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Ex-Microsoft CTO Checks In On Patent Reform
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:33 PM
from the easy-for-him-to-say dept.
from the easy-for-him-to-say dept.
theodp writes "Defending his controversial Intellectual Ventures in a less-than-hard-hitting CNET interview, ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold finds it peculiar that some people get really wound up over patents. 'People generally don't have any problem with the patent system,' quipped Myhrvold, the inventor of Microsoft's patented Television scheduling system for displaying a grid representing scheduled layout and selecting a programming parameter for display or recording, which allows you to more efficiently select shows like Elimidate for viewing."
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Nathan Myhrvold and the Business Of Invention 137 comments
elwinc writes "There's a great New Yorker story about Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures company, whose business model is to nurture ideas, write patents, and sell them. Apparently they're filing about 500 patents a year including a passive thorium reactor which consumes waste from conventional reactors. On the lighter side, you can read how Nathan has achieved 'dominant T. rex market share.'"
Though we've discussed Myhrvold and his company in the past, the New Yorker focuses more on how incredible it is to have a group of very intelligent people sitting around a table developing ideas.
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Not all patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Something (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of "process" and "business plan" patents, this is somewhat similar to what you are saying, because such patents are, by their very nature, vague.
In the case of software patents tho
Re:Not all patents (Score:2)
need another cup o' Joe (Score:3, Funny)
The first time I read that as "Myhrvold has pursued patentology.."
No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
To wit: When you get slapped with a multimillion frivolous patent lawsuit from a tiny scumbag parasite company like Eolas which threatens your very livelihood and business that you have worked so hard to build, you can afford to have uncle bill toss gobs of money at litigating it, then gobs more money at settling or buying off the company if it starts to look like their chances of exploiting a legal loophole to win are nonzero. And in the end you don't feel a thing. Most people can't do this. As a result "people"-- i.e. not you, real people who live outside the ivory tower where half-decade lawsuits are a negligable cost-- do tend to have problems with the patent system.
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:2)
But there would be a lot of things that would have to be worked out. Specifically, how do you fairly set that price point.
Besides, the biggest problem with patents is that they're given away like candy. With a 'let the courts sort them out' attitude.
Re:No, no, no (Score:2)
Litigation costs are not unique to the patent system.
Re:No, no, no (Score:2)
Re:No, no, no (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say that most software developers believe software patents are dumb. That the other 99% of the population doesn't care is not a convincing argument th
Re:No, no, no (Score:2)
Actually, most people don't have a problem with the patent system, because they have no idea that there might in fact be anything wrong with the patent system. Fun experiment: Ask someone you know in real life what they think about software patents. If they respond to you with more than a blank stare, they're an exception rather than the rule.
Most people in the software industry have problems with software patents, but being that they make up a relatively small subset of the unwashed voting masses, this do
Re:No, no, no (Score:2)
a) Too stupid to understand the problem
b) Too ignorant to understand the problem
c) Not imaginative enough to concieve that there could be something better
d) Already using the patent system to screw society to their own advantage.
The stupid and the ignorant don't see the corelation between things like retardedly overpriced drugs and patents. They don't see the problem with patents on lifeforms. They don't see the ramificati
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Insightful)
The social security comparison might be good but the problem is this. Social security dates from seventy years ago, and while there are very valid criticisms of it both practically and ideologically, it (1) has had at least some quantifiable positive effect mixed in with the bad and (2) was implemented to aid a specific and real crisis, which it did.
Software patents however were quietly created by court court decisions in the 80s in response to no pressing need, and have never produced a plausible benefit. The industry didn't look for it; the industry didn't need it to build the computer revolution or the internet or any of these other things that brought the world to where it was today; the industry doesn't use it now except to defend itself from the patents of other companies within the industry; hell, patentability of software is something that the industry scarcely even noticed for the first decade of its existence. The only reason we're talking about patents now is that the only people who ever figured out what kind of use to get out of patents started using it for very bad purposes. This isn't just a case of the bad outweighing the good. This is simply a case of a bad thing where any good side effects are hard or impossible to find or, at least, never really seem to be produced by the people defending patentability of software.
Rather than comparing it to social security-- something that we should fix the problems with because the nature of the problems indicate a need for maitanence of a system that's worked in the past rather than removing a system that's never worked, at least in the views of many people-- maybe we should compare the software patent situation with the War on Iraq, something we got into without really debating it or thinking about it much and now have committed ourselves to and can't get out of. Something that probably we could mend rather than ending but that still, frankly, we really didn't need to go in there in the first place and if we had actually thought about it more beforehand rather than just rushing in, we wouldn't have.
Parent
Re:Mod this up... (Score:2)
Nice point.
Make the call (Score:5, Insightful)
What do they say when you call to tell them that you've patented their DNA?
Re:Make the call (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Make the call (Score:2)
Amount Slashdotters pay: $0 in lieu of no infringing uses on record
Re:Make the call (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Make the call (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Make the call (Score:2)
Most people.. (Score:2)
Listen to Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.
-- Bill Gates in a 1991 internal memo (Source: http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/quotes/index.en.html#
Re:Listen to Bill (Score:2, Interesting)
First, we do not live in a democracy. A democracy is when three wolves and a sheep vote what's for supper. We are a republic.[1]
-----------------
No, that's not what Republicans believe in.
Both Democrats and Republicans stand for big:
Republicans believe in big business - generally, via supply side economics: when businesses have enough resources & needs, they'll need more people to fill those jobs, and the employed will benefit by having more money to spend, which will put
Re:Listen to Bill (Score:2)
As usual in this audience, very wrong. What you've said above is, in short: we don't live in a democracy, because we don't have a king . Completely non-sensical. A republic is simply a form of state that has a president as its head instead of a monarch. Nothing more, nothing less. Shining examples of republics are the The Peoples Republic of China, the for
Re:Listen to Bill (Score:2)
The dictionary disagrees with you [reference.com]. Notably: "A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them." Also known as a "representative democracy".
Athens is the only "true" democracy in history. However, even they were prejudiced. You had to be a white male landowner to have a vote - kin
Why there are libertarian techies (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sal
Not always an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not always an issue (Score:2)
so.. (Score:2)
It's more "I don't care because no one ever told me to" rather than "I'm well informed and I think it's fine".
Software patent frenzy (Score:5, Insightful)
With software patents, people are patenting the most simple of ideas, and they're doing it in a frenzy.
Microsoft's 'IsNot' patent is just one of the pathetic reasons why so many people have become anti-patent.
Software patents seem to be used mainly as an anti-competitive action, rather than used for protection of clever and innovative ideas.
Anybody who can't understand what the fuss is about is either completely ignorant of this situation, a moron, or plans to use his own patents in an anti-competitive way.
Since stepping down (Score:4, Funny)
Someone has got an investor's money (Score:5, Interesting)
Myhrvold: Well, this is even stranger. We actually did a study on this. The overall number of lawsuits for patents is growing, but so is the overall number of patents. So explain that to me.
- this guy doesn't need anything to be explained to him, he is a crook. He did a 'study'? Let him point to the study. Let him show us that study. I bet it was nothing like a study. I bet he sit down with a couple of guys over a beer and talked about how much money they could make from litigation and that was his study.
If you then look at it and ask, what fraction of those lawsuits are due to companies that have no products, the IP-only companies--it's about 2 percent. If you look at it and say what fraction of lawsuits are due to large technology companies, it's about 2 percent.
-Look at that, he's got some numbers! I bet he just pulled those numbers out of thin air. I don't know how many companies are out there suing each other over stupid patents but I am sure it is not 2 percent. It is either something very very small like 0.0001 percent or something very large, like over 60 percent but saying it's 2 percent doesn't make any sense. It's not a real number.
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This guy hopes to make money on litigation that much is clear. He calls himself an inventor. Inventor my ass! I 'invented' things. Plenty of things. One of them is in my russkey [mozdev.org] extension - selecting text in a browser and transforming it into a different type of text right on the page. There. An invention. I bet anyone can come up with that. And I bet it would stiffle innovation if I started suing other people for doing the same.
Re:Someone has got an investor's money (Score:2)
BTW., Google is named as one of the investors. What happened to 'Do No Evil' policy?
How about this, I patent the process of sitting with a couple of guys over a couple of beers and 'inventing' things so that such ridiculous ideas no longer come to fruition.
Or how about this: patenting a process that allows patenting obvoius ideas. If this passes than USPTO will have a hard time getting a license from me.
Re:Someone hasn't got a brain (Score:2)
Ok, I will. You see, when something is so deplorable that it practically mandates a "screw or get screwed" m.o., guess what people will do? DUH. Does he really believe his audience is that stupid?
Re:Someone has got an investor's money (Score:2)
The said it plainly: we will come up with ideas and then we will not implement them, we will wait until someone else comes up with the same idea, implements it and then we will be there waiting for our money.
It's a mafia in the making, what are you, asleep?
Ignorance. (Score:2)
They generally think outsourcing is good because they can buy things for half the cost, and drive to Canada to pick up prescription medication because it's more than they can afford here. If they were fully informed about how much the current patent system was costing them fewer would be on the fence about it.
I'd say (Score:2)
Given that patent officers are bureaucrats and not technical experts, and that companies and individuals file patents for almost anything, it's not surprising that so many bullshit patents are granted.
The US IP system definitely need restructuring. But it is important to remember that patents
Abolish the current patent system. 5 Year Maximum! (Score:5, Insightful)
One loose theory of why religion is originally formed is that it is a mutation of the set of rules the tribal elders set down in order to protect ones tribe. The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions. Rules on sexual interaction were originally intended to prevent the spread of STD's in ancient times. These very rules were later warped by the church (which had turned the "rules" into its own organization) in order to force a population increase in their followers. By promoting a warped version of this rule the church now contributes to the spread of STD's, one of the very things its founders most likely hoped to prevent.
How dose this relate to software patents you ask?
Well patents were not intended to strangle progress of smaller companies, they were intended to prevent big companies with huge R&D budgets from stealing smaller companies ideas, and either beat them to market with their own idea, or buy off the researchers from the smaller companies with huge bribes.
But in order to prevent the smaller companies from becoming the very entities that threatened innovation by hoarding their ideas, patents had a time limit on them that was reasonable.
5-10 years was the norm for most countries I think, but I'd have to look it up.
Then a funny thing happened. As the means of production became more efficient, i.e. companies needed LESS protection from the competition, patents started to get Longer and Longer. So companies started to buy up patents, or lobby for longer patent lengths.
The very system that was meant to help innovation is now the main reason that innovation is suffering.
Re:Abolish the current patent system. 5 Year Maxim (Score:2)
It is analagous to the romans selling their right to vote for bread and circuses.
Re:Abolish the current patent system. 5 Year Maxim (Score:3, Funny)
Bacon flavoured ice-cream is actually quite tasty.
Re:Abolish the current patent system. 5 Year Maxim (Score:2)
Think about what your saying. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a very convincing argument when you consider that most people don't have a problem with the patent system because they don't know there's a problem in the first place. Once in a while some patent will go through that will garner some attention (patent on the swing, Smucker PB&J patent, etc) but in general the patent issue flies under the radar. No doubt that's the way they like it though.
They don't want to implement their ideas (Score:2)
I think it is very important to make the following change to the patent office rules:
Whoever it is that comes up with the idea must implement it. If there is no implementation, than the idea cannot be patented at all. Period.
What this means is that noone can patent their 'idea' without implementation so that they do not dis
It seems to me.... (Score:2)
For the patent offices and patent laws to make sense, it requires that those working in the patent offices and patent law professions to be kept abreast of all develo
He's attacking Straw Men (Score:5, Informative)
The European Patent Convention says that software is not an invention and cannot be patented.
That the US Supreme Court has said in various rulings in software cases that:
Transformation and reduction of an article to a different state or thing is the clue to the patentability of a process claim
Whether the algorithm was in fact known or unknown at the time of the claimed invention, as one of the "basic tools of scientific and technological work," it is treated as though it were a familiar part of the prior art.
insignificant post-solution activity will not transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process
If you invent something like a new and nonobvious physical rubber manufacturing process it is certainly a patentable physical process whether it mentions software or not. Software does not prevent a an otherwise patentable invention from being patentable.
Software is not a "process". Any possible software is to be treated as a "familiar part of prior art". You cannot turn unpatentable software into a patentable process without some signifigant post solution physical activity. All from the Supreme Court.
Lower US courts have violated those Supreme Court rulings, particularly in the State Street Bank case which esentially ushered in software patents. Software patents which were previously and properly rejected. These lower court rulings upholding software patents only remain standing because the US Supreme Court has entirely neglected patent law for far too long.
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Re:He's attacking Straw Men (Score:2)
or, alternatively, because the SCOTUS has been bought and sold by corporations for so long - like the rest of our government.
Re:He's attacking Straw Men (Score:4, Informative)
The Office has traditionally been opposed to software patents (along with business methods; take a look at this site [bitlaw.com] for one discussion of this) and so rejected it, but the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) and it's predecessor, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA), have been hot to trot to permit software patents. This position ended up in the Supreme Court with the Benson case back in the 1960s; the CCPA had reversed the PTO, who o appealed to the Supreme Court, who finally ruled in favor of the PTO (i. e., reversing the reversal of the CCPA).
Scrambling to recover from this smack down, the CCPA and successor CAFC have strained to interpret Benson and other cases as narrowly as possible; as I recall they reversed a PTO rejection of a natural language algorithm, stating Benson only applied to "mathematical" algorithms.
As you have said, the CAFC continues to follow its "Anything under the sun is potentially patentable subject matter" concept as far as it thinks it can stretch beyond the wording of the Benson and Diehr cases; it will take a flat reversal by the Supreme Court or an act of Congress to change this, neither of which looks likely any time soon.
Parent
Elimidate (Score:2)
on Slashdot.
Modern patents and reality. (Score:5, Interesting)
So I did my research and found one of the better IP lawyers in the state. I walked into his office with a preprint of my academic paper, copies of existing academic articles which may be considered prior art, everything I thought he'd need.
His first question was whether I was willing to go bankrupt for this idea. "Uh... what?" I asked. That wasn't what I was expecting to hear.
The average cost for a successful patent, he explained to me, runs around $7,000. That news floored me; isn't the patent system supposed to be accessible to private citizens?
Oh, no, he told me, that's not the price. That's the price for a successful application. Right now, only about 35% of all software patents are granted. So the amortized cost of a software patent is about $20,000.
Then it starts getting even worse.
About one patent in ten will ever make their original investment back from licensing fees. The overwhelming majority of patents issued fail to recoup their initial outlay. Most patents are not used to get licensing fees; most patents are used to deny other people entry into your market. If a patent can keep other people out from your business, then it might make financial sense; but as it currently stands, since I have no business in this area of the security field... I'd be looking at one chance in ten of recouping my patent cost.
So, in other words, take the amortized cost of a patent ($20,000) and subtract from it the speculative revenues I'd be receiving ($20,000 *
That's considerably more than I make in a year as a graduate student. I could possibly, if I sold all my worldly possessions, get that much money together, but I'd probably have to declare bankruptcy as soon as it came time to pay my student loans. Hence, his question: is this idea worth going bankrupt over? Especially given the unavoidable fact that, if I did manage to beat the odds and get good licensing, all the major players would simply threaten to sue me for infringing on patents of theirs I didn't even know I'd infringed, and would offer just a no-cost cross-licensing deal that would let them have access to my patent for free, and all I'd really get out of it would be the mercy of them not suing me?
I'm not opposed to the existence of software patents. I think they're wildly overused, and overused in unethical ways, but there are some algorithms which are so breathtakingly new and innovative that they deserve patent protection. (RSA comes to mind as an example.)
I am opposed to a patent system which is priced far outside the capabilities of private citizens.
I am opposed to a patent system which is structured in such a way that large companies can get unlimited access to the small guy's patent portfolio just by threatening a lawsuit.
I guess you could say I'm opposed to practically every dimension of how patents are currently practiced.