5 ms·

It is irreparable harm considering they can't get back the monopoly/leading market-share effect at this very young stage of the tablet market. i.e. Sales and

by mythz 14y ago

It is irreparable harm considering they can't get back the monopoly/leading market-share effect at this very young stage of the tablet market. i.e. Sales and profits now is a lot more important than Sales and Money later.

dguaraglia 14y ago
Yeah, but AFAIK this economic model (and the Constitution) was supposed to work by trying to break monopolies, not encouraging them.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  You do realize that a patent is a deliberately created, temporary monopoly.
  - dguaraglia 14y ago
    Yes, and that's why I think (most) software patents are a crock of shit, same as most design patents. The very idea that someone can get a patent something like 'a tablet with a metal casing and rounded corners' is revolting. But then, the whole patent system has been fucked up for umpteen years because of the way lawyers lay out the legalese on most patents. Something as specific as a new protocol to transfer data (say, SPDY) can be massaged into being a vague generic definition ("a binary transmission method designed to make HTTP-like data structures and operations possible in a more efficient manner") that could cover a lot of ground, giving the owner of the patent the power to halt innovation (ZeroMQ could very well fall under the umbrella defined of such 'patent') while giving exactly 0 benefit to anyone. I'm just waiting for someone cheeky enough to come up with a vague wording for describing a 'wooden and/or plastic object designed with the purpose of holding items and or facilitating common household tasks' (i.e. a piece of furniture) and sue IKEA.
    - JoeCortopassi 14y ago
      Where would Google be without the PageRank patent to give them a monopoly on search? Don't think many people have an issue with that.
      - throwaway64 14y ago
        what an absurdly wrongheaded statement, do you really think that Google depended on patent protection to stop others from using PageRank, and even if they did, how could it ever be conclusively proven that PageRank was used by somebody else?
        masry 14y ago
        What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google? If Yahoo, LiveSearch and whatever other famous search engine just went ahead and ripped off Google then Google wouldn't be the Google we know now... Proving it shouldn't be any more difficult than asserting any patent. The defendant would have to show how they're ranking pages I would imagine, and if there's an infringement, they're found guilty.
        Zaim3 14y ago
        "What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google?" Because it belongs to Stanford University, not Google.
        JoeCortopassi 14y ago
        Under exclusive license by Google. Basically the same as having the patent yourselves
      - fromhet 14y ago
        I know less than little about most things, but wouldnt that m ake search engienes compete more, giving us, the users, better results? I think there's a fine line where on one side inventors cant net a profit without a time-based monopoly but on the other side of this fine line it's just hurting competition.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      But what you said was that the constitution was supposed to break monopolies. No it wasn't.
FaceKicker 14y ago
Doesn't that just mean more money though? I'd agree that the analysis of the damages would get pretty fuzzy at best if you're trying to account for such factors, but it's still ultimately just a loss of money.
- flatline3 14y ago
  That's the problem -- how do you calculate the lifetime value of that? It's not just lost sales, it's a substantial shift in the position of a huge corporation. Here's another example -- Imagine how different things could be today if the AT&T lawsuits hadn't temporarily paralyzed the BSDs just as Linux was also emerging. I can't even begin to quantify the cost of what could have happened if the lawsuit hadn't been filed by AT&T.
  - shurane 14y ago
    Can you tell some more detail about this AT&T lawsuit against BSD?
    - flatline3 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi This stalled BSD development/adoption for 2 years while the legal status was in question.
thezilch 14y ago
And the inverse, where Apple inflicts similar, irreparable harm to their competitors that are using "bogus" patents? Consider Apple is already a market leader, the implications are more damning in the opposite direction.

by mythz 14y ago

dguaraglia 14y ago

Yeah, but AFAIK this economic model (and the Constitution) was supposed to work by trying to break monopolies, not encouraging them.

Tloewald 14y ago
You do realize that a patent is a deliberately created, temporary monopoly.
- dguaraglia 14y ago
  Yes, and that's why I think (most) software patents are a crock of shit, same as most design patents. The very idea that someone can get a patent something like 'a tablet with a metal casing and rounded corners' is revolting. But then, the whole patent system has been fucked up for umpteen years because of the way lawyers lay out the legalese on most patents. Something as specific as a new protocol to transfer data (say, SPDY) can be massaged into being a vague generic definition ("a binary transmission method designed to make HTTP-like data structures and operations possible in a more efficient manner") that could cover a lot of ground, giving the owner of the patent the power to halt innovation (ZeroMQ could very well fall under the umbrella defined of such 'patent') while giving exactly 0 benefit to anyone. I'm just waiting for someone cheeky enough to come up with a vague wording for describing a 'wooden and/or plastic object designed with the purpose of holding items and or facilitating common household tasks' (i.e. a piece of furniture) and sue IKEA.
  - JoeCortopassi 14y ago
    Where would Google be without the PageRank patent to give them a monopoly on search? Don't think many people have an issue with that.
    - throwaway64 14y ago
      what an absurdly wrongheaded statement, do you really think that Google depended on patent protection to stop others from using PageRank, and even if they did, how could it ever be conclusively proven that PageRank was used by somebody else?
      - masry 14y ago
        What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google? If Yahoo, LiveSearch and whatever other famous search engine just went ahead and ripped off Google then Google wouldn't be the Google we know now... Proving it shouldn't be any more difficult than asserting any patent. The defendant would have to show how they're ranking pages I would imagine, and if there's an infringement, they're found guilty.
        Zaim3 14y ago
        "What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google?" Because it belongs to Stanford University, not Google.
        JoeCortopassi 14y ago
        Under exclusive license by Google. Basically the same as having the patent yourselves
    - fromhet 14y ago
      I know less than little about most things, but wouldnt that m ake search engienes compete more, giving us, the users, better results? I think there's a fine line where on one side inventors cant net a profit without a time-based monopoly but on the other side of this fine line it's just hurting competition.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    But what you said was that the constitution was supposed to break monopolies. No it wasn't.

FaceKicker 14y ago

Doesn't that just mean more money though? I'd agree that the analysis of the damages would get pretty fuzzy at best if you're trying to account for such factors, but it's still ultimately just a loss of money.

flatline3 14y ago
That's the problem -- how do you calculate the lifetime value of that? It's not just lost sales, it's a substantial shift in the position of a huge corporation. Here's another example -- Imagine how different things could be today if the AT&T lawsuits hadn't temporarily paralyzed the BSDs just as Linux was also emerging. I can't even begin to quantify the cost of what could have happened if the lawsuit hadn't been filed by AT&T.
- shurane 14y ago
  Can you tell some more detail about this AT&T lawsuit against BSD?
  - flatline3 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi This stalled BSD development/adoption for 2 years while the legal status was in question.

thezilch 14y ago

And the inverse, where Apple inflicts similar, irreparable harm to their competitors that are using "bogus" patents? Consider Apple is already a market leader, the implications are more damning in the opposite direction.