Misleading reporting. What he is an opponent of is bad patent reform.
What people in software often forget is that patent trolls are almost always using software patents or business method patents. In industries whose patents are not on software or business methods, trolling activity is very low. The patent system in those industries generally is working reasonably well. The major players in those industries are not opposed to reform to deal with the troll problem, but they want it to be aimed narrowly so as to not disturb things in their industries.
Sorry, but my experience working on reform for seven years tells me you are simply wrong. They want zero change. They see anything as a threat. Narrow targeting does not being them on board because they don't want to be narrowly targeted themselves in the future
You call it misleading reporting, but don't actually explain what was bad about the legislation he's opposed or how it could hurt industries where the patent system works. Not saying you're wrong, because I don't know the guy's work, but you haven't actually said anything to convince me.
I think very few companies oppose, in principle, shutting down trolls.[1] What they're worried about is collateral damage. Microsoft or IBM don't really care about bond requirements or loser pays, because the cost of patent litigation is a drop in the bucket to them. They do care, however, about measures to make software unpatentable. Companies like Qualcomm have don't just rely on patents on technologies implemented in an ASIC, but also on patents on technologies implemented in software on the baseband processor. Making software unpatentable also raises questions about whether those same algorithms would be unpatentable if implemented in hardware.
That said, I think in practice the ideological spectrum above collapses when you're talking about specific reform efforts. The Partnership for American Innovation is cagey about it's specific stance on reform, but it launched just a month before the most recent patent reform effort was killed, and days before published an article extolling the virtues of the existing patent system. Even though companies like Microsoft and Apple may not oppose patent reform in principle, they have nothing to gain from reform, and will in practice oppose any specific reform measure for fear of collateral consequences.
[1] Defined as companies that abuse legal process to get settlements for cases they wouldn't win in court.
"The major players in those industries are not opposed to reform ... but they want it to be aimed narrowly so as to not disturb things in their industries."
Non-disturbance of the status quo?
I'm sure there is a more original definition of "regulatory capture" somewhere, but this is pretty good starting point. What about Patents in healthcare, drugs, science, universities...there are loads of things where the public is paying money to finance artificial mini-monopolies, especially ones extended beyond their initial term by gaming the current system in various ways.
> Regularly, patent advocates tell me how important patents are for the biotech and life science industries. However, there apparently is academic research in the works that shows that patents actually slow down innovation in biotech. The specific example we discussed was that there is increasing evidence that when a professor or company gets a patent in the field of genetics research, other researchers simply stop doing work in that specific area. As a result, the number of researchers on a particular topic decreases, especially if the patent is broad. It's not hard to theorize that this results in less innovation around this area over time.
The patent system is not designed to encourage innovation. Instead, it is designed to enable entrenched players & the government to control innovation. This means, they can control the market & by adding legal barriers to competition. It's similar to how the mafia carves out territories. If you go into someone's ip territory, you will get the shakedown or whacked.
The way to have true patent reform is to abolish patents, as patents are holding us all back. However, that would mean removing a branch of government & a slew of other people who's livelihoods would be taken away. Unfortunately, the structures in place will prevent such reform.
Another way to have true patent reform is to effectively make patents obsolete. That is why DIY culture & black markets are "dangerous" & necessary ideas.
Patents facilitate the transfer of wealth & energy from the creators to the administrators, enforcers, & holders of capital. Is that how we want our civilization to evolve?
Your first link (http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/04/15/do-patents-truly-promot...) is actually chock full of links to studies that show exactly the opposite of your first two sentences. Which is not surprising, considering it's highly unlikely ipwatchdog.com would run an article suggesting anything other than that patents promote innovation.
The study in the second mises.org link is actually a simulation rather than anything directly based on empirical data, and I tend to trust them less. (Not to mention that the mises.org link also lists studies that present a more nuanced view of patents.)
I didn't bother clicking on the techdirt link.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of studies about patents and innovation out there, and the reality is that the picture is very nuanced. For a meta-study, see "Recent Research on the Economics of Patents", Bronwyn H. Hall, Dietmar Harhoff, (Google for pdf). My takeaway is that any simplistic claim that "patents harm innovation" or "patents promote innovation" is likely wrong.
Thank you for your amiable correction on the link. I took the first three Google results. The comments in the ipwatchdog article are interesting.
> My company is 3 years old. We have taken nothing from them, or anyone else. We launched our products to avoid them and their infringement zeal. Our products are innovative, less costly, and preferred in the market. As our market penetration has increased, they have been busy reworking their patents (by flooding the US Patent Office with new documents and revision requests) with the aim of shaking us (and any other new competitors) down. So, we are faced with terrible choices. We can fight in court to prove our case – at a cost of $2 million or more, or we can pay them unearned royalties. In either case we are losers in this scenario. The hospitality industry also continues to lose.
> As for now, you are right, you are faced with terrible choices. But did you do any kind of evaluation to determine whether you would be infringing any patents? My guess is you did not. I’d also be interested in knowing whether you have patent infringement insurance to cover your defense costs? My guess is you don’t have that either. If it is the case, as it usually is, that you did not engage in any kind of research in advance of launching your product and you do not have patent infringement insurance it would seem that your poor business choices are what has put you in this position rather than any defect in the patent system. The patent system is operating exactly as designed.
Ouch. Spoken like a true lawyer. That is when he hands over the business card to the poor business owner.
I'd love there to be a study on the costs associated with having to conduct a "proper" prior art search & the number of companies that do not pursue development because another company has developed "prior art". Ultimately, this is the cost of the patent system that is borne by society at large & the entrant company.
Studies aside, there seems to be a disagreement over the term "innovation".
> My takeaway is that any simplistic claim that "patents harm innovation" or "patents promote innovation" is likely wrong.
I can buy that. My suspicion, based on the climate of fear of creating a product, leads me to conclude that patents are not useful. I can conceive of scenarios that patents are useful. However, I can also conceive that something less draconian than a patent would also be a useful tool in such circumstances.
The problem is that we don't hear of these stories and my guess is
because, well, they don't fit the narrative the media is trying to sell
these days.
As for a fear of creating a product due to patents, I'm not sure this is a widespread phenomenon. Of course, my sample is extremely small and this is anecdotal, but all the people I know doing their own startups are either indifferent to, or actually bullish on, patents. Some are even filing their own. And at least one is operating in a market that I know is rife with patents (e-Books).
And this is why we need more empirical studies, because anecdotes and experiences don't add up to data. But it's not an easy topic, given that even the basic concept of "innovation" is hard to define and almost impossible to measure.
Detailed & convoluted, yes. Conclusive, no. It is interesting that engines dramatically improved after these patents expired.
Another thing that the "Strong Steam, Weak Patents, or,
the Myth of Watt‟s Innovation-Blocking Monopoly, Exploded*" paper detailed was the extraordinary effort that the inventors spent on the legal process. Wouldn't their energy be best served on their core competency, which is invention? Wouldn't society benefit more from inventors inventing instead of dealing with legal issues? I've heard of stories where inventors spent years bitterly defending their patents.
Patent bring innovation into the domain of the legal profession & business administration. Innovation, in it's purest form, is in the domain of the creator (inventor).
> As for a fear of creating a product due to patents, I'm not sure this is a widespread phenomenon.
Having to hire a patent attorney counts as fear. It's certainly an expense & extra administration to creating an innovative product. I've never seen a programmer, or engineer, peruse the patent database to find ideas on solving the problem. Most of the time, the problem is identified, and solutions are proposed & explored.
The fear of being litigated preventing you from creating is akin to the fear of killed in a car accident preventing you seeing your family. We still proceed, but we make every effort to make driving as safe as possible. Ideally, driving would be 100% safe. Ideally, creating would be 100% safe from litigation.
> Of course, my sample is extremely small and this is anecdotal, but all the people I know doing their own startups are either indifferent to, or actually bullish on, patents.
I also work with startups that have patents. It's almost a requirement to have a patent for "defensibility". If this requirement went away, the game would change. I suspect, more emphasis would be put on how well the organization can execute & innovate.
> And this is why we need more empirical studies, because anecdotes and experiences don't add up to data.
It's good to have both. Sometimes studies can be an exercise of local optimization at the expense of global optimization. Anecdotes are a great way to disseminating wisdom to take action.
> But it's not an easy topic, given that even the basic concept of "innovation" is hard to define and almost impossible to measure.
Agreed. That's why it's usually better to err on the side of simplicity. Facts are less obfuscated and the waters are less muddied.
I personally think novelty, untied to economic output, is a better measure. Novelty is easier to define & it is more difficult to redefine by parties interested in promoting an agenda.
---
As a whole, there are only analogous environments and motivations. As a creator, I favor independence. I don't want large amounts of capital & business administration to be a requirement for me to make a living creating things. I want autonomy without having to spending my time in court. I want to have the freedom to create derivative works. I want to have the freedom to invent without having to get a patent or making sure I don't infringe on somebody's patent.
If someone create a derivative work from my work, then I'm happy. I trust that collaborative environments with such a feedback loop creates more global innovation.
>Detailed & convoluted, yes. Conclusive, no. It is interesting that engines dramatically improved after these patents expired.
What you deem convoluted is simply covering all bases and countering any arguments before they come up.
All the improvements that came after were from the "expansive" use of steam. There was no way Watt's patent could have prevented the expansive use of steam because it covered the "contractive" use of steam, specifically the condenser. The condenser is an additional, separate mechanism that is completely unneeded for expansive use of steam. The improved steam machines simply could not have infringed Watt's patents. That in itself is pretty conclusive.
However, engines improving after the patents expiring is interesting, but not for the reasons you may think. The authors provide data showing why improvement stalled in those years (number of deaths caused by use of expansive steam). But Watt's patent covered the most efficient use of steam known until then, and that forced people to start looking for workarounds, which led to Trevithick's breakthrough. So the interesting thing is that Watt's patents actually spurred research into expansive steam, leading indirectly to the improvement in steam engines. This is interesting, because "invention by forced workarounds" has long been a post-facto rationalization of patents.
> Wouldn't society benefit more from inventors inventing instead of dealing with legal issues?
The flip side is, wouldn't society benefit even more if people rewarding inventors and spent their efforts making their own inventions instead of simply copying others'?
All human economic activity, since the earliest days of barter, depends on quid pro quo: People perceive value in something, and in return they offer compensation. There is absolutely no reason this should not extend to intellectual creations. Innovation may be in the domain of the creator, but it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Even the most prolific creator has to eat. If creators can't reap the benefits of the value provided by their creations, nobody's going to be innovating. All IP law essentially is based around this.
> If someone create a derivative work from my work, then I'm happy. I trust that collaborative environments with such a feedback loop creates more global innovation.
That's your prerogative, but not everyone feels this way. More often than not, in my experience, people will take your work and give nothing in return. I've seen it happen to popular open source reduced to begging for donations (I've donated to some), and I've seen it happen to small startups that got blatantly ripped off by the big guys and went under (I worked for one). Heck, when people fantasize about a world without IP, I just ask them to explain the state of innovation in China. Yes, there are many nuanced reasons for it, but it boils down to the fact that people will not give back unless they have to. Unfortunately, there are more predatory people in the world than collaborative, and as with all laws, that is why we have IP laws.
> The patent system is not designed to encourage innovation.
Hardly designed at all. The modern patent system goes to the 1600s when some boring king made some annoying promises that he had to compromise on:
By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually grant letters patent for monopolies to favoured persons (or people who were prepared to pay for them).[13] This power was used to raise money for the Crown, and was widely abused, as the Crown granted patents in respect of all sorts of common goods (salt, for example). Consequently, the Court began to limit the circumstances in which they could be granted. After public outcry, James I of England was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for "projects of new invention". This was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies in which Parliament restricted the Crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years. It also voided all existing monopolies and dispensations with [some] exception[s]....
> The way to have true patent reform is to abolish patents
That is an interesting idea, but I can't think of a way to make that work. Alternatively, I wrote a proposal where patents are divorced from science and technology, so that entrenched interests still have something: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/openmanufacturing/vS4ju1VqXb...
The purpose of the patent system is to allow investment to scale inventions to reach the maximum number of people.
As Lincoln said, the patent system "added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things." Discovery and production.
If patents did not exist, people would still research a cure for cancer or a better mousetrap. It's rewarding to solve problems, and one could make some money doing it.
However without some protected exclusivity to the invention, no company would invest the billions of dollars necessary to achieve regulatory approval, and mass-scale manufacturing, of that cure. It's just too easy for a competitor to swoop in, copy the process, and undersell the first company.
"Patent trolls" are not the main problem of the patent system, but patents with low or no invention height are the main problem. Also software and business models as such should not be patentable at all -- that just over-stretches the system.
Some times, I have the impression, that patent trolls are in the mouth of everybody to cover the fact, that they are more of a symptom than a real problem.
With bad patent-troll legislation, it could be possible to make things bad for legit inventors. Just think, somebody has invented something and is seeking investors. Now comes a big corporation and steals his invention and builds it. With a patent reform that does ignore such people, he even could be blocked to defend his patent (what is currently difficult enough, because he needs much money to do that).
> With bad patent-troll legislation, it could be possible to make things bad for legit inventors. Just think, somebody has invented something and is seeking investors. Now comes a big corporation and steals his invention and builds it. With a patent reform that does ignore such people, he even could be blocked to defend his patent (what is currently difficult enough, because he needs much money to do that).
The problem with the existing patent system is the other way around. You come up with an invention only to realize that five of the seven components are each individually patented by the incumbents. Which means that if you do anything they don't like, including trying to enforce your patent against them, they can easily destroy you with litigation.
It is beyond silly to claim that patent reform would harm small inventors when it is the status quo that harms small inventors.
>It is beyond silly to claim that patent reform would harm small inventors when it is the status quo that harms small inventors.
It might be, that the status quo harms small inventors. But I wanted to give a different perspective on the one thing that is in focus with the last patent reforms. What you describe, has nothing to do with that.
The problem is, that the intention of the reform was to prevent parties with no own production to sue other companies because of patent infringements. And such a move would of course block some patent trolls (not all) but also would massively harm small or single person inventors.
"It is beyond silly to claim that" any reform will make things better.
I have seen so many reforms in other areas, that just made things worse -- I would even say most of the "reforms" I have seen.
> The problem is, that the intention of the reform was to prevent parties with no own production to sue other companies because of patent infringements. And such a move would of course block some patent trolls (not all) but also would massively harm small or single person inventors.
You're claiming that small inventors would be unable to enforce their patents against larger competitors, what I'm saying is that that is the status quo. Future passage of patent reform cannot cause that to happen because it has already happened and causality requires the cause to precede the effect. Patent reform could allow small inventors to better enforce their patents because they wouldn't have to worry as much about counterclaims using low quality patents that would currently cause them to be bankrupted with litigation costs.
> I have seen so many reforms in other areas, that just made things worse -- I would even say most of the "reforms" I have seen.
That isn't an argument. You're effectively saying that most change is bad therefore all change is bad. The premise is questionable and the conclusion doesn't follow from it in any event.
I agree. Dealing with the "patent troll problem" is actually trying to cure the symptom, not the cause.
Patent trolls are a symptom of bad patents, which is why it's not surprising to see even big companies "patent troll" in exactly the same way. But people tend to give them a break, because "hey, they at least make some stuff" - even if the stuff they make has little to do with the vague patents they use to extort others for money.
Kill bad patents (which perhaps not coincidentally tend to be most software patents), and the patent trolling problem will (mostly) disappear, too.
Interestingly, the current acting director is a patent reform proponent who was installed in the position a year and a half ago. The way she was designated as acting director appears to be a ploy to get around the senate confirmation process.
Are there similar turns of phrase used to indicate the choice made by a President to appoint someone to a key position in the administration -- e.g. "White House nominates Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State".
I'm not going to indulge you further. I'm certain you can find a way to sufficiently restrict the question that this is the first time this particular thing has happened, but it's nothing more than an excuse for misplaced outrage. It is probably more correct that the decision involved multiple people, and we all know where the buck stops. There are plenty of real things to be concerned about without making shit up.
What people in software often forget is that patent trolls are almost always using software patents or business method patents. In industries whose patents are not on software or business methods, trolling activity is very low. The patent system in those industries generally is working reasonably well. The major players in those industries are not opposed to reform to deal with the troll problem, but they want it to be aimed narrowly so as to not disturb things in their industries.