Patent Reform Town Hall Meeting (Balt/Washington Area IEEE C

[Eric Jacobsen]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:40:15 +0000 (UTC), glen herrmannsfeldt
<gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

In comp.arch.fpga Eric Jacobsen <eric.jacobsen@ieee.org> wrote:

(snip, someone wrote)
What I was suggesting was full-on compulsory licensing: if Kodak want
to do something like that, they are permitted to licence Polaroid's
patent and Polaroid cannot unreasonably refuse them or charge a
licence fee that a judge considers unreasonably high; this will make
their camera a bit more expensive than Polaroid's, but allow them to
compete in the market.

(snip)
The fundamental purpose of a patent is to allow the fruits of research
efforts to belong to those who performed and paid for the research.
What you suggest reduces the value of that by requiring that a license
be provided to whoever comes along and asks for one. That
substantially reduces the value of the patent system as a whole by
preventing the research from being used exclusively by those who
produced it.
(I hope that is the one you meant.)

One of the beauties of the patent and copyright system is that patents
and copyrights eventually expire, so that world ultimately has equal
access to the fruits of humanity after the producers of the
innovations have been given opportunity and protection to exclusively
reap the benefits for a time. So in my view your proposed scheme
reduces both the incentive to patent things, and, by creating more
incentive to move things to trade secrets instead, potentially removes
them from ultimately becoming accessible to everyone.

I might agree with him. I agree that the license cost should
cover the research costs, that makes a lot of sense. But say,
for example, that one wanted $1000 per camera or phone as license
cost? (For something that the patent holder sells for $100.)
I would call that unreasonable, but as far as I know there
isn't anything in patent law to refute it.

I think it is important to cover the case where some inexpensive
research leads to a significant breakthrough and the owner of the IP
wants to keep it exclusive. There are many market cases where the
return on investment will be maximized, and therefore the incentive to
do good research maximized, if competitors are not allowed to use it.
This also encourages research by the competitors in order to close the
market gap. That's good for everyone, incuding the research and
engineering communities, the consumers, and the owners of the IP.

Compelling someone to license the results of their research to a
competitor just seems to me to be a bad idea all around.

There are some general market yardsticks for what license fees should
be, and "reasonable and non-discriminatory" wording tries to be
applied sometimes, but free market forces should be allowed to have
their place, too.

Also, it seems to me that it isn't always easy to know that
a new invention is sufficently different to avoid infringing.
It seems that Kodak thought thier instant camera was sufficiently
different, until they lost in court. Especially as the courts
may not understand the technical details as well as they should.

One of the attorneys I used to work with on such matters would often
say, "It's not really a patent until a judge says it's a patent."
There's so much crazy stuff gets patented, and patents granted that
seem to overlap a lot, etc., etc., that IMHO it's often impossible to
tell whether you'll infringe a certain patent or what patents might
possibly be asserted against someone for a particular device.

Long ago I reviewed a patent for an investor that seemed to cover the
general idea of wireless cellular communications. Some tiny, unknown
company owned it. Cellular systems were already widely deployed at
that point, and the patent field in the area was already huge. What
was the likelihood that anybody could be successful asserting that
patent against the cellular industry? Would the patent hold up to
scrutiny, i.e., not be declared invalid if the heavyweights of the
industry challenged it? There's no way to know unless someone wants
to try, and that's a very expensive proposition.

My old favorite was the patent on the XOR operator for graphical
displays, allowing one to erase by drawing over something.
That one, as I understand it, was contested twice and upheld
both times, where I would say that it was obvious to anyone who
understands the XOR operator. I have no idea what the license
charge was, or would have been.

It seems to me that the only thing that helps avoid this is
the cross licensing deals. But that discourages small companies
from competing in a big company world.

And there seems to be a lot of opinion that the recent "reforms" make
it even worse for small companies. Time will tell, I suppose.


Eric Jacobsen
Anchor Hill Communications
www.anchorhill.com

 

[Brad]

On Oct 27, 4:07 pm, Thomas Womack <twom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:

Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

But handing out a "License to Extort" to everyone with a new idea

(whether brilliant or half baked) is no way to run an economy.

 

[Thomas Womack]

In article <bec95002-6c28-4539-8bed-be950e7766b0@m5g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
Brad <hwfwguy@gmail.com> wrote:

On Oct 27, 4:07=A0pm, Thomas Womack <twom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
wrote:
Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

But handing out a "License to Extort" to everyone with a new idea
(whether brilliant or half baked) is no way to run an economy.

If the idea's half-baked then people will do something else rather
than pay even a small licence fee to use a bad idea; there aren't
enough brilliant ideas that a dollar per device per brilliant idea is
economy-threatening.

You do need some kind of judicial review process to ensure that the
fees don't get extortionate, and it may well be that people would use
more trade secrets in an environment with compulsory licencing.

Tom

 

[langwadt@fonz.dk]

On 26 Okt., 23:42, eric.jacob...@ieee.org (Eric Jacobsen) wrote:

snip

Many patent portfolios are defensive, and not intended to be asserted
against anyone.

it's like a cold war, big corp A, needs patents to defend themselves
against big corp B and vice versa.

when they occasionally clash it usually ends with a deal to cross
license
and they now have a bigger hammer to hit any small players trying to
get in
on their business

seems like any startup doing anything that involves software is just a
lawsuit
waiting to happen, if it ever makes it to making money the patent
trolls are
ready to strike

maybe the reality isn't really that bad but when you read something
like this:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20111001/00365416161/patent-troll-says-anyone-using-wifi-infringes-wont-sue-individuals-this-stage.shtml
...

-Lasse

 

[Bernd Paysan]

rickman wrote:

I'm not anti-patent. I think patents are not just useful, but
essential to stimulating innovation. But the Apple patent (at least
what was written here) is not about a slider bar. It is about a
"gesture". In my opinion that is so vague (to the point of being
obvious) that it should be unenforceable. As I said in the part of my
message that you snipped, all Google or anyone else has to do is to
not call it a gesture. If Apple insists that all methods of contact
with the display would be a gesture then your suggestions would also
be gestures.

No, that's not the way the patent system works. This will go to court,
and a jury of 12 zombie farmers in Texas who just came from their
pumpkin patches will rule on this, and of course Apple will insist that
anything is a gesture. Afterwards, Apple will sue the pumpkin farmers
for violating their trademark, because a pumpkin looks somewhat like an
apple.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

 

[rickman]

On Oct 27, 7:07 pm, Thomas Womack <twom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:

In article <613f5dcd-7fa7-4061-b6c0-6bd778a5c...@j20g2000vby.googlegroups..com>,

rickman  <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 26, 10:13=A0am, "rupertlssm...@googlemail.com"
rupertlssm...@googlemail.com> wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15461732

Completely barmy. There is definitely something very, very wrong with
software patents.

Rupert

I looked at this and I think it is a perfect example of how poor the
patent examination process is.  If your primary user interface is a
touch screen and you want to lock the device, how else would you
unlock the device than through a touch screen "gesture"?

By typing a PIN on an on-screen keypad; by sweeping a finger around a
pattern of blobs on-screen.  Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

Otherwise how do you pay for usability research, where almost by
definition the result will feel intuitively obvious and be used by
every device?

Tom

I'm not anti-patent. I think patents are not just useful, but
essential to stimulating innovation. But the Apple patent (at least
what was written here) is not about a slider bar. It is about a
"gesture". In my opinion that is so vague (to the point of being
obvious) that it should be unenforceable. As I said in the part of my
message that you snipped, all Google or anyone else has to do is to
not call it a gesture. If Apple insists that all methods of contact
with the display would be a gesture then your suggestions would also
be gestures.

Rick

 

[rickman]

On Oct 28, 12:46 pm, Brad <hwfw...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Oct 27, 4:07 pm, Thomas Womack <twom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
wrote:> Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

But handing out a "License to Extort" to everyone with a new idea
(whether brilliant or half baked) is no way to run an economy.

Isn't that the point that by giving inventors "rights" to their own
invention that it encourages the invention process? I can assure you
that many inventions would have happened much later or not at all if
patents didn't exist. If for no other reason because many inventors
and companies would not be in the business. They would probably be on
Wall street.

Rick

 

[Rick]

On Oct 28, 12:17 am, David Brown <da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com>
wrote:

On 28/10/2011 01:07, Thomas Womack wrote:









In article<613f5dcd-7fa7-4061-b6c0-6bd778a5c...@j20g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,
rickman<gnu...@gmail.com>  wrote:
On Oct 26, 10:13=A0am, "rupertlssm...@googlemail.com"
rupertlssm...@googlemail.com>  wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15461732

Completely barmy. There is definitely something very, very wrong with
software patents.

Rupert

I looked at this and I think it is a perfect example of how poor the
patent examination process is.  If your primary user interface is a
touch screen and you want to lock the device, how else would you
unlock the device than through a touch screen "gesture"?

By typing a PIN on an on-screen keypad; by sweeping a finger around a
pattern of blobs on-screen.  Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

Otherwise how do you pay for usability research, where almost by
definition the result will feel intuitively obvious and be used by
every device?

You pay for usability research by doing the research, making a good
product, and selling more than others because reviewers say "this device
is easier to use than the competitors".  So what if the competitors copy
your ideas in their new devices six months later?  The extra sales you
make during those first six months should pay for the research many
times over unless you are running your business very badly.

Or are suggesting that it is somehow "fair" that you should get paid
again and again for that usability research over the next 21 years?

That is only the case for a fast moving industry like the example
given. I did my work in pharmaceutical research and it wasn't uncommon
to take 5 years to get a product to market. The FDA testing and
documentation alone would take a couple of years. Meanwhile half the
people who worked on the project have moved to competing companies and
results of clinical trials are public knowledge. Of course to
compensate the company that bears the actual costs the patent date is
actually moved forward to provide for a few additional years of
protection. They also seem to be VERY sympathetic to CIPs. If you were
to invent the syringe today, you could probably continually patent it
indefinitely every time you came up with a different sized needle.

Unless I miss your point it is ~different inventions warrant different
lengths of protection. Some of this is already in the system but it
could be improved.

But who is the judge who gets more and who gets less. Trivia question:
What do Fredrick's of Hollywood and Howard Hughes have in common? They
both have patents for push-up bras.

Personally I think patents for things like push up bras should run for
30 years to encourage development in that area.<sic>

Patent attorney where I worked once leaned back in his chair and
laughed "I hope people do infringe, the more the merrier! Standard
royalty for patent infringement is 7% so we would make 7% of what
everyone else sells for doing nothing! Great business to be in!"

Rick

 

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

In comp.arch.fpga Eric Jacobsen <eric.jacobsen@ieee.org> wrote:


(snip, someone wrote)

What I was suggesting was full-on compulsory licensing: if Kodak want
to do something like that, they are permitted to licence Polaroid's
patent and Polaroid cannot unreasonably refuse them or charge a
licence fee that a judge considers unreasonably high; this will make
their camera a bit more expensive than Polaroid's, but allow them to
compete in the market.

(snip, then I wrote)

I might agree with him. I agree that the license cost should
cover the research costs, that makes a lot of sense. But say,
for example, that one wanted $1000 per camera or phone as license
cost? (For something that the patent holder sells for $100.)
I would call that unreasonable, but as far as I know there
isn't anything in patent law to refute it.

I think it is important to cover the case where some inexpensive
research leads to a significant breakthrough and the owner of the IP
wants to keep it exclusive. There are many market cases where the
return on investment will be maximized, and therefore the incentive to
do good research maximized, if competitors are not allowed to use it.
This also encourages research by the competitors in order to close the
market gap. That's good for everyone, incuding the research and
engineering communities, the consumers, and the owners of the IP.

I was thinking of the case where someone wants to be anti-social,
not license it, and also not sell the devices. Or, say, only
sell to people with a certain political or religious viewpoint.
Maybe someone already rich enough not to be moved by market forces.

Compelling someone to license the results of their research to a
competitor just seems to me to be a bad idea all around.

If free market works, I think I agree. I am not sure that
it always does.

(snip, I wrote)

Also, it seems to me that it isn't always easy to know that
a new invention is sufficently different to avoid infringing.
It seems that Kodak thought thier instant camera was sufficiently
different, until they lost in court. Especially as the courts
may not understand the technical details as well as they should.

One of the attorneys I used to work with on such matters would often
say, "It's not really a patent until a judge says it's a patent."
There's so much crazy stuff gets patented, and patents granted that
seem to overlap a lot, etc., etc., that IMHO it's often impossible to
tell whether you'll infringe a certain patent or what patents might
possibly be asserted against someone for a particular device.

Well, that is true. The latter gets back to not reading patents.
If you don't read your competitors patents, you have no idea if
you might be infringing. If you do, you have at least a chance
to notice.

Next time you get stopped by a traffic cop, try telling him that
you didn't read that page in the DMV book, and didn't know that
speeding was illegal. Again, might work against willful speeding,
or willful infringment, but in the end, it is still illegal.

Well, I was told by someone who works closely with patent lawyers
that it is better to read them. You at least have the possibility
of designing around the patent.

Long ago I reviewed a patent for an investor that seemed to cover the
general idea of wireless cellular communications. Some tiny, unknown
company owned it. Cellular systems were already widely deployed at
that point, and the patent field in the area was already huge. What
was the likelihood that anybody could be successful asserting that
patent against the cellular industry? Would the patent hold up to
scrutiny, i.e., not be declared invalid if the heavyweights of the
industry challenged it? There's no way to know unless someone wants
to try, and that's a very expensive proposition.

Just like buying a lottery ticket. Well, many of them. There
is a cost, but a low probability of a big payoff.

Or license to a big company for a reasonably price and let them
argue it out in court.

-- glen

 

[rickman]

On Oct 28, 7:29 am, Noob <r...@127.0.0.1> wrote:

Steven Hirsch wrote:
My employer forbids engineers and software developers from reading patents
as a matter of policy (unless specifically requested to by legal).

"[The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

What a travesty.

Where's the progress when the wheel is reinvented every other month?

One way out of this mess is for the EU to start ignoring US patents;
that might make the US "snap out of it".

This is exactly why patents are granted. Not only is the inventor
able to benefit financially from his invention but the invention is
made public. Once the patent expires the world is the recipient.

Rick

 

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <a8f1923a-38a3-4d17-953e-c51228eda4bf@q13g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>,
rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On Oct 28, 12:46=A0pm, Brad <hwfw...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 27, 4:07=A0pm, Thomas Womack <twom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
wrote:> Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

But handing out a "License to Extort" to everyone with a new idea
(whether brilliant or half baked) is no way to run an economy.

Isn't that the point that by giving inventors "rights" to their own
invention that it encourages the invention process? I can assure you
that many inventions would have happened much later or not at all if
patents didn't exist. If for no other reason because many inventors
and companies would not be in the business. They would probably be on
Wall street.

Project that onto Tesla. He invented the electricity power grid,
with a distance the most import invention of all times,
and sold that for a pittance to Westinghouse.

Project that onto Chuck Moore.

What did inventors do before there where patents?
Wall street? Come one!

Rick

Groetjes Albert

--
--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

 

[David Brown]

On 28/10/11 21:15, Rick wrote:

On Oct 28, 12:17 am, David Brown<da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com
wrote:
On 28/10/2011 01:07, Thomas Womack wrote:









In article<613f5dcd-7fa7-4061-b6c0-6bd778a5c...@j20g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,
rickman<gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 26, 10:13=A0am, "rupertlssm...@googlemail.com"
rupertlssm...@googlemail.com> wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15461732

Completely barmy. There is definitely something very, very wrong with
software patents.

Rupert

I looked at this and I think it is a perfect example of how poor the
patent examination process is. If your primary user interface is a
touch screen and you want to lock the device, how else would you
unlock the device than through a touch screen "gesture"?

By typing a PIN on an on-screen keypad; by sweeping a finger around a
pattern of blobs on-screen. Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

Otherwise how do you pay for usability research, where almost by
definition the result will feel intuitively obvious and be used by
every device?

You pay for usability research by doing the research, making a good
product, and selling more than others because reviewers say "this device
is easier to use than the competitors". So what if the competitors copy
your ideas in their new devices six months later? The extra sales you
make during those first six months should pay for the research many
times over unless you are running your business very badly.

Or are suggesting that it is somehow "fair" that you should get paid
again and again for that usability research over the next 21 years?

That is only the case for a fast moving industry like the example
given. I did my work in pharmaceutical research and it wasn't uncommon
to take 5 years to get a product to market. The FDA testing and
documentation alone would take a couple of years. Meanwhile half the
people who worked on the project have moved to competing companies and
results of clinical trials are public knowledge. Of course to
compensate the company that bears the actual costs the patent date is
actually moved forward to provide for a few additional years of
protection. They also seem to be VERY sympathetic to CIPs. If you were
to invent the syringe today, you could probably continually patent it
indefinitely every time you came up with a different sized needle.

Unless I miss your point it is ~different inventions warrant different
lengths of protection. Some of this is already in the system but it
could be improved.

That is certainly part of my point, yes. Given the newsgroups here, the
bias of the conversation is towards patents in software and embedded
systems, and in my post above I was referring specifically to the case
of swipe-to-unlock.

In fields where "inventions" take a long time and cost much more money,
then there needs to be more and longer-term protection. 21 years is
still far too long, and the patent system needs a serious overhaul even
for long-term industries like the drug industry (maybe in a way that
makes the whole system faster). But there is no doubt that a company
spending 5 years researching a drug should be entitled to more
protection than someone who thinks "wouldn't it be cool to use a finger
swipe to unlock a phone? I think I'll patent that".

But who is the judge who gets more and who gets less. Trivia question:
What do Fredrick's of Hollywood and Howard Hughes have in common? They
both have patents for push-up bras.

Personally I think patents for things like push up bras should run for
30 years to encourage development in that area.<sic

Patents /don't/ encourage development. That's the problem. A 30-year
wide-ranging patent like that stops development - no one can invent a
"push-up-and-together" bra because of that patent.

Patent attorney where I worked once leaned back in his chair and
laughed "I hope people do infringe, the more the merrier! Standard
royalty for patent infringement is 7% so we would make 7% of what
everyone else sells for doing nothing! Great business to be in!"

And there you see who benefits from the modern patent system and its
usage. Occasionally, a real inventor will get lucky and make some money
- but mostly it's an overall loss for the inventor, and a loss for
others, and as the money flows back and forth between the patent owner
and licensees, only the lawyers get paid regularly as they grab their cut.


> Rick

 

[Eric Jacobsen]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:20:34 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 28/10/11 21:15, Rick wrote:
On Oct 28, 12:17 am, David Brown<da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com
wrote:
On 28/10/2011 01:07, Thomas Womack wrote:

Personally I think patents for things like push up bras should run for
30 years to encourage development in that area.<sic

Patents /don't/ encourage development. That's the problem. A 30-year
wide-ranging patent like that stops development - no one can invent a
"push-up-and-together" bra because of that patent.

This creates an incentive to find another way to do it. If the new
way is innovative, it can be patented and provide a benefit to those
who sorted out the new way. I don't see how patents discourage
innovation or development.


Eric Jacobsen
Anchor Hill Communications
www.anchorhill.com

 

[rickman]

On Oct 29, 5:49 am, Albert van der Horst <alb...@spenarnc.xs4all.nl>
wrote:

In article <a8f1923a-38a3-4d17-953e-c51228eda...@q13g2000vbd.googlegroups..com>,









rickman  <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 28, 12:46=A0pm, Brad <hwfw...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 27, 4:07=A0pm, Thomas Womack <twom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
wrote:> Apple's patent is on the slide-to-unlock
bar; if they've spent a lot of time looking at alternate unlock
mechanisms and determined that slide-to-unlock is in some usability
sense the best, they should get to ask anyone else with
slide-to-unlock for, say, a dollar per device.

But handing out a "License to Extort" to everyone with a new idea
(whether brilliant or half baked) is no way to run an economy.

Isn't that the point that by giving inventors "rights" to their own
invention that it encourages the invention process?  I can assure you
that many inventions would have happened much later or not at all if
patents didn't exist.  If for no other reason because many inventors
and companies would not be in the business.  They would probably be on
Wall street.

Project that onto Tesla. He invented the electricity power grid,
with a distance the most import invention of all times,
and sold that for a pittance to Westinghouse.

Project that onto Chuck Moore.

What did inventors do before there where patents?
Wall street? Come one!

Rick

Groetjes Albert

That's what I'm saying, Wall Street COME ON!!!

Rick

 

[rickman]

On Oct 28, 4:50 pm, Bernd Paysan <bernd.pay...@gmx.de> wrote:

rickman wrote:
I'm not anti-patent.  I think patents are not just useful, but
essential to stimulating innovation.  But the Apple patent (at least
what was written here) is not about a slider bar.  It is about a
"gesture".  In my opinion that is so vague (to the point of being
obvious) that it should be unenforceable.  As I said in the part of my
message that you snipped, all Google or anyone else has to do is to
not call it a gesture.  If Apple insists that all methods of contact
with the display would be a gesture then your suggestions would also
be gestures.

No, that's not the way the patent system works.  This will go to court,
and a jury of 12 zombie farmers in Texas who just came from their
pumpkin patches will rule on this, and of course Apple will insist that
anything is a gesture.  Afterwards, Apple will sue the pumpkin farmers
for violating their trademark, because a pumpkin looks somewhat like an
apple.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"http://bernd-paysan.de/

Reductio ad absurdum.

Rick

 

[David Brown]

On 29/10/11 17:10, Eric Jacobsen wrote:

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:20:34 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 28/10/11 21:15, Rick wrote:
On Oct 28, 12:17 am, David Brown<da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com
wrote:
On 28/10/2011 01:07, Thomas Womack wrote:

Personally I think patents for things like push up bras should run for
30 years to encourage development in that area.<sic

Patents /don't/ encourage development. That's the problem. A 30-year
wide-ranging patent like that stops development - no one can invent a
"push-up-and-together" bra because of that patent.

This creates an incentive to find another way to do it. If the new
way is innovative, it can be patented and provide a benefit to those
who sorted out the new way. I don't see how patents discourage
innovation or development.

It conceivably creates an incentive to find a totally different way to
do it. But that requires the inventor to find a completely way new way
to solve the problem, /and/ to be able and willing to file his own
patent - which costs a lot of time and money, /and/ to be willing to
fight off claims of infringement from the original patent owner, /and/
to be willing to fight future infringements in court. It's a huge
investment in time and money, and is more about being a lawyer and a
cut-throat businessman than about being an inventor. You can only avoid
it by cross-licensing deals and other arrangements with existing patent
holders.

Successful invention and innovation today is about steering clear of
everything patent-related and hoping for the best, or being part of a
huge company with an army of lawyers, and accepting that you will spend
a much larger budget on legal fees, lawyers, and licensing deals than
you will on actually developing new products or researching new ideas.


Nowhere in this is there a place for someone coming up with a good idea
to improve an existing patent. Nowhere is there a place for the "little
guy", no matter how brilliant his idea is. It is all about the big
companies being able to maintain the status quo, and the lawyers getting
their fees.



I am not sure that patents need to be totally abandoned (except for
software patents, which should never have been allowed in the first
place). But there needs to be a complete re-think to get back to
something that actually encourages innovation and invention, gives
/appropriate/ reward to people doing research and coming up with good
ideas, works for individuals and small companies as well as large ones,
allows for improvement on existing ideas, and minimises the bureaucracy,
legal costs, and wasted time.

 

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

In comp.arch.fpga David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> wrote:
(snip)

This creates an incentive to find another way to do it. If the new
way is innovative, it can be patented and provide a benefit to those
who sorted out the new way. I don't see how patents discourage
innovation or development.

It conceivably creates an incentive to find a totally different way to
do it. But that requires the inventor to find a completely way new way
to solve the problem,

Well, in chemistry (drug development) sometimes it is easier.
One can slightly modify a molecule, even if the active site is
the same, and get a new patent. (Also, new testing and FDA
approval.)

/and/ to be able and willing to file his own
patent - which costs a lot of time and money, /and/ to be willing to
fight off claims of infringement from the original patent owner, /and/
to be willing to fight future infringements in court. It's a huge
investment in time and money, and is more about being a lawyer and a
cut-throat businessman than about being an inventor. You can only avoid
it by cross-licensing deals and other arrangements with existing patent
holders.

Sometimes the new drug is from the same company to
keep revenue flowing when the previous patent expires.

-- glen

 

[Eric Jacobsen]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 19:57:32 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 29/10/11 17:10, Eric Jacobsen wrote:
On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:20:34 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 28/10/11 21:15, Rick wrote:
On Oct 28, 12:17 am, David Brown<da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com
wrote:
On 28/10/2011 01:07, Thomas Womack wrote:

Personally I think patents for things like push up bras should run for
30 years to encourage development in that area.<sic

Patents /don't/ encourage development. That's the problem. A 30-year
wide-ranging patent like that stops development - no one can invent a
"push-up-and-together" bra because of that patent.

This creates an incentive to find another way to do it. If the new
way is innovative, it can be patented and provide a benefit to those
who sorted out the new way. I don't see how patents discourage
innovation or development.


It conceivably creates an incentive to find a totally different way to
do it. But that requires the inventor to find a completely way new way
to solve the problem, /and/ to be able and willing to file his own
patent - which costs a lot of time and money, /and/ to be willing to
fight off claims of infringement from the original patent owner, /and/
to be willing to fight future infringements in court. It's a huge
investment in time and money, and is more about being a lawyer and a
cut-throat businessman than about being an inventor. You can only avoid
it by cross-licensing deals and other arrangements with existing patent
holders.

It's usually easier than you make it sound. Finding workarounds to
existing patents is not uncommon at all, and it is up to the developer
of the new method whether to file a new patent or just keep it a trade
secret, or even publish the new method.

If a patent can't be worked around, then kudos to the folks who
figured out the great way to do whatever it is that's being done and
for writing a thorough patent. Life is a two way street: if you want
to be rewarded for your own work you have to be prepared to reward
others for theirs. People who grouse about not having access to
patented technology usually change their tune when they have something
of their own that they want to protect.

Successful invention and innovation today is about steering clear of
everything patent-related and hoping for the best, or being part of a
huge company with an army of lawyers, and accepting that you will spend
a much larger budget on legal fees, lawyers, and licensing deals than
you will on actually developing new products or researching new ideas.

That's a pretty narrow and gloomy view of the world. I can say that
I don't share that view, and I hope that your situation improves
enough or you have enough success that you see the better side of
things.

Nowhere in this is there a place for someone coming up with a good idea
to improve an existing patent. Nowhere is there a place for the "little
guy", no matter how brilliant his idea is. It is all about the big
companies being able to maintain the status quo, and the lawyers getting
their fees.

Many patents and new innovations are improvements on existing patents,
often by "little guys". I have a number of granted patents from
working for a large company and a pending patent of my own. Several
close friends and associates have done well with patents that they
filed on their own as an individual or as part of a very small
company. I recently did an evaluation for an independent individual
inventor on a pretty innovative, new way to do things in an
established, mature field. There are plenty of success stories that
are example proofs that counter your argument.

That's not to say that the system favors small inventors, just that
it's still very much possible for a small company or an individual to
benefit from the process.

I am not sure that patents need to be totally abandoned (except for
software patents, which should never have been allowed in the first
place). But there needs to be a complete re-think to get back to
something that actually encourages innovation and invention, gives
/appropriate/ reward to people doing research and coming up with good
ideas, works for individuals and small companies as well as large ones,
allows for improvement on existing ideas, and minimises the bureaucracy,
legal costs, and wasted time.

Often when a VC or investor looks at a new small company one of the
first questions is whether they've patented their technology or not.
That wouldn't be the case and wouldn't be important if small companies
couldn't play in the patent arena.


Eric Jacobsen
Anchor Hill Communications
www.anchorhill.com

 

[dp]

On Oct 29, 11:08 pm, eric.jacob...@ieee.org (Eric Jacobsen) wrote:

...
Often when a VC or investor looks at a new small company one of the
first questions is whether they've patented their technology or not.
That wouldn't be the case and wouldn't be important if small companies
couldn't play in the patent arena.

Not much if any experience with patents - nor with VC, for that - but
on the few occasions I have talked to such the question has been asked
of sheer adherence to "the standard". I would guess that the whole
patent system is designed simply to protect the big ones, if small
guys are left to get some crumbs every now and then it is only
for the sake of the systems credibility/public acceptance.

My way is for things I have done and believe are worth something
I just keep them non-public. If someone is smart enough to overtake
me by seeing what I have done then he deserves to do that, this is
what life/evolution has been all about, for as long as we can look
back anyway.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/sets/72157600228621276/

 

[clvrmnky]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:35:36 -0700, dp wrote:

My way is for things I have done and believe are worth something I just
keep them non-public. If someone is smart enough to overtake me by
seeing what I have done then he deserves to do that, this is what
life/evolution has been all about, for as long as we can look back
anyway.

Actually, human cultural evolution has been about wide-spread sharing of

tools and techniques since the earliest days. "Intellectual property" is
a very modern notion.

And even in the modern era, those places and times we associate with the
greatest variety of invention (Scotland during the era of Watt, et al,
Southern Germany in the late 18th century, Central England at the height
of the steam age) were marked by almost no patent protection, or patent
laws that were tacitly ignored.

This is a complex subject, and the law tends to be the bluntest of
instruments.