in order and talked to a company about whether or not they'd want to license the patent. The guy flat out said (paraphrased), "No. We'd hire an army of lawyers to write a hundred patents a day to box yours in. You'd spend the rest of your life and all your money trying to sue us." Patents are just another way that the big guys have found to erect barriers to potential competition. It's getting harder and harder to get off the ground because of them. That is very much blocking innovation.
And Google bid on the patents as a defensive move. When you're that big, you NEED a warchest of patents as a deterrent, as in "You sue me over patents? Fine, I'll pull some out and sue you!", thus settling the case with patent licensing swaps and less money spent in the long run. Tell me, how many times has Google used patents as an offensive compared to a company like, say, Apple?
You obviously know absolutely NOTHING about how the patent system in the US works. Don't call people morons when you are this damned clueless.
Loss: "Patents need to be overhauled and are anti-competitive"
Um, sorry google but everyone pretty much sees through your hypocrisy. Next.
Tell me, how many times has Google used patents as an offensive compared to a company like, say, Apple?
Hmmmm... remember, you're talking about a 34 year old comapny vs. a 13 year old company.
Give Google time, let its patent chest grow and then we'll talk.
As I mentioned before... Google has a lot of companies biting at its heels. This is what you get for ignoring the IP rights of other companies just because you consider your company above all of that corporate gobbledigook.
Except given Apple had already started down the road to Sherlock 3 with Sherlock 2 it's equally likely that any patent would have been theirs, and he would have been the one litigated into submission.
that is not true. go search through the history of it. apple is no better than microsoft, except, that they are good at fooling sheep into thinking they are with something somehow 'morally' better. people need to wise up.
Sadly, these days the "little guy" is usually called "John Lodsys"
Added: I really hope we could find a middle ground for protecting the innovators without feeding the patent trolls. Idealistic, I know, but one can dream...
It isn't that hard. A requirement for retaining a patent should either be manufacturing something out of it, or licencing it to someone who makes a device out of it, within a set number of years (2, maybe 3).
that is not true. go search through the history of it. apple is no better than microsoft, except, that they are good at fooling sheep into thinking they are with something somehow 'morally' better. people need to wise up.
... and the same could be said about Google. What's your point?
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
I agree with many others here. The patent system is screwed up, just like the unlawful de facto government that maintains it.
Excuse me while I come up with an ingenious idea, patent it, and then sit on it for 30 years hoping that someone ELSE will actually do the work to bring it to market.
Unlawful? Are you even aware that the intellectual property clause is enshrined in the main body of the US Constitution?
Unlawful? Are you even aware that the intellectual property clause is enshrined in the main body of the US Constitution?
Probably not, most people are pretty ignorant about the Constitution. For example, many people, including some current Supreme Court justices, seem to think that, if a right isn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution, we don't have it, despite the 9th Amendment.
Hmmmm... remember, you're talking about a 34 year old comapny vs. a 13 year old company.
Give Google time, let its patent chest grow and then we'll talk.
As I mentioned before... Google has a lot of companies biting at its heels. This is what you get for ignoring the IP rights of other companies just because you consider your company above all of that corporate gobbledigook.
Okay then, within the past decade. It still doesn't look too good. Google has been advocating patent reform for years now and I completely agree with them. Apple is just as bad as the rest of the tech giants when it comes to patent crapola. They sue with overly broad patents and they get sued with overly broad patents. And Google has who biting at their heels? There's Oracle with the Java case that's falling apart. It's already been whittled way down and now we've come to see that Sun was happy about Google's use of the tech. Oracle is trying to grab license fees from Google and it doesn't look like it's going to work nearly as well as they'd hoped. It seems that everyone in the tech sector gets sued whether their products are legit or not, which is precisely why the patent system needs a massive overhaul.
And Google isn't "my company", and you know what? Historically, they ARE above a lot of this patent garbage. I'll give credit where credit is due, and right now, Google's track record is a lot cleaner than Apple's.
There's Oracle with the Java case that's falling apart. It's already been whittled way down and now we've come to see that Sun was happy about Google's use of the tech.
If Sun was 'happy with google using the tech' why didn't they grant them a license? Easy enough to do.
Sorry but when your trial judge talks of your 'brazen attitude' your trial is not going well.
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011...f-oracles.html
I'll give credit where credit is due, and right now, Google's track record is a lot cleaner than Apple's.
Oh, bullshit! I can't do your homework for you but let me give you a few hints... Oracle, Apple, Paypal, 1plusV, Skyhook, FTC, EU, NHN Corp. and Daum Communications (S. Korea), copyright violations - re: book scanning...
Google's short history is filled with alleged antitrust, spying, stealing... can all of these people be wrong about Google?!
Give Google another 20 years and they'll make Apple look like kids in the church choir.
[on edit: regarding the "your company" comment... it had nothing to do with "you"... I was talking about the beliefs of Page and Brin... now reread what I wrote.]
I hear this a lot but I have yet to hear anyone have a good argument for *why* patents don't fulfil the "original intention." It seems to me that they clearly protect the inventor of a device or process and only do so for a reasonable amount of time.
Now it's easy to see that *Copyright* on the other hand is way out of control, that the original creators have practically zero sway or say over what happens to their creations and that the entire industry is wildly tilted towards those companies that buy and sell IP as opposed to those individuals that create it. The original artists and writers gets basically nothing or next to nothing and the corporations own all the IP (that they didn't even create!) for something like a hundred years or more. This situation is quite clearly *not* the original intention of the law and quite clearly works almost in complete *reverse* of the way it's supposed to.
Patent laws on the other hand seem very straightforward to me and do in fact tend to protect the little guy that actually invents the process or whatever. There are cases all the time of inventors making millions off of an invention, sometimes years later. There are almost *no* cases of the same thing happening with copyright law or with books, paintings, drawings, comics, etc.
When it comes to art and literature, the corporations rule all and the original artists are usually screwed over. When it comes to invention, often the little guy wins.
More often then not that little guy invented the shape of a square or an alphabetical list of items or some other vague thing. The delay windshield wiper didn't take an act of genius. That is one of the most famous little guy cases. In reality he was just a good at selling an idea to GM. Unfortunately his version of the wiper was inferior so they didn't want to use it. The problem is that the patent system seems to just patent ideas and not all of the hard work and engineering to actually make something happen. All of us little guys get screwed when someone takes advantage of the system for a huge paycheck. Guess who is ultimately paying for it? You deserve to be paid fairly for your work. If that isn't happening then a system can be put in place that covers just that niche, but the current patent system is a huge joke. For copyright, times are changing. The content producer will have more power to self publish and stick to short term contracts as everything moves digital.
What a lot of ridiculous nonsense.
A patent cannot "block innovation" by definition. It's embarrassing that he even said that. What a complete moron.
Besides which, they are the company that singlehandedly forced the price up to ridiculous levels. If not for them the patents would have went for less than half what they eventually did and if they don't belief in patents why did they even bid on them?
Besides which ... "sore losers" and "sour grapes" comes to mind.
Gonna have to disagree about patents blocking innovation. Yeah, it sounds like sour grapes, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. If this is what it takes to help fix the absurdly broken patent system, then so be it.