The Patent, Used as a Sword does the opposite to its intended purpose

this is in US political madness because countries that dont tow the line for US governments patent and copyright reforms are placed on a "naughty" list of non compliant nations, these are effectively sanction lists for trade and co-operation. the maximalists and protection focused US is COMPELLING other countries to comply or suffer,

the biggest example of this is the TPP (trans pacific partnership) which aims to force countries residents to bow to comical trilateral agreements that are tested in a panel, rather than a court.

please note that every time the mickey mouse copyright comes up the US extends copyright length and now were are up to 70 years for a schetch of a cartoon mouse, if 70 years is not long enough 1000 years wont be either.

in the area of patents, where the idea is to provide a "window" where exclusive use (see monopoly) is awarded to a designer or inventor to "capitalise" on the intellectual property for a short term to "reward" inventors and designers.

this is called "an innovation incentive" and the idea is that patent protection rewards innovation, by providing exclusive use and right to use the design for a limited period and allows the designer to licence or sell their IP

thats how it is SOLD to the populous, but the truth is stunningly different than the noble aims stated out above.

Patents actually inhibit the innovation they sought to inspire, and the money gained from the protected innovation often goes to lawyers and courts in disputes.

here is one such example. please try to note the actual outcome compared to the perceived reason to patent.

For three decades, Mr. Phillips had focused on writing software to allow computers to understand human speech. In 2006, he had co-founded a voice recognition company, and eventually executives at Apple, Google and elsewhere proposed partnerships. Mr. Phillips’s technology was even integrated into Siri itself before the digital assistant was absorbed into the iPhone.

But in 2008, Mr. Phillips’s company, Vlingo, had been contacted by a much larger voice recognition firm called Nuance. “I have patents that can prevent you from practicing in this market,” Nuance’s chief executive, Paul Ricci, told Mr. Phillips, according to executives involved in that conversation.

Mr. Ricci issued an ultimatum: Mr. Phillips could sell his firm to Mr. Ricci or be sued for patent infringements. When Mr. Phillips refused to sell, Mr. Ricci’s company filed the first of six lawsuits.

Soon after, Apple and Google stopped returning phone calls. The company behind Siri switched its partnership from Mr. Phillips to Mr. Ricci’s firm. And the millions of dollars Mr. Phillips had set aside for research and development were redirected to lawyers and court fees.

When the first lawsuit went to trial last year, Mr. Phillips won. In the companies’ only courtroom face-off, a jury ruled that Mr. Phillips had not infringed on a broad voice recognition patent owned by Mr. Ricci’s company.

But it was too late. The suit had cost $3 million, and the financial damage was done. In December, Mr. Phillips agreed to sell his company to Mr. Ricci. “We were on the brink of changing the world before we got stuck in this legal muck,” Mr. Phillips said.

www.nytimes.com...

i know what your thinking, but that is but one example,

here are more, apple,

Apple's former General Counsel, Nancy Heinen, has a good quote in the article highlighting part of the problem:
"Think of the billions of dollars being flushed down the toilet... When patent lawyers become rock stars, it’s a bad sign for where an industry is heading,."
It's a very bad sign, but there seems to be little appetite by anyone to do anything to fix the wider problem. And despite Apple's foray into being a massive patent warrior, attacking tons of other companies, it still hasn't occurred to many people just how broken the system remains. The NY Times piece spends some time looking at Patent 8,086,604, an Apple patent issued last year, which many refer to as the Siri patent, as it covers a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system." Basically, a way to search multiple databases at once. As a separate companion piece to the full article highlights, that patent was rejected 8 times before the examiner was "worn down" and approved it, despite no meaningful changes in the language.

www.techdirt.com...

requoting the important part

"Think of the billions of dollars being flushed down the toilet... When patent lawyers become rock stars, it’s a bad sign for where an industry is heading,."

what happens when two separate groups have the same idea?
the both patent as broadly as possible their idea,
and the first to market is attacked by the other group,
and both spend large money in court and the product is halted from sale in the mean time.

Apple is not alone. The number of patent lawsuits filed in United States district courts each year has almost tripled in the last two decades to 3,260 in 2010, the last year for which federal data is available. Microsoft has sued Motorola; Motorola has sued Apple and Research in Motion; Research in Motion has sued Visto, a mobile technology company; and in August, Google, through its Motorola unit, sued Apple, contending that Siri had infringed on its patents. (Google dropped the suit last week, leaving open the possibility of refiling at a later date.) All of those companies have also been sued numerous times by trolls.

Patents for software and some kinds of electronics, particularly smartphones, are now so problematic that they contribute to a so-called patent tax that adds as much as 20 percent to companies’ research and development costs, according to a study conducted last year by two Boston University professors.

www.nytimes.com...

you pay 20% higer prices for goods because of litigation costs,

PATENT LAWYERS ARE MAKING HUGE SUMS OF MONEY,
and this forces up the cost of your tech

the reality of the situation is patents are now being used as swords,
they cut through competition not in a free market, but in a court room,
and through your purchases you pay the bill.

the out come is a gold rush of overly broad patents that are of little value unless you patent troll actual producers of products,

the system is so broken it is now not worth entering a market unless you dont intend on innovating at all.


my humble opinion,
go open source, and prevent anyone from patenting the innovation,
then simply give the ideas to the free market,
innovation in-spite of patents,
wow what a wacky situation

xploder

reply to post by XPLodER

It's a sad thing to have to agree, but I sure do..... I'd come up with an idea year back while trucking and before one saw this on private vehicles (still don't very much), but it was a system to mount a Dash cam as well as side cams. Run all that into a computer CPU box about the size of an Xbox and give it a week to 10 day recording ability. The idea was to CYA for truck drivers on what really happened when too many get shafted but also to help get the truly bad ones off the road with proof they could't hide.

By the time those who do this for a living explained to me what Copyrights. Patents and all that would entail and cost, I was staggered but still game. Hell.. I'd even written part of the software. I was really into it. Then came the deal-ender....like the damn Mouse.

Power and Money is everything....and if I'd made my thing and it worked perfectly...then Kenworth or Freightliner had come along and stolen the whole design wholesale...It's mine only so far as I can fight it in court and I'd note the man who invented the intermittent wiper for how that works. He won alright....but some victory after the years and costs it took to get there.

I agree..... Invent something? Release it open source to the world. Make money building or doing it for people who just don't want to but release the idea itself. The system leaves few other real good choices for the little people.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


i feel for you,
i have found myself in similar situations,
and i have concluded the 20% reduction in costs involved with application and defending patents in court,
means a product 20% cheaper for the final product sold to the consumer,

rather than pad the lawyers pockets i have started to open source my ideas,
simply to get the innovation to the market, and prevent patent trolls from preventing entry into the market.

i can say from experience,
patents do the EXACT OPPOSITE to their stated intent,
they prevent actual innovators from coming to market with products lest they be litigated into oblivion.

open source is the way of the future,
and being forced to double down on a system so broken can only have disastrous consequences for innovators.

these barriers are stopping real inventors and innovators while allowing a monopoly to the big players.

people have asked my why i innovate, it is not the patents or promises of money or even fame,

it has nothing to do with patents, i create because i can,

its just a shame that the people making the most money are lawyers,
and not the real innovators.

the trolls and lawyers love this broken system,

real innovators have to give away their property to innovate because of patents,

i would gladly give 90% of my ideas to open source,
if america would address this broken system, i would not need to

for every dollar spent on innovation a dollar goes to protection and future litigation,
so the protection actually removes money from real innovation.

Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Statement of Principles 1.0

Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design. The hardware's source, the design from which it is made, is available in the preferred format for making modifications to it. Ideally, open source hardware uses readily-available components and materials, standard processes, open infrastructure, unrestricted content, and open-source design tools to maximize the ability of individuals to make and use hardware. Open source hardware gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging commerce through the open exchange of designs.

freedomdefined.org...



i will be supplying my hardware designs to OSHW

because the true innovators are ordinary people
any the real steps forward dont come from protecting yesterdays innovation,
they come from people wanting to make today's tech better for tomorrow

look forward to innovate,
look back to become obsolete



xploder

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


here is the latest,

Last Year, Google & Apple Spent More On Patents Than On R&D

so i guess the truth is that MORE money is spent on patents and litigation than on R&D
how does this create innovation again?

That seems like a pretty big problem, and one we should all be concerned about. Now, both Apple and Google are cash rich companies, so they can spend a lot on patent issues, but all of that is money that isn't going into actual innovation or developing new products. And, for smaller companies, it's much worse -- since basically all of them don't have the kind of cash reserves we're talking about with Google and Apple. If even these big companies are spending more on patents than on R&D, can't we agree that the system is completely broken?

www.techdirt.com...

should the TPP pass we will see the only ones capable of innovation will be the large companies with massive cash reserves, who will litigate you into bankruptcy.

sad day in america when being a patent troll is more valuable than actually producing a product.

xploder

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


the numbers are inflated to force law makers to think that copyright is losing ground and requires special attension from law makers.

i guess blatant lies work when law makers are involved

Either way... Matthew Lasar, over at Ars Technica digs into the numbers to find that the RIAA's and others' claims... are completely bogus. First off, it appears that they failed the "how to calculate percentage change" test. Lasar also finds that the actual change based on the source data appears to be maybe a decline of a little over 8%. As he notes "8.4 percent, I'm sure most readers will agree, is a long way from 41 percent."

www.techdirt.com...

RIAA's Bogus Math Strikes Again: Claimed 41% Decline In Musicians... Not Even Close To True

its acually closer to 8%

maby a truthful discussion cant take place because if the truth comes out the MPAA and RIAA will look like spoilt brats demanding more pocket money without actually doing anything to earn their cut.

"look at the decline" thats piracy
WTF if this is what they are telling law makers no wonder copyright enforcement is at the end of automatic weapons and twenty swat officers with helicopters. (dotcom case)

but if the truth was told the enforcement would cost more than the acual losses

what else have they been lying about?

xploder

so lets now take a look at copyright enforcement,

in recent months many legitimately streamed vids have been taken down,
rover curiosity landing (removed)
debates (removed)

and now the stunning truth,
the DCMA take downs have started to target comical competitors

Ah, bogus DMCA notices that you just can't make up. TorrentFreak has a good article highlighting a completely bogus DMCA notice from Microsoft (sent by one of its partners on its behalf) that tries to take a bunch of legitimate news sites out of Google's index, on the mistaken claim that they violated Windows 8 copyrights. But, even more ridiculous is an aside mentioned in the article, that some other DMCA notices appear to target Bing, Microsoft's own search engine. Indeed, they're not that hard to find. If you look up DMCA notices asking Google to remove links to Bing, Microsoft shows up quite a bit:

www.techdirt.com...

so now copyright is being used to remove free speech and remove competition from markets,
as well as depriving people from witnessing historically important content

broken broken broken

xploder

what happens to monopoly situations in commerce?

well the incumbent industry usually stops innovation and just takes as much profit as possable,
this means no expansion of services or features and no improvement in access to services.

but as soon as competition is brought to the market, prices fall and innovators out compete.

Time Warner's spokesman seems to misunderstand what the word "incentive" means. When cities attempt to lure businesses they want, they offer concessions, grants, tax breaks, etc. It's assumed that the incumbent businesses have grabbed substantial marketshare and, therefore, don't need to be given incentives to do anything more than stay. If Time Warner is upset that its new competition was given this in exchange for selecting Kansas City, it can't blame anyone else for its failure to offer better services. It certainly was in the position to do so, but it never occurred to the incumbent(s) to make any great leaps in service and speed until it was "unfairly" forced to do so.

www.techdirt.com... shtml

as soon as competition comes to a market,

In exchange for the incentives, the cities are requesting that the companies improve their community services to be on par with Google's efforts, which have resulted in free internet connections in hundreds of locations chosen by the government... The WSJ cites an unnamed source that claims Time Warner Cable has improved its service's speed and performance in the area in return for discounts that mirror Google's, as well as a partial refund of city fees that the company paid earlier this year.
"Improved speed and performance," eh? One wonders (loudly and angrily) what the hell was keeping TWC from improving speed and performance over the last several years? Perhaps it was the lack of a serious competitor and one of those famous "level" playing fields that tilts at a 45-degree tilt toward the incumbent provider. As it stands now, Google's fastest offering (up to 1 Gbps) is 950 Mbps faster than TWC's fastest offering.

www.techdirt.com... shtml

this is a good example of how a monopoly sits on its hands and offers an inferior service,
untill competition comes to threaten their monopoly.
then they actually do something more or different than just collect money for share holders

INCUMBANTS
AT&T/TW/Comcast/etc have gotten about 1.2tril in grants and tax-breaks over the past 15 years with the intent of actually upgrading the USA's infrastructure.

I say even the playing field, but retroactively give Google a fair slice of all that stimulus. I figure a cool 100bil of free money should be enough for Google to "fairly" compete.

so while getting massive stimulus to provide better coverage nothing happens,
bring in a competitor and suddenly there is inovation

xploder

Twitter: It’s time for patent trolls to bear the costs of frivolous lawsuits

BY Ben Lee, Twitter

Still, even meritless lawsuits cost us money in attorney fees, and force our engineers to spend time with lawyers rather than improving our product. For example, we recently won a case regarding U.S. Patent No. 6,408,309, entitled “Method and System for Creating an Interactive Virtual Community of Famous People.” After a trial before a jury, we managed to prove that we didn’t infringe and that the asserted claims from the patent were invalid. This patent was “invented” by a patent lawyer, Dinesh Agarwal. According to his own testimony at trial, Mr. Agarwal had no computer science or programming background, and he thought up the whole idea while he was shopping for groceries.

gigaom.com...

even twitter canot innovate while they are in court fighting patent trolls

xploder

federal court judge on how bad the law really is for innovation

There are a variety of measures that could be taken to alleviate the problems I've described. They include: reducing the patent term for inventors in industries that do not have the peculiar characteristics of pharmaceuticals that I described; instituting a system of compulsory licensing of patented inventions; eliminating court trials including jury trials in patent cases by expanding the authority and procedures of the Patent and Trademark Office to make it the trier of patent cases, subject to limited appellate review in the courts; forbidding patent trolling by requiring the patentee to produce the patented invention within a specified period, or lose the patent; and (what is beginning) provide special training for federal judges who volunteer to preside over patent litigation.

www.theatlantic.com...

so even judges are starting to wounder how all this helps innovation.

xploder

Personally I would hope the legal community (Judges) eventually pull the plug of the BIG players on this. I know we just had a thread where I argued for copyright protections to reasonable degrees....but chasing down college kids and soccer moms for $250,000 lawsuits is vile. I've not followed the movie industry near as close as I had the record industry but I imagine they aren't much nicer as speeds allow for movie download almost as easily as music these days.

You know, they could look at new ways to market and exploit their product. In music...Well, my goodness.. CONCERTS used to be a fairly regular thing and primary source of revenue. It'd be a thought to move back toward and who knows what else.. Google faced a market where I wouldn't have imagined they'd have a hope of becoming one of the largest corporations in the world.....making a new search engine. Hell...We had Hotbot and Yahoo. What the heck is a Google?

The Music Industry and other patent hounds could back off and find more respectable ways of making a living as well I believe. At least be human beings about handling conflict on claims. Oh well... I'm just irritable on this topic because I really believe my idea would have been a superior product..and that much more likely to have been ripped right off in the current system Screw 'em. (And as you note, that attitude is what keeps innovation from moving forward)

I used to practice patent law. I have seen the patent system do its job in stimulating invention and I have seen the patent system stifle business. It all depends on the type of technology and the good faith of the players involved.

In the world of software and IT, patents seem to be more of a nuisance than a necessity to spur invention. In software and IP, the technology changes so rapidly that the 20 year monopoly a patent affords is useless, considering technology in this area can become obsolete within months in some cases. By the time the copy-cats have a chance to reverse engineer and ramp up to the market, their copy-cat product is largely obsolete.

In software and IT, more often than not the litigation involves people called patent trolls. Patent trolls are people with patents of dubious validity. They basically threaten big players like Apple, Microsoft, google, etc. with litigation. The big players end up paying the trolls off, more often than not. The problem with the law in this case is the American rule that losers in lawsuits do not have to pay the winners' attorney's fees. If patent trolls had to pay for trials on their own dime, you would see them disappear.

Other industries need patents. Biotech and pharmaceutical companies poor billions into research. Their drugs can remain commerically successful for several years or even decades because the rate of innovation is slow compared to software and IT. Biotech and pharmaceutical companies could not reap the benefits of their expensive research without patents.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


First, many of the $250K+ copyright cases did not just involve soccer moms or college students with a couple of pirated mp3's on their hard drive, these people were often big-time offenders who often distributed large numbers of pirated files.

Second, just because you think a business' distribution method or business model is out of date or antiquated, it does not mean you can steal their product. I may think the local corner shop charges too much for groceries. I may feel it would be more efficient if they sold their groceries on line or electronically. I may feel it would be better if the local corner shop did something else with the space than sell groceries. It does not mean I have a right to shop lift.

reply to post by XPLodER


I should add that Judge Posner is being very modest when he says at the end of the article that he does not know what he is talking about. Judge Posner is arguable the most respected judge in America alive. This is a great article in that it points out the strengths and weaknesses of the current system.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint

Oh please, give me a break.

In 2007 the RIAA took a case all the way to a jury in Federal Court, suing Jammie Thomas on 24 counts of illegal file-sharing. This was the first case to go all the way to court, as every other had either been settled or was tied up in litigation and negotiating settlement. Being the first, it was extremely important to both sides of the issue, which at the time was red-hot in all media venues. At the time of the trial, well over 20,000 other suits were active, and the RIAA had a point to prove. In the end, the jury found Thomas guilty on all 24 counts, and set an award to the plaintiff of $222,000, despite the testimony of expert witnesses that proved a degree of reasonable doubt.

The 14 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits Filed by the RIAA and the MPAA

That is the one we're talking about on the soccer mom. I'm in a college town with multiple Universities. The going after college kids was factually happening right here. It got entirely out of hand. Now I use the past tense only because I've not heard too much about it recently. Then again, I'm following a lot of stories clear outside MSM which they don't figure ranks coverage, so who knows how active they are today. I can't see anyone defending the thuggish and bully boy tactics of the RIAA and MPAA though. It was and is just vindictive, malicious and wrong.

This is why you Don't patent your products for money. You give the designs to the world under a free license saying that no one is allowed to make money on it. You don't care about the money - you care about creating a paradigm that changes the system for the future betterment of mankind. Unless we can do this, there will always be people who can hold power and money over us.

I believe all technology should be free to everyone and available to everyone. No matter what it is. It it's being used for good, thats fine, if it's used for harm, jail those offenders but don't hide or restrict the technology. We need to dismantle this capitalist system so we can truly be free.

Considering the Philip vs. Ricci case if he won the case didn't they have to pay the court fees for him? It says the financial damage is done but doesn't he get the money back?