Steve Forbes Joins the Anti-Patent Bandwagon
Please consider posting a comment to this article on Fox Opinion, if you are worried about property rights for inventions eroding away. Even sharp capitalists (albeit investing in crony companies notwithstanding) can't figure it out!
Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the particular time limits one who doesn’t act on their rights can collect, but intellectual property must be protected at least long enough to encourage investment, development, marketing and a grace period for capitalizing, or we stagnate.
Without a better option I find myself disagreeing with Forbes; a rare occurrence, but it does happen.
"his ilk are largely responsible"
what do you mean by this? why would you think that patent attorneys would not also be inventors? they have a technical background, they deal with startups, they are attorneys, and most importantly-they deal with inventions daily. they have the foresight and are positioned well to know where tech is headed. Should investment bankers not invest?
why aren't you more concerned over the time it takes to get a patent in the first place. would you agree 10 years is off the charts? or that companies do not get funding because their patent doesn't issue in the first place?
It is too difficult to get to get a patent. I know. I have tried. The time frame is inexcusable. The cost for a reputable attorney to do the search and application is also prohibitive for many. So I see some problems but I wouldn’t throw out the baby… That has been the extent of my first hand experience, and that was about fifteen years ago… I am by no means well versed enough to suggest this is anything more than my experience and may be unique.
the question ultimately is whether the problem lies with patents specifically or somewhere else. as you say, baby with the bath water.
Rand pointed out many instances where capitalism was blamed for the "ils" of govt intervention in the market. I can't comment on your specific case, I don't have enough knowledge (other than to tell you we charge 1500 for search and opinion, 500 for search). what I can tell you is patents are property rights and critical to economic progress and free markets.
I don't want to make this about our business, but I want to put it out there. we always talk to inventors and do not charge a fee for that. seriously. hours in some cases. ok, don't deluge us, people. our goal is for the engines of the world to RUN.
Somewhere else. Patents are essential. We are in agreement. Patents are not responsible for the abusers any more than capitalism is responsible for the cronies. I have no doubt you offer fair exchange.
O.A.
Thank you for your efforts and your reply. Listening is my pleasure. I know what I know, and others what they do. I am as you may have noted an inquiring mind. Aside from my other interests, my major life goal is the acquisition of wisdom. That is why I am here and why I study the subjects I do.
Best Regards,
O.A.
We have people in this world that think up a idea on paper, get some patent for it, but have no desire/ability to get actual product to market. Rather than sell the idea or partner with someone who can turn the idea into a practical invention, they lie in wait for someone to deploy tech using the same idea, and they cry foul. They never intended to make money off their ideas by production. They intended others to produce for them, and then they leach onto their revenue stream. This is particularly seen in software patents, where the clueless US Patent Office doesn't have a good concept of what non-trivial, non-obvious means.
However, there is a scary thought in this article.
Mr. Forbes points out how, over time, tech prices drop.
Then he points out that the cost of MPEG2 licensing hasn't dropped over time.
He says this is a problem because companies are being asked to pay "full price" for the technology instead of a price that "reflects the marketplace".
That assertion is just plain evil.
May a seller set his price, or not, Mr Forbes?
It doesn't matter if he thinks "innovation is harmed" by the market price.
Private property rights ought to take precedence over any forseen good that would come out of revoking them.
His kind of thinking leads to "Kelo v. City of New London" results.
In response to your first paragraph. Do you understand what "non-obvious" means in patent law? Because you cannot just use standard english definition for this term. If you think by "obvious" it means one's ability to understand how to build the invention once it has been described to you, that is required under US patent law. An invention is always a combination of known elements(things). One cannot create something from nothing (conservation of matter and energy). There is no such standard as "trivial" in the patent world. What you may consider trivial, often solves an important problem to those people skilled in that art. Patents are the most expensive, the most time consuming and examined property rights in the world. period.
"We have people in this world that think up a idea on paper, get some patent for it, but have no desire/ability to get actual product to market. Rather than sell the idea or partner with someone who can turn the idea into a practical invention..." Like Edison, Bell, Howe, every major University in the US, IBM etc. Think about it like this, people would be happy to be independent inventors and get paid for it. But large corporations don't want to pay for others' property rights. Aside here: Bill Gates once said, that the thing he feared the most was somebody thinking an invention up in their garage-just like he did. Gates, Jobs, etc. only want to compete with themselves now that their companies are large. However, large corporations pay attention when another entity sues over property rights. This is the ONLY way for small inventors to often get paid for their work. The problem is not with inventors or their inventions (including software) it is with the lack of respect for property rights in the first place.
Yes, you are right with respect to Kelo. But this antipatent rant is the same lack of respect for property rights that lead to Kelo. How do you know about this case Lionel?
My issue in the software world is that we are now patenting the trivial,
Apple: rounded corners
Microsoft: when you double-click the mouse, have that do something different than a single click.
and the obvious,
Sega: to direct a player in the way the game wants you to go, put up an arrow pointing in the desired direction.
Eolas: When you have browser plug-ins feeding content into the web page you're viewing, have that content work without the user clicking on it.
There is a "non-obvious" standard in patent law and I think ideas in software are being patented today that would not have been patented 25 years ago because people would have been ashamed to claim them as any sort of advancement. To me, "non-obvious" means given a problem, someone in the field would not have derived the identical solution given five minutes of thought. It means you need people in the patent office that understand the field and can make a good judgement. That is something I just don't think we have. This is a problem in the software world. I'm not anti-patent. I just think in the physical world, it USUALLY is obvious when what you've come up with is trivial. When you're looking at lines of code, it is not.
For your enjoyment:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15693_the...
I am always surprised when I hear from companies that find themselves in such a lawsuit, but did not undertake basic due diligence and perform a clearance search before implementing new software programs that help the company prosper. It's simple and inexpensive. Would you build a house without knowing you had title to the land and understand if there were easements attached?
"troll" I hate this word when used with companies. It's derogatory without explanation (this was designed specifically by those to shortcut reason and appeal to emotion in debate). Non-practicing entities (of which Edison was one) are just enforcing people's property rights that the inventors did not have money to do. The money your company didn't really have-well what about all the R&D investment of the patent holder or inventor? that somehow patents materialize out of thin air to blindside companies and cause harm. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inventors spend money developing then LOTS of money in the patent process (sometimes a decade or more). Applications are published within 18 months for all the world to see (and steal and design around). Anyone who uses Google can do a simple search to see if their software has the potential to be infringe others. but I give you a point for furthering the discussion
all of your examples are overly broad characterizations and not reflective of the claims in the patent. It takes years to learn how to read and construct claim language.
You would not attempt to interpret your own warranty or indemnification clauses for your company without hiring someone who has studied what those clauses mean and how they work. This is the problem. People hear these anecdotal examples and on the surface they seem crazy. but most do not have the time or skill to analyze these stories you hear about bogus patents.
What's important to all of your comments is this. There is a large movement (heck by multinationals to little anarchist alike) to get rid of patents. It's real. it will stifle innovation and has already. Look back over the last ten years compared to the decade before. It's startling. If you guys are going to have an opinion on this-you need to stop promoting other people's propaganda.
The patent system is not above criticism and when people do so, it does not mean we're witless dupes being manipulated by "them".
I am not an expert on genetic engineering. But if I am deciding for the world whether we should have genetically modified foods, then it is imperative that I understand the underlying technology. If I am commenting on patents, I need to understand patent law as it is and changing, and the underlying technology of any case. I am not appealing to authority, I am appealing to knowledge. It is clear, that the people who propagated the Apple "round corners" design patent-we've read these articles, btw, were either ignorant of patent law or were appealing to people's ignorance of patent law.
Questions: do you know the difference between design patents and utility patents? Do you know the differences between claims and the specification of a patent? do you know the difference between 'comprising' and 'consisting of' in a claim? I cannot answer each of these cases. I can assure you that claims are much more complex and do not cover what journalists have suggested they cover.
There are people suggesting that Edison did not invent the light bulb. These people are playing on people's ignorance of the invention process and patents. Edison is not the first nor the last to put light inside of a glass bulb. there were kerosine and arc lamps before Edison. There was also Swan's incandescent electric lightbulb. it was not practical. Low resistance, which meant you couldn't even light one city block practically. this is the sort of hard, detailed analysis one has to undertake to understand an invention, a patent, and its place.
I am not saying anyone in this post is stupid. I answer with facts when you respond on my posts. I expect the same from you on posts you have knowledge on.
Do not trust me, Lionel. Do not care for facts. The "patent system" is the most complex, most expensive, most time consuming , most examined property right in the world. the burden of proof-is on you
The burden of proof is on me to...what? Prove that frivolous patents have been granted? Prove that patent trolls exist? Something else?
I think you're misreading me. I have no "agenda" here.
I've neither patented anything nor been sued for patent violations. I think I've done one patent search because I was required to show I understood the process in college. I can't answer the questions you raised. But I do know something is wrong when we're granting patents to people that are inventing the stick:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=hhYJAAA...
If you've got the time, give that one a review and tell me why this should have been granted a patent. I don't get it.
I have worked with software for 25 years and I believe we do have similar "stick" patents out there in the computer world. When I was writing my original reply to you, I spent a while hunting for an old IBM patent on the concept of "after the screen fills with characters and the cursor is in the last position, scroll the screen up." I couldn't find it, but I know I studied that one when I was in college and was amazed it was ever granted. That is not innovation.
The Eolas patent story I think is covered accurately here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas
The kicker here is that after Microsoft paid up millions of dollars to a guy, who then proceeded to basically sue "the entire industry" for the same thing...after further review the patents were viewed invalid.
some patents are incorrectly granted. in our experience, there are many more applications denied that should have been allowed than vice versa. it's not at all clear, the economy suffers more from incorrectly issued patents, than from applications denied. however, always easier to point to problems concerning incorrectly denied patents than jobs and wealth that were not created via the opposite see: hidden cost issue/economics.
example. I am going to make my own atlas shrugged movie. I am going to ignore or claim I wasn't aware of copyrights. I make it. spend millions. do you feel sorry for me when Kaslow sues me? hey, I spent MILLIONS-whose side will you be on?
AR, Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal
Ayn Rand Lexicon
I was trying to think of an apt analogy last night-and I came up with one.
This debate is like the people who blamed capitalism for the abuses of the CA railroads in to late 1800s. The problems were real that people complained about. but the REASON for those problems was mis-identified. In reality, there was a lack of capitalism by the state who stifled competition, free market and refused to enforce property rights. (I think Rand wrote on this-I'll liook it up) In this case, those saying patents are responsible for the problems (ex: litigation costs), these costs are associated with say the discovery process, limited number of federal judges and courts, and the ignorance of federal judges on patent law. I will post a link to a paper on the issue of too many bad software patents. the stats do not bear out the claim.
http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.12...
overall. Sure, there are always players who take advantage of the sad state of our legal system overall. These are hardly unique to patent law. We DO have Supreme Court Justices who do Not understand patent law, yet rule and leave the whole patent industry in turmoil, as well as the Kelo decision. The Constitution is ignored time and again. Those are not the error of patent law but the lack of understanding and enforcement of it