Most of what many software companies called R&D, I call product development. Real R&D happens at big corporate labs where crazy long term ideas are funded witho

Most of what many software companies called R&D, I call product development. Real R&D happens at big corporate labs where crazy long term ideas are funded without regard to next quarter's profits. I used to work at IBM TJ Watson Research. That was R&D. They published a Systems Journal with the research for public consumption. Much of it was on very basic algorithms or on fundamental physics or engineering that had nothing to do with a particular product. AT&T Bell Labs? That's R&D. Even Microsoft Research is R&D, but most of the patents Microsoft sues over does not come out of their research labs. Here's software R&D: Spending 4 years on Phd research looking at new speech recognition algorithms and making fundamental improvements in the field. Here's what's not R&D: Developing a product in 6-12 months, and then asking your developers retroactively to go submit patents on anything in there that they can find: drop down menus, clicking styles, transparent overlays, extracting links from text. Ask yourself this, do you think Pinterest deserves a patent on "Pin Board" UI? Do you think a Y-Combinator startup that goes from idea to launch in 3 months, and then submits a whole slew of patents on whatever they manage to cobble together in that time is R&D? Some patents are essentially the equivalent of domain name squatting. Nothing more than a land grab for as many claims as possible. I've been through the patent process before. Asked by lawyers to drum up as many claims as possible with as wide applicability as possible, send through the USPTO, wash, rinse, repeat, until you walk away with as many viable claims as possible. It's not really about what you actually developed, it's about trying to own as much of the intellectual landscape as possible. I find that essentially dishonest and I don't think it is good for innovation. Neither Google nor Apple's biggest expenses are R&D. Apple's R&D expenses in fact have been historically low. Microsoft spend 12% on R&D last year. Apple, only 3%. IBM and Intel also essentially outspent Apple, as I bet Samsung has too. Consider that Apple relies on fundamental semiconductor advances in screens, fabs, memory, Flash memory, et al that are mostly done by other companies. These companies invest massive R&D efforts into fabs, advanced lithography, production lines. Isn't it kind of sad that Apple's $150 billion isn't going into fundamental advanced in new technology, but into stock buy back, dividends, and offshore investments? You know, if Apple were to invest in say, the kind of stuff IBM or HP is doing with trying to develop new batteries or fundamentally new storage mediums, I'd be like, sure, that was a 10 year investment, they may deserve some protection. But I just can't get behind a patent on using regular expressions to parse phone numbers or URLs out of text and turn them into clickable links, which is a basic job interview question.