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This is exactly why patents are not good for the world. Imagine if the iPhone was never built because they respected these patents. The cell phone industry wo

by ryanjmo 17y ago

This is exactly why patents are not good for the world. Imagine if the iPhone was never built because they respected these patents. The cell phone industry would literally be 3 years behind where it is now. Patents do not encourage innovation, they smother it.

tjogin 17y ago
It's not that I disagree with you, but there's also the option of paying patent licenses.
andreyf 17y ago
Ugh, what a knee-jerk echo-chamber reaction. If there were no patents, the iPhone would have never been built, because Nokia would have kept this IP as trade secret, or not developed it at all. For companies, patents increase the value of R&D investments by orders of magnitude, and without them, most current R&D spending would be impossible to justify to shareholders. If there were no patents, Apple would have no financial incentive (and that's the only incentive public companies have) to invest so heavily in all of the technologies in the iPhone, as they could easily be copied by others. The world isn't as simple as "competition always yields innovation". Giving companies limited time monopolies on their discoveries (by definition, limiting competition) increases the amount of R&D they do. This was understood hundreds of years go, even before the Copyright Clause was debated, and still holds true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause I'm not saying that the spirit of this holds true here, or in every patent case. I'm saying that responding "ugh! patents suuuck!" is too simplistic of a world view.
- raganwald 17y ago
  "Giving companies limited time monopolies on their discoveries (by definition, limiting competition) increases the amount of R&D they do." I think this was a public good as long as companies--Nokia and Apple are both examples of this--used their R&D to produce goods and services for the marketplace. Under the circumstances, there may be some merit to Nokia demanding licensing fees. My guess is that there is some back-room stare-down taking place. Perhaps Apple feels that Nokia should cross-license some of Apple's patents. Perhaps Apple is threatening to invalidate some of Nokia's patents. It will be interesting to see this play out. I hope Nokia doesn't devolve into a shell company trolling for license fees :-)
- antonovka 17y ago
  If there were no patents, Apple would have no financial incentive (and that's the only incentive public companies have) to invest so heavily in all of the technologies in the iPhone, as they could easily be copied by others. No financial incentive other than, you know, a need to compete in order to sell their product? It's not as if you can just photocopy a phone and wind up with the software written and hardware designs necessary to reproduce it -- and if you can, how novel are the ideas? It's disingenuous to state that Apple relied on Nokia's IP (that they would have otherwise kept trade secret), especially given that it's almost certain that Apple engineers ignored existing patents as much as possible when developing the iPhone to avoid additional liability.
  - DougBTX 17y ago
    It's disingenuous to state that Apple relied on Nokia's IP Unless there is any truth in the "we got our patents into industry standards which Apple supports" line from the article.
  - andreyf 17y ago
    No financial incentive other than, you know, a need to compete in order to sell their product? There are many ways to compete and sell products. Investing as much money as Apple does into R&D is only financially reasonable with government guaranteed monopolies in place. Do you seriously have any doubt that Apple would spend less money on R&D if they weren't able to patent their discoveries? Would any of their products be possible without such extensive R&D spending?
- anonjon 17y ago
  "Giving companies limited time monopolies on their discoveries (by definition, limiting competition) increases the amount of R&D they do." This does not follow from that. Giving companies limited-time monopolies increases the number of patents they file, it says nothing of the respective quality of the patent. It may be true that patents increase the sharing of technology and remove duplication of efforts from the R&D market place (although that really isn't clear either). What we can say for certain is that they are also used to hold back innovation, where large corporations invest heavily in R&D to produce patents (or buy up) that they specifically intend to not use, as the innovation provided would be disruptive to their main business. "For companies, patents increase the value of R&D investments by orders of magnitude, and without them, most current R&D spending would be impossible to justify to shareholders." Where exactly is your data for this? It seems that as it stands, a lot of what determines success is being the first and being the best. What is impossible to justify to shareholders is allowing your business to sit at a standstill because 'someone will just copy us anyway'. "If there were no patents, Apple would have no financial incentive (and that's the only incentive public companies have) to invest so heavily in all of the technologies in the iPhone, as they could easily be copied by others." How about the financial incentive of selling iPhones? If that isn't enough incentive then perhaps it doesn't make sense to be spending the money on the technologies...The world isn't as simple as 'innovation is always good' either. And why do you reduce the sole incentive of a company to being a financial one? Sure, for most publicly traded companies, money is an incentive, but why is it the /only/ incentive? Maybe I want to make cool shit, change the world and feed the poor with my company? Maybe people are willing invest with me because they see that there can be value in a company beyond profit margin? (A company that is actually worth having around). The argument isn't that patents suck, its that in the majority of real life use cases, they suck.
- ynniv 17y ago
  > If there were no patents, the iPhone would have never been built, because Nokia would have kept this IP as trade secret, or not developed it at all. knee-jerk? ROFL... talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Have you ever actually read a software patent? I have yet to find one which is educational, which is (as you point out) the basis of granting exclusivity for disclosure. The complex and abstract style used to write many of them makes them basically useless. Even those that are readable are often obvious to those "having ordinary skill in the art". They were granted because the USPTO is over burdened and innovation happens quickly in the industry, but once they have been granted, simple prior art is no longer sufficient to invalidate them. Patents on software are basically patents on math. I'm all for copyright protection on software, but patent protection is stifling the industry.
  - andreyf 17y ago
    Have you ever actually read a software patent? I have yet to find one which is educational... I'm not saying that the spirit of this holds true here, or in every patent case. I'm saying that responding "ugh! patents suuuck!" is too simplistic of a world view. Patents on software are basically patents on math How, exactly, is that, in a way that patents on anything else aren't "basically math"? More importantly, do you think Nokia would ever have spent $60B on R&D if they got no patent rights for it? I'm all for copyright protection on software How is that even remotely, marginally related?
    - ynniv 17y ago
      I'm not saying that the spirit of this holds true here, or in every patent case. When people say "patents" on Hacker News, you should assume that they mean software patents. Maybe business method patents on rare occasion. How, exactly, is that, in a way that patents on anything else aren't "basically math"? A sewing machine is not "basically math". A stapler that doesn't use staples is not "basically math". But more importantly, "a scientific truth, or the mathematical expression of it, is not a patentable invention." (Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co. v. Radio Corp. of America, 306 U.S. 86, 40 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 199 (1939)). More importantly, do you think Nokia would ever have spent $60B on R&D if they got no patent rights for it? Yes, of course they would, thats the business they are in. They made $76.22B revenue in 2008. How is that even remotely, marginally related? The tools of our industry are already sufficiently protected to encourage investment, research, and development. Mechanisms are easy to invent are often invented independently, and patents interfere with this.
- ryanjmo 17y ago
  Another knee-jerk reaction is thinking that companies must have looked at the patent and copied it, if they infringed on it. Most likely Apple never considered those patents. I would imagine that the iPhone still would have been built and would have been nearly as good, even if those patents did not exist.
  - yumraj 17y ago
    There is a difference between a willful patent infringement and an un-willful (not sure what the real term is) patent infringement. Both are patent infringements, and both carry penalties etc., however a willful patent infringement carrier a much higher penalty. So, even if Apple didn't know about it, it could still be infringing on Nokia's patents. This is exactly the reason why patent attorneys constantly tell folks in the R&D to never go look or read other's patents, so that if they are ever sued in the future, they can at least claim that it was not a willful infringement.
    - netsp 17y ago
      That's a great way of figuring out how the law is broken."Un-willful" patent infringement shouldn't be stopped. If a patent is likely to be violated without intention, that really means that the (social good) justification for the patent isn't very strong. The only reason it is even illegal is to stop companies from being willfully ignorant but still take advantage of the idea's prior existence.
  - psyklic 17y ago
    Most likely Apple never considered those patents. Except that the actual complaint states that Nokia offered to license Apple the patents and Apple declined multiple times. http://www.scribd.com/doc/21458614/Nokia-vs-Apple-Complaint http://www.scribd.com/doc/21458614/Nokia-vs-Apple-Complaint
    - crc32 17y ago
      Yes, but he means "Apple never considered those patents at the the time of developing the iPhone" therefore meeting his definition of "un-wilfull". This is also possibly a reason why Nokia have waited to sue - they have been spending the time trying to get Apple to license them out of court.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Aaaah...no. It's one thing to claim patent on something so general or obvious that it strains credibility, but if Nokia's patents were open (as in well-known by the industry) and easily licensable as they claim, then Apple would be acting in bad faith. You think Apple wouldn't sue if you put out a 'miPhone' that used their patented technology, without consulting them? Need more details on this, but Nokia is a respected company, I rather doubt they've decided to take up patent trollery just to see what they can scam out of Apple.
EastSmith 17y ago
Wasn't Apple the reason Android spent it's early days without multitouch? Imagine modern touch mobile without multitouch?
- andreyf 17y ago
  Isn't the reason Apple spent the amount of money they did developing multitouch because they knew they could patent it? If there were no patent protections in place, it would have been very financially foolish to spend most of the R&D money Apple spends.

by ryanjmo 17y ago

tjogin 17y ago

It's not that I disagree with you, but there's also the option of paying patent licenses.

andreyf 17y ago

Ugh, what a knee-jerk echo-chamber reaction. If there were no patents, the iPhone would have never been built, because Nokia would have kept this IP as trade secret, or not developed it at all. For companies, patents increase the value of R&D investments by orders of magnitude, and without them, most current R&D spending would be impossible to justify to shareholders. If there were no patents, Apple would have no financial incentive (and that's the only incentive public companies have) to invest so heavily in all of the technologies in the iPhone, as they could easily be copied by others. The world isn't as simple as "competition always yields innovation". Giving companies limited time monopolies on their discoveries (by definition, limiting competition) increases the amount of R&D they do. This was understood hundreds of years go, even before the Copyright Clause was debated, and still holds true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause I'm not saying that the spirit of this holds true here, or in every patent case. I'm saying that responding "ugh! patents suuuck!" is too simplistic of a world view.

raganwald 17y ago
"Giving companies limited time monopolies on their discoveries (by definition, limiting competition) increases the amount of R&D they do." I think this was a public good as long as companies--Nokia and Apple are both examples of this--used their R&D to produce goods and services for the marketplace. Under the circumstances, there may be some merit to Nokia demanding licensing fees. My guess is that there is some back-room stare-down taking place. Perhaps Apple feels that Nokia should cross-license some of Apple's patents. Perhaps Apple is threatening to invalidate some of Nokia's patents. It will be interesting to see this play out. I hope Nokia doesn't devolve into a shell company trolling for license fees :-)
antonovka 17y ago
If there were no patents, Apple would have no financial incentive (and that's the only incentive public companies have) to invest so heavily in all of the technologies in the iPhone, as they could easily be copied by others. No financial incentive other than, you know, a need to compete in order to sell their product? It's not as if you can just photocopy a phone and wind up with the software written and hardware designs necessary to reproduce it -- and if you can, how novel are the ideas? It's disingenuous to state that Apple relied on Nokia's IP (that they would have otherwise kept trade secret), especially given that it's almost certain that Apple engineers ignored existing patents as much as possible when developing the iPhone to avoid additional liability.
- DougBTX 17y ago
  It's disingenuous to state that Apple relied on Nokia's IP Unless there is any truth in the "we got our patents into industry standards which Apple supports" line from the article.
- andreyf 17y ago
  No financial incentive other than, you know, a need to compete in order to sell their product? There are many ways to compete and sell products. Investing as much money as Apple does into R&D is only financially reasonable with government guaranteed monopolies in place. Do you seriously have any doubt that Apple would spend less money on R&D if they weren't able to patent their discoveries? Would any of their products be possible without such extensive R&D spending?
anonjon 17y ago
"Giving companies limited time monopolies on their discoveries (by definition, limiting competition) increases the amount of R&D they do." This does not follow from that. Giving companies limited-time monopolies increases the number of patents they file, it says nothing of the respective quality of the patent. It may be true that patents increase the sharing of technology and remove duplication of efforts from the R&D market place (although that really isn't clear either). What we can say for certain is that they are also used to hold back innovation, where large corporations invest heavily in R&D to produce patents (or buy up) that they specifically intend to not use, as the innovation provided would be disruptive to their main business. "For companies, patents increase the value of R&D investments by orders of magnitude, and without them, most current R&D spending would be impossible to justify to shareholders." Where exactly is your data for this? It seems that as it stands, a lot of what determines success is being the first and being the best. What is impossible to justify to shareholders is allowing your business to sit at a standstill because 'someone will just copy us anyway'. "If there were no patents, Apple would have no financial incentive (and that's the only incentive public companies have) to invest so heavily in all of the technologies in the iPhone, as they could easily be copied by others." How about the financial incentive of selling iPhones? If that isn't enough incentive then perhaps it doesn't make sense to be spending the money on the technologies...The world isn't as simple as 'innovation is always good' either. And why do you reduce the sole incentive of a company to being a financial one? Sure, for most publicly traded companies, money is an incentive, but why is it the /only/ incentive? Maybe I want to make cool shit, change the world and feed the poor with my company? Maybe people are willing invest with me because they see that there can be value in a company beyond profit margin? (A company that is actually worth having around). The argument isn't that patents suck, its that in the majority of real life use cases, they suck.
ynniv 17y ago
> If there were no patents, the iPhone would have never been built, because Nokia would have kept this IP as trade secret, or not developed it at all. knee-jerk? ROFL... talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Have you ever actually read a software patent? I have yet to find one which is educational, which is (as you point out) the basis of granting exclusivity for disclosure. The complex and abstract style used to write many of them makes them basically useless. Even those that are readable are often obvious to those "having ordinary skill in the art". They were granted because the USPTO is over burdened and innovation happens quickly in the industry, but once they have been granted, simple prior art is no longer sufficient to invalidate them. Patents on software are basically patents on math. I'm all for copyright protection on software, but patent protection is stifling the industry.
- andreyf 17y ago
  Have you ever actually read a software patent? I have yet to find one which is educational... I'm not saying that the spirit of this holds true here, or in every patent case. I'm saying that responding "ugh! patents suuuck!" is too simplistic of a world view. Patents on software are basically patents on math How, exactly, is that, in a way that patents on anything else aren't "basically math"? More importantly, do you think Nokia would ever have spent $60B on R&D if they got no patent rights for it? I'm all for copyright protection on software How is that even remotely, marginally related?
  - ynniv 17y ago
    I'm not saying that the spirit of this holds true here, or in every patent case. When people say "patents" on Hacker News, you should assume that they mean software patents. Maybe business method patents on rare occasion. How, exactly, is that, in a way that patents on anything else aren't "basically math"? A sewing machine is not "basically math". A stapler that doesn't use staples is not "basically math". But more importantly, "a scientific truth, or the mathematical expression of it, is not a patentable invention." (Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co. v. Radio Corp. of America, 306 U.S. 86, 40 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 199 (1939)). More importantly, do you think Nokia would ever have spent $60B on R&D if they got no patent rights for it? Yes, of course they would, thats the business they are in. They made $76.22B revenue in 2008. How is that even remotely, marginally related? The tools of our industry are already sufficiently protected to encourage investment, research, and development. Mechanisms are easy to invent are often invented independently, and patents interfere with this.
ryanjmo 17y ago
Another knee-jerk reaction is thinking that companies must have looked at the patent and copied it, if they infringed on it. Most likely Apple never considered those patents. I would imagine that the iPhone still would have been built and would have been nearly as good, even if those patents did not exist.
- yumraj 17y ago
  There is a difference between a willful patent infringement and an un-willful (not sure what the real term is) patent infringement. Both are patent infringements, and both carry penalties etc., however a willful patent infringement carrier a much higher penalty. So, even if Apple didn't know about it, it could still be infringing on Nokia's patents. This is exactly the reason why patent attorneys constantly tell folks in the R&D to never go look or read other's patents, so that if they are ever sued in the future, they can at least claim that it was not a willful infringement.
  - netsp 17y ago
    That's a great way of figuring out how the law is broken."Un-willful" patent infringement shouldn't be stopped. If a patent is likely to be violated without intention, that really means that the (social good) justification for the patent isn't very strong. The only reason it is even illegal is to stop companies from being willfully ignorant but still take advantage of the idea's prior existence.
- psyklic 17y ago
  Most likely Apple never considered those patents. Except that the actual complaint states that Nokia offered to license Apple the patents and Apple declined multiple times. http://www.scribd.com/doc/21458614/Nokia-vs-Apple-Complaint http://www.scribd.com/doc/21458614/Nokia-vs-Apple-Complaint
  - crc32 17y ago
    Yes, but he means "Apple never considered those patents at the the time of developing the iPhone" therefore meeting his definition of "un-wilfull". This is also possibly a reason why Nokia have waited to sue - they have been spending the time trying to get Apple to license them out of court.

anigbrowl 17y ago

Aaaah...no. It's one thing to claim patent on something so general or obvious that it strains credibility, but if Nokia's patents were open (as in well-known by the industry) and easily licensable as they claim, then Apple would be acting in bad faith. You think Apple wouldn't sue if you put out a 'miPhone' that used their patented technology, without consulting them? Need more details on this, but Nokia is a respected company, I rather doubt they've decided to take up patent trollery just to see what they can scam out of Apple.

EastSmith 17y ago

Wasn't Apple the reason Android spent it's early days without multitouch? Imagine modern touch mobile without multitouch?

andreyf 17y ago
Isn't the reason Apple spent the amount of money they did developing multitouch because they knew they could patent it? If there were no patent protections in place, it would have been very financially foolish to spend most of the R&D money Apple spends.