Can someone on this forum give me an intelligent answer to the following question:
Why should a patent holder be obligated to design a product or implement the invention? Isn't it sufficient to create the "intellectual property". Please consider the following example: if a miner finds a gold deposit and digs the raw ore out of the ground and sell it to a refiner, wouldn't you agree that the miner is entitled to compensation. Note that the ore can't be used for anything until is refined, but that doesn't mean the only person that should be compensated is the refiner. Some gold miners only produce ore, some only refine ore, and some do both. Why shouldn't we treat the patent system similarly?
My my purpose is to make people aware that this negative attitude towards the patent system risks killing the most valuable asset this country has.
I don't think it's a negative attitude towards the patents system as such. It's more a negative attitude towards software patents. I've seen no evidence from anyone that without software patents tech players couldn't see success from inventiveness. Despite what seems like daily claims from Apple or their supporters that their IP is being unfairly used, "stolen" by others, Apple has certainly been successful. They sell every bit of product they can get their hands on, no matter how much they've supposedly been "copied".
If billions of dollars in revenue isn't enough incentive to be creative, I don't think possession of a software patent is going to give them any more drive to be successful. Their historical competitor Microsoft received their very first software patent in 1987 and even by 1990 only had 3. Yet they were seeing great success with both Windows and Office without software patent protection in place.
If there's evidence that without software patents players like Apple, Oracle, IBM, Samsung, Google etc would stop innovating because they wouldn't be able to profit from their developments I'd love to see it. Despite claims of wholesale theft of IP, I see a whole lot of dollars flowing into mobile players coffers. Lack of a software patent isn't going to change that.
This is the software equivalent of an overly-broad patent on "a machine for moving people from one place to another" a long time ago. And then, after the widespread invention/adoption of trains, stagecoaches, cars, airplanes, etc, suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming that all these implementations infringe on your patented idea and taking Amtrack, Ford, GM, Boeing, etc. to court.
And then suing and winning more than a half billion dollars because of it.
It's ludicrous, but it seems to hold up in court, so it seems like something's broken.
I don't think it's a negative attitude towards the patents system as such. It's more a negative attitude towards software patents. I've seen no evidence from anyone that without software patents tech players couldn't see success from inventiveness. Despite what seems like daily claims from Apple or their supporters that their IP is being unfairly used, "stolen" by others, Apple has certainly been successful. They sell every bit of product they can get their hands on, no matter how much they've supposedly been "copied".
If billions of dollars in revenue isn't enough incentive to be creative, I don't think possession of a software patent is going to give them any more drive to be successful. Their historical competitor Microsoft received their very first software patent in 1987 and even by 1990 only had 3. Yet they were seeing great success with both Windows and Office without software patent protection in place.
If there's evidence that without software patents players like Apple, Oracle, IBM, Samsung, Google etc would stop innovating because they wouldn't be able to profit from their developments I'd love to see it. Despite claims of wholesale theft of IP, I see a whole lot of dollars flowing into mobile players coffers. Lack of a software patent isn't going to change that.
It is true that software patents weren't being sought after in the early 80s. However, that is because the electrical engineering field failed to see the value in software. Today we think it is crazy that IBM allowed Microsoft and its team of nobodies to own the IBM operating system. We now know that was a HUGE mistake and windfall for Bill Gates. The software companies of the 80s didn't need patents because the industry didn't recognize the value in software, period. However, what happened with software in the early 80s was very unusual and is hardly a justification for wholesale dismissal of software patents. I believe that the unusual circumstances of the 80s has convinced the software industry that they are different and patents are not necessary. I don't believe it is true. The rational used to justify abolishing software patents (they impede companies and aren't necessary) can be made for almost any other industry (except maybe pharmaceuticals). The movement in the software industry is changing the patent laws and undermining the system. The power is shifting to the large entrenched companies. If it doesn't stop, it will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Yes patents come at a cost, but they create something special which is they guarantee that the entrenched player is always at risk of missing out on the next big thing. That posturing, even if illusory, is priceless.
The amount of money that exchanges hands over patents has never stopped a product from going to market. RIM paid 600 million, but that didn't stop a single device from being sold. Because patents are valued based on products sold, it is in everyone's best interest to see the technology make it to market.
Also, I don't see why everyone is complaining about the 600 million. Microsoft paid 1.6 billion for a worthless advertising company a few years ago. Why can't a company like Microsoft or RIM be expected to pony up money to support the inventors of the technology they are using. If they really don't want to pay, they can always just take the feature out. Or, if they think it is so easy to get a patent, it shouldn't be too hard to patent something like push email themselves. The patent office grants equal opportunity to everyone, which is why I think it is the single most just distribution of wealth on the face of the planet. That alone is reason to keep software patents.
There is no way to prove one way or the other what would happen if software patents didn't exist. I think many in the software industry take it for granted that the U.S. has the mentality to invent. I would argue that the whole system exists in part from the stimulus created by the patent system. It is impossible to separate the two.
This is the software equivalent of an overly-broad patent on "a machine for moving people from one place to another" a long time ago. And then, after the widespread invention/adoption of trains, stagecoaches, cars, airplanes, etc, suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming that all these implementations infringe on your patented idea and taking Amtrack, Ford, GM, Boeing, etc. to court.
And then suing and winning more than a half billion dollars because of it.
It's ludicrous, but it seems to hold up in court, so it seems like something's broken.
NTP won the patent troll lottery, if you ask me.
First of all, the NTP patents are not as broad as you suggest. You are accusing NTP of claiming only the function. That isn't true. see wikipedia entry on NTP.
My personal belief is that the real reason everyone thinks the system is broken is because the dollar value in the RIM case is so high and it is hard to believe that in 1999 nobody had thought of originating the email on the mobile device. As unbelievable as it may seem, it is true. Nobody had done push email in 1999 and by the early 2000s, the value of doing push email was in the billions.
The fallacy in everyone's arguments is that the patent system makes companies pay for technology. That isn't true. Any company is free to take the infringing technology out of their products. This is particularly true of the Apple and Google settlement. Before they even sold their devices they knew they would have to deal with these patents and they chose to include the feature anyway. That just goes to show how valuable the technology really was.
This is the software equivalent of an overly-broad patent on "a machine for moving people from one place to another" a long time ago. And then, after the widespread invention/adoption of trains, stagecoaches, cars, airplanes, etc, suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming that all these implementations infringe on your patented idea and taking Amtrack, Ford, GM, Boeing, etc. to court.
And then suing and winning more than a half billion dollars because of it.
It's ludicrous, but it seems to hold up in court, so it seems like something's broken.
NTP won the patent troll lottery, if you ask me.
The first machine for transporting people that I can think of is a pole (which can be used as a pole vault). Since poles have existed in nature before mankind existed, the best you could have hoped for is a method of using the pole. If you lived 2,000 years ago and invented the chariot, you would not be able to write a claim to "a machine for transporting a person from one place to another," because the "pole" would anticipate your claim. The first person to invent a chariot could have claimed a support structure having two wheels and attachment means to an animal where the wheels are aft of the center of gravity of the support structure. That would have been allowable. This is a great example of how the patent system works. The prior art limits the claims.
The patent law can't get into a debate about what would be a "fair" breadth for a patent. The inventor is entitled to claim it as broadly as the prior art will allow them. As it turns out, in 1999 the prior art left a gapping hole for the inventor of the NTP patent. That isn't the fault of the patent system. That's the fault of other people working in this field, who failed to think of the invention and recognize how important it would be in a few short years.
Also, there are lots of lottery's in life. How is it fair the the children of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet grew up with privilege and business opportunities that we don't have. The patent system may be a lottery, but it is open to everyone on the face of the planet on equal terms so long as you can think of something inventive before someone else. That's not broken at all. That's fair and just.
Patents are just like the land grants of the 1800s. The government has the right to distribute the property as it sees fit. Instead of granting the rights to cronies, the government says, "First Come First Served". The patent office doesn't speculate how much the land is worth or try and distribute it justly. It just sets out the criteria for claiming it and says, "may the fastest person win." Some land is barren, some land is worth 600 million. Why can't the software industry see how wonderful this system is and embrace it like the Americans of the 1800's. The government doesn't have real property to give away. It has intellectual property. Yall should start thinking of technology that can change the world and you could be the next patent owner with a parcel of land that Google and Apple want.
I don't think it's a negative attitude towards the patents system as such. It's more a negative attitude towards software patents. I've seen no evidence from anyone that without software patents tech players couldn't see success from inventiveness. Despite what seems like daily claims from Apple or their supporters that their IP is being unfairly used, "stolen" by others, Apple has certainly been successful. They sell every bit of product they can get their hands on, no matter how much they've supposedly been "copied".
If billions of dollars in revenue isn't enough incentive to be creative, I don't think possession of a software patent is going to give them any more drive to be successful. Their historical competitor Microsoft received their very first software patent in 1987 and even by 1990 only had 3. Yet they were seeing great success with both Windows and Office without software patent protection in place.
If there's evidence that without software patents players like Apple, Oracle, IBM, Samsung, Google etc would stop innovating because they wouldn't be able to profit from their developments I'd love to see it. Despite claims of wholesale theft of IP, I see a whole lot of dollars flowing into mobile players coffers. Lack of a software patent isn't going to change that.
Also, I should have mentioned that the "billions of dollars" that Apple makes isn't necessarily an incentive to innovate. Apple behaves very differently than most large companies when it comes to innovation. Everyone knows this and this characteristic is in large part due to Steve Jobs and isn't likely to be replicated in other companies. What usually happens is that the successful companies stop innovating and focus on protecting market share and revenue. Innovation becomes secondary to internal political struggles to control the money and power or tactics to crush the competition (e.g., through mergers and acquisitions, advertising, or anti-competitive tactics). In many cases the new technology actually hurts a company's revenue. Kodak was a casualty of this problem. Other examples include touch screens, which crushed RIM and in a few years we'll see how the tablet market running on ARM processors and light OSs is going to kill growth in PCs. The patent system provides the protection to the companies and technology that will come along and replace those stagnant companies. If you don't have patents, the entrenched players will sit back and wait for someone to succeed and then copy them.
In reality the copying happens anyway, even with patents. The difference is that the patent forces the entrenched player to compensate the inventor. This is more efficient than causing the entrenched player to go out of business. In the end, the flow of capital is to the innovator, which creates the stimulus. If you don't have patents, the entrenched players can copy with impunity. They can even copy each other, which causes everyone to revert to other tactics to maintain market share (e.g., M&A activities, advertising, politics, or anti-competitive tactics). The bean counters in the finance department will always put pressure to reduce R&D costs, which means there will always be downward pressure on innovation. Without patents, eventually everyone would "disarm" themselves and just protect the markets in other ways.
You want proof that this is how it would work? Go to any country that has a poor patent system and you will see it. The most common way of protecting market share is politics and anti-competitive behavior. The patent system is a game changer. There is a strong correlation around the world with patent protection and innovation. Have you ever participated in or invested in a start-up company? Often times, patents are a critical component of obtaining investment dollars. Usually the people that say it doesn't matter are companies that are providing freeware and make no money or are companies like facebook that just happen to be at the right time and place in history to succeed without patents. Good for them. However, that isn't how it usually works. And, the environment that made Facebook successful wouldn't have existed without patents.
First of all, the NTP patents are not as broad as you suggest. You are accusing NTP of claiming only the function. That isn't true. see wikipedia entry on NTP.
The Wikipedia page is very interesting, and I see your point, but I disagree. The patents seem pretty broad. The concept NTP patented is "wireless push email". The fundamental concept of mail, as used every day in the physical world is "push". For example, LL Bean mails me ("pushes" me) a yearly catalog in the mail--I don't drive over to LL Bean to get it. So the concept of pushing mail in a virtualized environment (i.e., mail inside a computer) could/should be exactly the same, i.e., it's very obvious.
Second, the concept of "wireless" communication was well established by the time the patent was filed. For example, RadioMail provided wireless email services in 1991.
Many years later, NTP's patent "inventor" simply put the two broad concepts together ("push" and "wireless email") into a slightly less broad idea, then patented it.
Actually, as it turns out, email had been pushed wirelessly from ArpaNet to a pager more then ten years before the NTP patents were filed. As revealed by the New York Times, a guy named Goodfellow actually achieved it. During the NTP/RIM trial Goodfellow was paid hush money by NTP's attorneys to keep quiet. According to Stanford patent law professor Mark A. Lemley, as quoted in the NY Times, "I think there is a potential ethics issue. The basic key is [NTP] attorneys have the obligation to disclose everything they know about his prior artwork and make [Goodfellow] available as a fact witness."
Why didn't Goodfellow--the true inventor of wireless push email--simply patent his wireless push email invention himself? As quoted by the NY Times, "You don't patent the obvious."
Naturally, NTP's "inventor" had no such qualms and patented the same thing a decade later.
But what you can do? The broken patent system gets abused all the time. Patent anything you can think of--even broad, obvious stuff that's been done before--and then sue the pants off anyone who independently designs and implements a real-world example of the patented materials. Patent trolls gonna troll.
So, I stand by my original assertions, which are: (1) The patent system is fubar'd, and (2) NTP won the patent troll lottery to the tune more than a half billion dollars reamed out of RIM, and then NTP managed to extort even more out of Apple, etc.
One other thing....you say patents make products "prohibitively expensive". That is easy to say and difficult to prove. I could argue that the products wouldn't exist without the patent system because slavish copying would prevent anyone from breaking into any new market. Take Apple for instance. If Microsoft could make iPads, Apple would have had no incentive to make an iPad. What would be the point of making it if Microsoft could sell it. The only reason you can't see this aspect of patents is because they are doing their job. It doesn't matter whether it is Apple or a small inventor, a small business, or a non-practicing entity, the risk of someone else getting a patent on the product that everyone wants to buy is the very thing that creates the race to develop. It is a shame that the computer industry doesn't see it that way.
But your example (the ideas which went into the iPad) is just fine by me because there is a real, tangible product which came to market with those ideas. Thus, there is something to "protect" (i.e. the revenue stream generated by that product).
The problem I have is with protecting an idea for which there is no intent of it being used in a product (licensed or directly). An idea for which the sole purpose is generating money through waiting for others to create successful products which use that idea, and then launching lawsuits against them.
Comments
Can someone on this forum give me an intelligent answer to the following question:
Why should a patent holder be obligated to design a product or implement the invention? Isn't it sufficient to create the "intellectual property". Please consider the following example: if a miner finds a gold deposit and digs the raw ore out of the ground and sell it to a refiner, wouldn't you agree that the miner is entitled to compensation. Note that the ore can't be used for anything until is refined, but that doesn't mean the only person that should be compensated is the refiner. Some gold miners only produce ore, some only refine ore, and some do both. Why shouldn't we treat the patent system similarly?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
My my purpose is to make people aware that this negative attitude towards the patent system risks killing the most valuable asset this country has.
I don't think it's a negative attitude towards the patents system as such. It's more a negative attitude towards software patents. I've seen no evidence from anyone that without software patents tech players couldn't see success from inventiveness. Despite what seems like daily claims from Apple or their supporters that their IP is being unfairly used, "stolen" by others, Apple has certainly been successful. They sell every bit of product they can get their hands on, no matter how much they've supposedly been "copied".
If billions of dollars in revenue isn't enough incentive to be creative, I don't think possession of a software patent is going to give them any more drive to be successful. Their historical competitor Microsoft received their very first software patent in 1987 and even by 1990 only had 3. Yet they were seeing great success with both Windows and Office without software patent protection in place.
If there's evidence that without software patents players like Apple, Oracle, IBM, Samsung, Google etc would stop innovating because they wouldn't be able to profit from their developments I'd love to see it. Despite claims of wholesale theft of IP, I see a whole lot of dollars flowing into mobile players coffers. Lack of a software patent isn't going to change that.
This is the software equivalent of an overly-broad patent on "a machine for moving people from one place to another" a long time ago. And then, after the widespread invention/adoption of trains, stagecoaches, cars, airplanes, etc, suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming that all these implementations infringe on your patented idea and taking Amtrack, Ford, GM, Boeing, etc. to court.
And then suing and winning more than a half billion dollars because of it.
It's ludicrous, but it seems to hold up in court, so it seems like something's broken.
NTP won the patent troll lottery, if you ask me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy
I don't think it's a negative attitude towards the patents system as such. It's more a negative attitude towards software patents. I've seen no evidence from anyone that without software patents tech players couldn't see success from inventiveness. Despite what seems like daily claims from Apple or their supporters that their IP is being unfairly used, "stolen" by others, Apple has certainly been successful. They sell every bit of product they can get their hands on, no matter how much they've supposedly been "copied".
If billions of dollars in revenue isn't enough incentive to be creative, I don't think possession of a software patent is going to give them any more drive to be successful. Their historical competitor Microsoft received their very first software patent in 1987 and even by 1990 only had 3. Yet they were seeing great success with both Windows and Office without software patent protection in place.
If there's evidence that without software patents players like Apple, Oracle, IBM, Samsung, Google etc would stop innovating because they wouldn't be able to profit from their developments I'd love to see it. Despite claims of wholesale theft of IP, I see a whole lot of dollars flowing into mobile players coffers. Lack of a software patent isn't going to change that.
It is true that software patents weren't being sought after in the early 80s. However, that is because the electrical engineering field failed to see the value in software. Today we think it is crazy that IBM allowed Microsoft and its team of nobodies to own the IBM operating system. We now know that was a HUGE mistake and windfall for Bill Gates. The software companies of the 80s didn't need patents because the industry didn't recognize the value in software, period. However, what happened with software in the early 80s was very unusual and is hardly a justification for wholesale dismissal of software patents. I believe that the unusual circumstances of the 80s has convinced the software industry that they are different and patents are not necessary. I don't believe it is true. The rational used to justify abolishing software patents (they impede companies and aren't necessary) can be made for almost any other industry (except maybe pharmaceuticals). The movement in the software industry is changing the patent laws and undermining the system. The power is shifting to the large entrenched companies. If it doesn't stop, it will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Yes patents come at a cost, but they create something special which is they guarantee that the entrenched player is always at risk of missing out on the next big thing. That posturing, even if illusory, is priceless.
The amount of money that exchanges hands over patents has never stopped a product from going to market. RIM paid 600 million, but that didn't stop a single device from being sold. Because patents are valued based on products sold, it is in everyone's best interest to see the technology make it to market.
Also, I don't see why everyone is complaining about the 600 million. Microsoft paid 1.6 billion for a worthless advertising company a few years ago. Why can't a company like Microsoft or RIM be expected to pony up money to support the inventors of the technology they are using. If they really don't want to pay, they can always just take the feature out. Or, if they think it is so easy to get a patent, it shouldn't be too hard to patent something like push email themselves. The patent office grants equal opportunity to everyone, which is why I think it is the single most just distribution of wealth on the face of the planet. That alone is reason to keep software patents.
There is no way to prove one way or the other what would happen if software patents didn't exist. I think many in the software industry take it for granted that the U.S. has the mentality to invent. I would argue that the whole system exists in part from the stimulus created by the patent system. It is impossible to separate the two.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ShinySteelRobot
This is the software equivalent of an overly-broad patent on "a machine for moving people from one place to another" a long time ago. And then, after the widespread invention/adoption of trains, stagecoaches, cars, airplanes, etc, suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming that all these implementations infringe on your patented idea and taking Amtrack, Ford, GM, Boeing, etc. to court.
And then suing and winning more than a half billion dollars because of it.
It's ludicrous, but it seems to hold up in court, so it seems like something's broken.
NTP won the patent troll lottery, if you ask me.
First of all, the NTP patents are not as broad as you suggest. You are accusing NTP of claiming only the function. That isn't true. see wikipedia entry on NTP.
My personal belief is that the real reason everyone thinks the system is broken is because the dollar value in the RIM case is so high and it is hard to believe that in 1999 nobody had thought of originating the email on the mobile device. As unbelievable as it may seem, it is true. Nobody had done push email in 1999 and by the early 2000s, the value of doing push email was in the billions.
The fallacy in everyone's arguments is that the patent system makes companies pay for technology. That isn't true. Any company is free to take the infringing technology out of their products. This is particularly true of the Apple and Google settlement. Before they even sold their devices they knew they would have to deal with these patents and they chose to include the feature anyway. That just goes to show how valuable the technology really was.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ShinySteelRobot
This is the software equivalent of an overly-broad patent on "a machine for moving people from one place to another" a long time ago. And then, after the widespread invention/adoption of trains, stagecoaches, cars, airplanes, etc, suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming that all these implementations infringe on your patented idea and taking Amtrack, Ford, GM, Boeing, etc. to court.
And then suing and winning more than a half billion dollars because of it.
It's ludicrous, but it seems to hold up in court, so it seems like something's broken.
NTP won the patent troll lottery, if you ask me.
The first machine for transporting people that I can think of is a pole (which can be used as a pole vault). Since poles have existed in nature before mankind existed, the best you could have hoped for is a method of using the pole. If you lived 2,000 years ago and invented the chariot, you would not be able to write a claim to "a machine for transporting a person from one place to another," because the "pole" would anticipate your claim. The first person to invent a chariot could have claimed a support structure having two wheels and attachment means to an animal where the wheels are aft of the center of gravity of the support structure. That would have been allowable. This is a great example of how the patent system works. The prior art limits the claims.
The patent law can't get into a debate about what would be a "fair" breadth for a patent. The inventor is entitled to claim it as broadly as the prior art will allow them. As it turns out, in 1999 the prior art left a gapping hole for the inventor of the NTP patent. That isn't the fault of the patent system. That's the fault of other people working in this field, who failed to think of the invention and recognize how important it would be in a few short years.
Also, there are lots of lottery's in life. How is it fair the the children of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet grew up with privilege and business opportunities that we don't have. The patent system may be a lottery, but it is open to everyone on the face of the planet on equal terms so long as you can think of something inventive before someone else. That's not broken at all. That's fair and just.
Patents are just like the land grants of the 1800s. The government has the right to distribute the property as it sees fit. Instead of granting the rights to cronies, the government says, "First Come First Served". The patent office doesn't speculate how much the land is worth or try and distribute it justly. It just sets out the criteria for claiming it and says, "may the fastest person win." Some land is barren, some land is worth 600 million. Why can't the software industry see how wonderful this system is and embrace it like the Americans of the 1800's. The government doesn't have real property to give away. It has intellectual property. Yall should start thinking of technology that can change the world and you could be the next patent owner with a parcel of land that Google and Apple want.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy
I don't think it's a negative attitude towards the patents system as such. It's more a negative attitude towards software patents. I've seen no evidence from anyone that without software patents tech players couldn't see success from inventiveness. Despite what seems like daily claims from Apple or their supporters that their IP is being unfairly used, "stolen" by others, Apple has certainly been successful. They sell every bit of product they can get their hands on, no matter how much they've supposedly been "copied".
If billions of dollars in revenue isn't enough incentive to be creative, I don't think possession of a software patent is going to give them any more drive to be successful. Their historical competitor Microsoft received their very first software patent in 1987 and even by 1990 only had 3. Yet they were seeing great success with both Windows and Office without software patent protection in place.
If there's evidence that without software patents players like Apple, Oracle, IBM, Samsung, Google etc would stop innovating because they wouldn't be able to profit from their developments I'd love to see it. Despite claims of wholesale theft of IP, I see a whole lot of dollars flowing into mobile players coffers. Lack of a software patent isn't going to change that.
Also, I should have mentioned that the "billions of dollars" that Apple makes isn't necessarily an incentive to innovate. Apple behaves very differently than most large companies when it comes to innovation. Everyone knows this and this characteristic is in large part due to Steve Jobs and isn't likely to be replicated in other companies. What usually happens is that the successful companies stop innovating and focus on protecting market share and revenue. Innovation becomes secondary to internal political struggles to control the money and power or tactics to crush the competition (e.g., through mergers and acquisitions, advertising, or anti-competitive tactics). In many cases the new technology actually hurts a company's revenue. Kodak was a casualty of this problem. Other examples include touch screens, which crushed RIM and in a few years we'll see how the tablet market running on ARM processors and light OSs is going to kill growth in PCs. The patent system provides the protection to the companies and technology that will come along and replace those stagnant companies. If you don't have patents, the entrenched players will sit back and wait for someone to succeed and then copy them.
In reality the copying happens anyway, even with patents. The difference is that the patent forces the entrenched player to compensate the inventor. This is more efficient than causing the entrenched player to go out of business. In the end, the flow of capital is to the innovator, which creates the stimulus. If you don't have patents, the entrenched players can copy with impunity. They can even copy each other, which causes everyone to revert to other tactics to maintain market share (e.g., M&A activities, advertising, politics, or anti-competitive tactics). The bean counters in the finance department will always put pressure to reduce R&D costs, which means there will always be downward pressure on innovation. Without patents, eventually everyone would "disarm" themselves and just protect the markets in other ways.
You want proof that this is how it would work? Go to any country that has a poor patent system and you will see it. The most common way of protecting market share is politics and anti-competitive behavior. The patent system is a game changer. There is a strong correlation around the world with patent protection and innovation. Have you ever participated in or invested in a start-up company? Often times, patents are a critical component of obtaining investment dollars. Usually the people that say it doesn't matter are companies that are providing freeware and make no money or are companies like facebook that just happen to be at the right time and place in history to succeed without patents. Good for them. However, that isn't how it usually works. And, the environment that made Facebook successful wouldn't have existed without patents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
First of all, the NTP patents are not as broad as you suggest. You are accusing NTP of claiming only the function. That isn't true. see wikipedia entry on NTP.
The Wikipedia page is very interesting, and I see your point, but I disagree. The patents seem pretty broad. The concept NTP patented is "wireless push email". The fundamental concept of mail, as used every day in the physical world is "push". For example, LL Bean mails me ("pushes" me) a yearly catalog in the mail--I don't drive over to LL Bean to get it. So the concept of pushing mail in a virtualized environment (i.e., mail inside a computer) could/should be exactly the same, i.e., it's very obvious.
Second, the concept of "wireless" communication was well established by the time the patent was filed. For example, RadioMail provided wireless email services in 1991.
Many years later, NTP's patent "inventor" simply put the two broad concepts together ("push" and "wireless email") into a slightly less broad idea, then patented it.
Actually, as it turns out, email had been pushed wirelessly from ArpaNet to a pager more then ten years before the NTP patents were filed. As revealed by the New York Times, a guy named Goodfellow actually achieved it. During the NTP/RIM trial Goodfellow was paid hush money by NTP's attorneys to keep quiet. According to Stanford patent law professor Mark A. Lemley, as quoted in the NY Times, "I think there is a potential ethics issue. The basic key is [NTP] attorneys have the obligation to disclose everything they know about his prior artwork and make [Goodfellow] available as a fact witness."
Why didn't Goodfellow--the true inventor of wireless push email--simply patent his wireless push email invention himself? As quoted by the NY Times, "You don't patent the obvious."
Naturally, NTP's "inventor" had no such qualms and patented the same thing a decade later.
But what you can do? The broken patent system gets abused all the time. Patent anything you can think of--even broad, obvious stuff that's been done before--and then sue the pants off anyone who independently designs and implements a real-world example of the patented materials. Patent trolls gonna troll.
So, I stand by my original assertions, which are: (1) The patent system is fubar'd, and (2) NTP won the patent troll lottery to the tune more than a half billion dollars reamed out of RIM, and then NTP managed to extort even more out of Apple, etc.
Thank goodness the NTP patents expire this year.
Please explain again how this has a net positive effect on society (i.e. "works").
Quote:
Originally Posted by ash471
One other thing....you say patents make products "prohibitively expensive". That is easy to say and difficult to prove. I could argue that the products wouldn't exist without the patent system because slavish copying would prevent anyone from breaking into any new market. Take Apple for instance. If Microsoft could make iPads, Apple would have had no incentive to make an iPad. What would be the point of making it if Microsoft could sell it. The only reason you can't see this aspect of patents is because they are doing their job. It doesn't matter whether it is Apple or a small inventor, a small business, or a non-practicing entity, the risk of someone else getting a patent on the product that everyone wants to buy is the very thing that creates the race to develop. It is a shame that the computer industry doesn't see it that way.
But your example (the ideas which went into the iPad) is just fine by me because there is a real, tangible product which came to market with those ideas. Thus, there is something to "protect" (i.e. the revenue stream generated by that product).
The problem I have is with protecting an idea for which there is no intent of it being used in a product (licensed or directly). An idea for which the sole purpose is generating money through waiting for others to create successful products which use that idea, and then launching lawsuits against them.