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So how do patents "encourage innovation" again? It sounds more like patent attorney & bureaucratic speak meaning lots of money flowing toward them at the expens

So how do patents "encourage innovation" again? It sounds more like patent attorney & bureaucratic speak meaning lots of money flowing toward them at the expense of everybody else. Here's yet another example of patents hindering innovation and reducing novelty within the market. Why can't we just focus on real innovation & novelty instead of this legal drama?

kevingadd 12y ago
Did you read the article? They've been developing this tech for decades and releasing actual products based on it. Products people like enough to buy. What innovation's being hindered here? Beats didn't do anything new.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  I'm not the person you responded to, but I did read the article. The article kind of highlights the OP's point IMO. eg. (from the article): "Bose alleges that Beats has infringed on 50 years’ worth of research, development and engineering of noise cancelling tech" Well, the whole point of patents is supposed to be to publish the implementation details of inventions so that technology is available for all (the public commons) to use freely after the initial (14/17/20 year -- depending upon what year the patent was issued) patent period is up. This whole concept of incrementally improving a technology with amendment patents to keep the protection going virtually indefinitely is a very modern concept, and one that the "forefathers" who wrote patents into the Constitution would have been dead set against. Far be it from me to defend Beats or Apple since they are both IP-abusive companies themselves, but I'm not going to defend Bose either; the patent system and the lawsuit industry that has exploded around it in the past decade is completely out of control.
  - wfjackson 12y ago
    If the technology is covered solely by expired patents, I doubt any judge would call that infringement. Is there even a concept of amending a patent and getting it extended as a result without filing for a new patent?
    - neltnerb 12y ago
      Yes, but it's not so bad as to get you 50 years of protection. It sounds to me like they're accused of infringing on specific fairly recent patents relating to enhancements to noise-reduction techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application Bose has certainly been doing a lot of R&D for 50 years, I think the point of that statement is to make clear that they are not a patent troll, not to suggest that they're trying to hold Beats liable for 50 year old inventions. In fact, if Bose had come up with the ideas 50 years ago being claimed in recent patents, their own earlier patent would be prior art against filing a recent patent.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    The whole purpose is to spur innovation, not allow for blatant copying. The point in contention is whether or not Beats innovated, or just copied. And please, for the sake of intelligent discourse, don't say "the forefathers would have". It's so alarmingly meaningless and just strikes the conversation with a weird cultish vibe.
    - briantakita 12y ago
      > The point in contention is whether or not Beats innovated, or just copied. Have you heard of derivative works? Are you aware of how derivative works have contributed to innovation throughout the course of human civilization?
      - wtallis 12y ago
        What's your point here? That all derivative works are of equal value regardless of where they fall on the copying—innovation spectrum?
    - georgemcbay 12y ago
      The "forefathers" in the US weren't mystical, but real people (like Thomas Jefferson) who wrote real documents describing their concern with the potential negative impact of patent law abuse due to the harm monopolies cause. People who, while they eventually accepted the idea of patents as being positive if highly restrained, were vocally outspoken against many of the ways patent law could potentially be twisted (as it now has become at the hands of the modern corporation and IP law firms). See, for example: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html
- briantakita 12y ago
  > What innovation's being hindered here? Beats didn't do anything new. Novelty is being removed from the marketplace. Beats products look good and many people prefer them to Bose. The technology itself has been independently developed by Beats. The funny thing is Chinese manufacturer & tech firms don't strictly adhere to patent laws and are making progress by leaps & bounds. It's a matter of evolution. Patent law "chivalry" is dead. It's a quaint game from a time long gone.
JumpCrisscross 12y ago
> So how do patents "encourage innovation" again? On one hand we have Bose, who "for almost 50 years...has made significant investment in the research, development, engineering, and design of proprietary technologies now implemented in its products, such as noise canceling headphones" [1]. On the other hand we have Beats, which dressed up commodity tech in a nice design and well-executed marketing campaign. Not sure if this is the best case to torpedo patent law with. [1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/235098824/Bose-v-Beats-Civil-Complaint http://www.scribd.com/doc/235098824/Bose-v-Beats-Civil-Compl... §5
- Gracana 12y ago
  Every audio enthusiast I know would scoff at that assessment of Bose. They have a reputation for commanding a premium for cheaply made, mediocre products using fancy marketing and gimmickry. They're no different from Beats in that regard.
  - eob 12y ago
    Do any of the audiophiles on HN know if it's just fashionable to hate Bose or are there actually double-blind studies done in which music listeners consistently rate Bose as worse than price-comparable alternatives? I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I also get the sense that many around me seem to have disdain for Bose. I also stumbled into possession of QC headphones and some Bose speakers for my house and think they're great. So I've always wondered at what the precisely stated and justified beef is.
    - wtallis 12y ago
      There's certainly a lot of hate that only makes sense with audiophile logic, and a lot that stems from Bose not playing the same marketing game that everyone else does. Amar Bose wasn't a charlatan. But like any premium brand that's marketed by marketers rather than engineers, sometimes things end up overpriced and benefits get overstated.
    - aeberbach 12y ago
      I don't call myself an audiophile but I have owned a lot of different headphones up to the $1500 mark. There's no need (and no way) for double-blind studies here. We're not talking magic cables. Objectively you can plot frequency results with actual science and measure a difference. Subjectively you can experience it, and of course there is the look, smell, weight, clamping pressure, earpiece comfort and texture of the things as they sit on your head (hence no blind testing possible). I have disdain for Bose because of their breathless hype, misleading sales practises, high cost and (subjectively speaking) mediocre performance. Lots of people disagree with me and like Bose a lot. And that's just fine.
threeseed 12y ago
Patents are really designed for the "little guy". You only need to look at companies like Dyson who was just one guy in a garage coming up with crazy new approaches to an existing problem. Someone like that deserves some protection from bigger companies who could simply steal his idea and put him out of business.
- briantakita 12y ago
  > Patents are really designed for the "little guy". That's the marketing by the pro-patent camp. However, it's the big guys that benefit, at the expense of the little guys. The big guys can afford the lawyers, the filing fees, and the patent war chests. How often do we hear about the little guy receiving a patent infringement cease & desist letter by a patent troll or large company? Patents add another layer of complexity to the market resulting unnecessary expense & process for everyone. We focus on hiring lawyers for protection & litigation instead of innovation. Derivative works result in innovation. In the end, the ultimate beneficiaries of patents are the patent attorneys & bureaucracy. Hardly a recipe for innovation. The little guys are at an advantage over the big guys because they are more nimble & can explore markets that are "too small" for the big guys. And then, why are we choosing to favor anybody at all? Why not let the free market determine the winner? Manufacturing, development, & marketing are becoming more decentralized as time moves on. Why have a centralized legal roadblock to new product development?
  - fossuser 12y ago
    It's a tradeoff. Some markets require large research investment up front (like pharmaceuticals) and they won't bother if others can immediately sell the same finished product without doing the research. Without patents you also get trade secrets which can leave the public without ever knowing how something works. Patents are an attempt to exchange a limited time monopoly for a complete disclosure of how the invention works so that the public can benefit. There might be an argument for that time being too long (and I think it's completely broken when it comes to software), but I can see why they're useful as incentives.
  - yojimbo311 12y ago
deepsun 12y ago
Generally I'm against patent battles, but not in this case. Noise and echo cancellation are very research-demanding areas, with pretty smart algorithms and hardware to be developed. Those are certainly patentable, unlike "round edges".

kevingadd 12y ago

Did you read the article? They've been developing this tech for decades and releasing actual products based on it. Products people like enough to buy. What innovation's being hindered here? Beats didn't do anything new.

georgemcbay 12y ago
I'm not the person you responded to, but I did read the article. The article kind of highlights the OP's point IMO. eg. (from the article): "Bose alleges that Beats has infringed on 50 years’ worth of research, development and engineering of noise cancelling tech" Well, the whole point of patents is supposed to be to publish the implementation details of inventions so that technology is available for all (the public commons) to use freely after the initial (14/17/20 year -- depending upon what year the patent was issued) patent period is up. This whole concept of incrementally improving a technology with amendment patents to keep the protection going virtually indefinitely is a very modern concept, and one that the "forefathers" who wrote patents into the Constitution would have been dead set against. Far be it from me to defend Beats or Apple since they are both IP-abusive companies themselves, but I'm not going to defend Bose either; the patent system and the lawsuit industry that has exploded around it in the past decade is completely out of control.
- wfjackson 12y ago
  If the technology is covered solely by expired patents, I doubt any judge would call that infringement. Is there even a concept of amending a patent and getting it extended as a result without filing for a new patent?
  - neltnerb 12y ago
    Yes, but it's not so bad as to get you 50 years of protection. It sounds to me like they're accused of infringing on specific fairly recent patents relating to enhancements to noise-reduction techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application Bose has certainly been doing a lot of R&D for 50 years, I think the point of that statement is to make clear that they are not a patent troll, not to suggest that they're trying to hold Beats liable for 50 year old inventions. In fact, if Bose had come up with the ideas 50 years ago being claimed in recent patents, their own earlier patent would be prior art against filing a recent patent.
- diminoten 12y ago
  The whole purpose is to spur innovation, not allow for blatant copying. The point in contention is whether or not Beats innovated, or just copied. And please, for the sake of intelligent discourse, don't say "the forefathers would have". It's so alarmingly meaningless and just strikes the conversation with a weird cultish vibe.
  - briantakita 12y ago
    > The point in contention is whether or not Beats innovated, or just copied. Have you heard of derivative works? Are you aware of how derivative works have contributed to innovation throughout the course of human civilization?
    - wtallis 12y ago
      What's your point here? That all derivative works are of equal value regardless of where they fall on the copying—innovation spectrum?
  - georgemcbay 12y ago
    The "forefathers" in the US weren't mystical, but real people (like Thomas Jefferson) who wrote real documents describing their concern with the potential negative impact of patent law abuse due to the harm monopolies cause. People who, while they eventually accepted the idea of patents as being positive if highly restrained, were vocally outspoken against many of the ways patent law could potentially be twisted (as it now has become at the hands of the modern corporation and IP law firms). See, for example: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html
briantakita 12y ago
> What innovation's being hindered here? Beats didn't do anything new. Novelty is being removed from the marketplace. Beats products look good and many people prefer them to Bose. The technology itself has been independently developed by Beats. The funny thing is Chinese manufacturer & tech firms don't strictly adhere to patent laws and are making progress by leaps & bounds. It's a matter of evolution. Patent law "chivalry" is dead. It's a quaint game from a time long gone.

JumpCrisscross 12y ago

> So how do patents "encourage innovation" again? On one hand we have Bose, who "for almost 50 years...has made significant investment in the research, development, engineering, and design of proprietary technologies now implemented in its products, such as noise canceling headphones" [1]. On the other hand we have Beats, which dressed up commodity tech in a nice design and well-executed marketing campaign. Not sure if this is the best case to torpedo patent law with. [1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/235098824/Bose-v-Beats-Civil-Complaint http://www.scribd.com/doc/235098824/Bose-v-Beats-Civil-Compl... §5

Gracana 12y ago
Every audio enthusiast I know would scoff at that assessment of Bose. They have a reputation for commanding a premium for cheaply made, mediocre products using fancy marketing and gimmickry. They're no different from Beats in that regard.
- eob 12y ago
  Do any of the audiophiles on HN know if it's just fashionable to hate Bose or are there actually double-blind studies done in which music listeners consistently rate Bose as worse than price-comparable alternatives? I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I also get the sense that many around me seem to have disdain for Bose. I also stumbled into possession of QC headphones and some Bose speakers for my house and think they're great. So I've always wondered at what the precisely stated and justified beef is.
  - wtallis 12y ago
    There's certainly a lot of hate that only makes sense with audiophile logic, and a lot that stems from Bose not playing the same marketing game that everyone else does. Amar Bose wasn't a charlatan. But like any premium brand that's marketed by marketers rather than engineers, sometimes things end up overpriced and benefits get overstated.
  - aeberbach 12y ago
    I don't call myself an audiophile but I have owned a lot of different headphones up to the $1500 mark. There's no need (and no way) for double-blind studies here. We're not talking magic cables. Objectively you can plot frequency results with actual science and measure a difference. Subjectively you can experience it, and of course there is the look, smell, weight, clamping pressure, earpiece comfort and texture of the things as they sit on your head (hence no blind testing possible). I have disdain for Bose because of their breathless hype, misleading sales practises, high cost and (subjectively speaking) mediocre performance. Lots of people disagree with me and like Bose a lot. And that's just fine.

threeseed 12y ago

Patents are really designed for the "little guy". You only need to look at companies like Dyson who was just one guy in a garage coming up with crazy new approaches to an existing problem. Someone like that deserves some protection from bigger companies who could simply steal his idea and put him out of business.

briantakita 12y ago
> Patents are really designed for the "little guy". That's the marketing by the pro-patent camp. However, it's the big guys that benefit, at the expense of the little guys. The big guys can afford the lawyers, the filing fees, and the patent war chests. How often do we hear about the little guy receiving a patent infringement cease & desist letter by a patent troll or large company? Patents add another layer of complexity to the market resulting unnecessary expense & process for everyone. We focus on hiring lawyers for protection & litigation instead of innovation. Derivative works result in innovation. In the end, the ultimate beneficiaries of patents are the patent attorneys & bureaucracy. Hardly a recipe for innovation. The little guys are at an advantage over the big guys because they are more nimble & can explore markets that are "too small" for the big guys. And then, why are we choosing to favor anybody at all? Why not let the free market determine the winner? Manufacturing, development, & marketing are becoming more decentralized as time moves on. Why have a centralized legal roadblock to new product development?
- fossuser 12y ago
  It's a tradeoff. Some markets require large research investment up front (like pharmaceuticals) and they won't bother if others can immediately sell the same finished product without doing the research. Without patents you also get trade secrets which can leave the public without ever knowing how something works. Patents are an attempt to exchange a limited time monopoly for a complete disclosure of how the invention works so that the public can benefit. There might be an argument for that time being too long (and I think it's completely broken when it comes to software), but I can see why they're useful as incentives.
- yojimbo311 12y ago

deepsun 12y ago

Generally I'm against patent battles, but not in this case. Noise and echo cancellation are very research-demanding areas, with pretty smart algorithms and hardware to be developed. Those are certainly patentable, unlike "round edges".