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What I think is fundamentally wrong with the way the patent system is applied today is that in many instances it serves as nothing more than an artificial monop
by hetman 14y ago
What I think is fundamentally wrong with the way the patent system is applied today is that in many instances it serves as nothing more than an artificial monopoly only benefitting the patent holder.
The idea of the patent system in itself is actually quite elegant. Government grants a temporary monopoly in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention. Everyone wins! The person issued the patent can more easily profit from their invention because they can work in the open. Society likewise benefits, no more secret guilds locking up knowledge, now everyone can see how it's done (and apply it once the monopoly expires).
As a social contract this really makes sense. The problem is that a lot of the patents being thrown around today only really satisfy half of that contract. A temporary monopoly is indeed granted, but the disclosure received in exchange is worthless information. I say it is worthless because no one actually needs to read that disclosure to figure out how to do it themselves with basically no effort.
Of the large companies, it seems to me that Apple is one of the worse offenders at exploiting the patent system in this way. Don't get me wrong, what they are doing is perfectly legal, but that doesn't make it OK. It does seem like Apple is following the legal rules and Samsung is thrashing around attempting to break them (perhaps feeling they have little alternative). But that doesn't mean that our legal system is perfect and cases like this will hopefully help us understand how it can be fixed to prevent this kind of exploitation in the future.
- chimeracoder 14y ago> A temporary monopoly is indeed granted, but the disclosure received in exchange is worthless information. Given some of the frivolous patents granted these days, and given the application process itself, I wonder how many companies spend more to obtain the patents than they do for the R&D on the technology that's being patented.
- ThePherocity 14y agoAll of them.
- taligent 14y agoActually almost none of them.
- fpgeek 14y agoCitation please? Here's a citation for the opposite claim (that plenty of companies pay unreasonably large amounts of money on patents, sometimes exceeding R&D spending): http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229100/Can_the_U.S._patent_system_be_saved_ http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229100/Can_the_U.S._... Some highlights for 2011: Apple $2.4 billion $R&D, $2.6 billion for their share of Rockstar Bidco (Nortel patents) Google $5.2 billion R&D, $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility. Note that Google still qualifies even if you just count the Motorola "patent spend" at Google's recent $5.5 billion valuation of Motorola's patents and technology, rather than the cost of the whole acquisition.
- taligent 14y agoYou do know that Apple does most of what can be classed as R&D through its normal P/L operating units. So it's not like there is a separate iOS R&D team specifically churning out patents. Patents can and do come from ANY engineers across the company. It's the same at most companies.
- cma 14y agoIf things are sold beyond their marginal costs, something is broken. We need other funding mechanisms for research and development like the Stiglitz prize system, or Dean Baker's artistic freedom voucher.
- nitrogen 14y agoIf things are sold beyond their marginal costs, something is broken. I think this is too simplistic and labor centric. At the very least, the number of people who can benefit from a particular kind of work should affect the value of that work, should it not?
- MartinCron 14y agonothing more than an artificial monopoly only benefitting the patent holder I thought that's exactly what patents are supposed to be. Inventors are rewarded with a temporary artificial monopoly.
- kbolino 14y agoAt least in the United States, the express purpose of all patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other IP protections is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", i.e. for the public good. The vehicle used to achieve this end is the granting of a temporary monopoly, but the monopoly itself is not the end.
- MartinCron 14y agoAbsolutely right. I was just trying to point out that the monopoly in this context isn't some sort of dysfunctional side-effect, but part of the intended mechanism.
- gcb 14y agoisn't there provisions for realistic royalty rates?
- novalis 14y agoThat is just one of the problems right there, patent holder isn't necessarily the Inventor. It just gets worse from that point.
- MartinCron 14y agoWell, the patent holder is either the inventor or acquired the patent from the inventor. If we assume that the inventor is a consenting adult and didn't give the patent away under duress, I don't see any problem with that.
- novalis 14y agoPatent troll company setup for nothing more than litigation, just one of the many problems with that.
- A1kmm 14y agoI disagree that it is an elegant solution. Ideas are something that have a resource cost to conceive, develop and disseminate, but which have no cost to the developer afterwards. The more people who use an idea, the better from an economic standpoint, because the use of an idea is not a finite resource like, say, water. Therefore, the economic properties that you want are to, on the supply side, reward people who produce ideas - an the patent system does that - and on the demand side, to encourage as much appropriate use of the idea as possible, which is the opposite of what the patent system does. A monopoly is therefore inappropriate. A system where product developers pay the same amount into a pool regardless of how many patents they use, and have to declare truthfully what patent documents they referred to for the purposes of distributing the pool would work far better. That way, products would have no reason not to use all the newest technologies, but people who file good quality patents would still get paid.
- linuxhansl 14y agoEven at the risk of sounding like a broken record... Public disclosure is only part of the story. The other part is to allow protecting the cost of an invention. If there was no protection there would be less incentive to invest in r&d to come up with new idea. This is where the problem lies with software patents (IMHO): A "software invention" does not cost anything. I will lean out and say that there is no idea in software that is worth anything by itself. Instead it is the expression of that idea that has value, and that is protected by copyright. (I'm still waiting to be shown a software patent of an idea that would not have seen the light of day without a legally granted monopoly)
- ericHosick 14y ago"I'm still waiting to be shown a software patent of an idea that would not have seen the light of day without a legally granted monopoly" Are you saying that "software type people" will always release their ideas publicly cause they are just cool or are you saying that software is so intrinsically intuitive that any concepts unique to software will just come about?
- linuxhansl 14y agoWhat I am trying to say is that all software patents I've seen so far are for "epiphany" type ideas. Ideas that did not need an elaborate initial setup or have any cost associated with them. Ideas folks have in the shower, etc. Hence society as a whole does not benefit from these monopolies because folks have these ideas anyway. The cost of software lies in the implementation, which is protected by copyright. You are right, though, I glanced over the point that patents allow you to publish your idea without fear that somebody else will beat you at your own idea. That again is provided that the idea is actually unique and other folks could not just come up with it as well (in the shower :) ). IMHO the bad of software patents far outweighs any good that can come from them and the only folks who benefit greatly are lawyers and companies that would like to prevent each other from competing.
- ericHosick 14y ago"Ideas that did not need an elaborate initial setup or have any cost associated with them." Ahh. I see. Ok. Ya. I had an "epiphany" idea in software. Invested quite a bit in R&D to see if it worked. It did not. A while later, had an epiphany on the epiphany and so on. The final solution, which is patent pending, took me quite a few years and quite a bit of money (not including opportunity costs) to figure out. It could be I'm just not that smart and that is why it took me so long. However, I've never seen anyone implement this type of technology. No patent, startup, software that exists already. I've seen people over the last 20 years try to solve the problem I've solved, but without success. Would this fall under something that should not be patented?