When Patents Attack — the NPR Version 87
fermion writes "This American Life is running a story this week on Intellectual Ventures, a firm some consider the leader of the patent trolls. The story delves into the origins of the term patent troll and the rise of the patent troll industry. Much time is spent presenting Intellectual Ventures both as a patent troll firm and a legitimate business that allows helpless inventors to monetize patents. It is stipulated that Intellectual Ventures does not in fact sue anyone. It is also alleged that Intellectual Ventures creates many shell companies, presumably to hide such activity. Intellectual Ventures is compared to a Mafia protection racket that may never actually burn down a business that does not pay the dues, but does encourage such burning to occur."
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As far as I know IV does sue. They have sued in the recent past. Remember IV is owned and run by an ex-microsoft big-wig.
I was a touch surprised that (Score:2)
in all their "Mafia protection racket" analogies, they didn't use the phrase "You gotta really nice lookin' business here", which nearly always precedes "It'd be a shame if something happened to it".
Nice piece, though, over all.
M.a.F.I.A. (Score:2)
Becareful, they may become a Slander/Libel Troll and sue anyone that calls them "Mafia" or their business a "Protection Racket".
I wonder why the music and film industry associations [mafiaa.org] haven't already done that.
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Because truth is an absolute defense against libel.
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Because truth is an absolute defense against libel.
Only in the United States. It's backwards in many European countries.
Re:I was a touch surprised that (Score:5, Funny)
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No, because the public will never be able to spend as much on bribery/lobbying as most large corporations.
Re:Will educating lamens help change the climate? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, because the public will never be able to spend as much on bribery/lobbying as most large corporations.
In the case of software patents the lobby in favor of them isn't really the corporations. It's the lawyers.
Think about it: If software patents went away tomorrow, Microsoft et al wouldn't be able to collect patent license fees anymore, but neither would they have to pay them out. For most companies it comes out as a wash, give or take. And if software patents went away, none of those companies would have to continue paying their armies of patent lawyers, which would save them each millions of dollars.
But that would put all of those software patent lawyers out of business, so it is the lawyers who supply the driving force behind the status quo. What confuses people is that they frequently hear corporate lawyers advocating software patents and assume that they take that position in the interest of their employer rather than their occupation.
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Software patents have always been about raising the cost of entry to new competitors.
Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, etc fight each other for business, but its sort of a gentlemen's game, with the players, stakes and products well known.
New players shake up the status quo, change markets, obsolete product lines. Stuff that big companies hate.
Years ago, I argued here on /. against software patents, arguing that despite what developers thought, they were really for the benefit of large companies, not upstart new co
Mod parent up (Score:2)
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Software patents have always been about raising the cost of entry to new competitors.
Yes and no. That is certainly an advantage of software patents to large corporations, but it is weighed against on the other side by subjecting the large corporations to shakedowns by patent trolls. Ask Microsoft if they think i4i deserves more than a quarter of a billion dollars of Microsoft's money. To say nothing of what will happen one of these days when a patent troll gets a permanent injunction against a major software company for a patent claim that can't be worked around without breaking protocol or
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Yep, I've been thinking that the lawyers are the real problem for a decade.
"The software programming community seems largely against patents. When the only people defending software patents are patent holders who make money from licensing, patent lawyers who make money from patent applications and patent litigation, and the Patent and Trademark Office who make money from granting patents, is there any reason to believe patents are in the public interest?" -- me [nothings.org], in 1999 (slightly edited for clarity)
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"Does anyone think that getting people (non-slashdot crowd/lamens) informed on this issue will make any significant changes to current way the industry is operating?"
No. The public are too stupid to understand the issues.
I realize this is Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
Or should I just whine about how bad patent trolls are without benefit of absorbing any new material? It's not like we haven't been down this road before.
Re:I realize this is Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
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The show should be live-streaming on most of the West coast NPR stations in about 30 minutes, so you'll get your chance to LTFA soon.
I heard the second half on the radio just a short while ago (and it was awesome), and I'm looking forward to listen the the half that I missed soon.
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http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/441.mp3
I'd love to hear this, but (Score:1)
This American Life gives me hives.
Good introduction for the uninitiated (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully this helps to convince non-technical Americans that patents should rarely, if ever be awarded for software.
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Explaining patent insanity is easy. What's hard is getting those in charge to fix it.
Imagine a primitive world without cookies. Two people from different towns, John and Barry, independently invent cookies at the same time. Each starts a cookie-making business, but John pays the government for a patent.
When they meet, John tells Barry that he has to either pay John a percentage or stop making cookies. Barry refuses, since John didn't have anything to do with Barry inventing cookies, but the government force
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Imagine two people from different towns, John and Barry. John invents cookies and starts making cookies. Barry has a bakery and decided John's invention will add to his profit, so Barry starts making cookies too. Since Barry has a bakery with better equipment and staff, Barry soon puts John out of business.
Later that week Zeke is sitting in Barry's bakery eating a cookie and has a revolutionary idea for a new invention. Just then John passes by dressed in rags begging for food and Zeke decides it's not wort
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Since people today can start bakeries and make cookies yet not go out of business, even though other people already have bigger bakeries and make more cookies, your counter-example is hardly ironclad.
And the counter-counter-example is John invents cookies, does patent them, and starts up a bakery. Barry has a big bakery franchise and a war chest of bakery-related patents, so buries John in lawyers. Broken by court costs, John agrees to lease Barry the patent for a pittance. Later that week Zeke has a revolu
I listened to this last night (Score:1)
Re:I listened to this last night (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Good use", as in for the good of their bank accounts. What else did you expect?
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By good use they mean shakedown someone actually producing a product. You did not think they actually wanted to get things made did you?
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Hopefully now we'll get to see some real patent reform; honestly, I'm not sure why this hasn't come up already. The popular political topic right now is 'Obamacare' and how it 'creates uncertainty' and that is a horrible thing for business; understandable in a way, as they set aside money for the worst-case scenario whenever possible.
So, assuming along those same lines, I wonder what their patent costs are? I know I've heard before that tech companies set aside a 'patent licensing fund' when they can to dea
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Yeah, we'll get patent reform all right...for the trolls, by the trolls. The America Invents act will make it easier than ever for a patent troll to actually steal an idea before it's patented, get the patent, and then win in court when they sue the original inventor.
Unfortunately, that is why we're all so depressed about patents (and many other things as well). It's because the status quo is one thing, but if Congress goes near it they can only make it worse.
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Interesting tidbits (Score:5, Informative)
I listened to the whole thing live streaming from my NPR station. I was interested to hear that almost everything considered "common knowledge" here on Slashdot held up under their scrutiny. They visited a company that makes software to find duplicate patents, and they said that about 30% of patents granted are duplicates of the same idea. They also said that the one case Intellectual Ventures gives as their "poster child" of an "inventor whose idea was being used illegally until IV came along" actually had over 5500 duplicates granted in the same time frame (nevermind all the prior art that existed). That one patent, by the way, was traced to a patent troll company that is obligated to give Intellectual Ventures a cut of their revenue from it...and the creator of the patent is trying to sue them, IIRC. So much for "encouraging innovation by helping poor inventors".
Another interesting statistic is that they cited polls claiming that 80% of software engineers say patents hurt their business and creativity. I know we've been repeating this to each other for years, but it's nice to see it backed up every now and then.
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Another interesting statistic is that they cited polls claiming that 80% of software engineers say patents hurt their business and creativity. I know we've been repeating this to each other for years, but it's nice to see it backed up every now and then.
Well that statistic might be correlated to the 80% of software engineers leave /. comments.
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Actually I think their claimed 'prototypical inventor' was just involved in patent litigation, not specifically involved in litigation with intellectual ventures.
Re:Interesting tidbits (Score:4, Insightful)
Please list some of those inconvenient truths they avoid.
I see far more of that sort of behavior from other news outlets. The Oslo bombing is getting far less press coverage now that they figured out a white guy did it.
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They visited a company that makes software to find duplicate patents, and they said that about 30% of patents granted are duplicates of the same idea.
Do they mean in a legally distinguishable sense, or in a "we used the same or a very similar specification but have different claims in each patent directed to our several different inventions" sense? Forgive me for being suspicious of the correctness of this statement, but very few people on Slashdot (and off Slashdot, for that matter) understand how to read a patent and how to understand what it actually covers.
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Well I'm assuming that the guy who makes a living telling investors whether their prospects' patents are unique (and thus valuable) knows more on the subject than I do. The point, I thought, was that even if they are legally distinguishable, the amount of "value added" is so little from one to the next that it's hard to consider them new inventions. All it does is make any one application infringe on even more patents.
Another amusing quote was of a software engineer who said he has four patents in his na
Transcript available (Score:1)
They also said that the one case Intellectual Ventures gives as their "poster child" of an "inventor whose idea was being used illegally until IV came along" actually had over 5500 duplicates granted in the same time frame (nevermind all the prior art that existed).
Not quite... Actually, it's pretty clear that the journalists have no idea what they're talking about - they note three patents that [OMG] have the same title... while failing to note that two of them are continuations of the first one, and that they have very different claims. Their evidence for all of those duplicates, again, are the titles. Any patent practitioner, including myself, will tell you that titles have n
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Then you should know that patents on mathematics is illegal.
And all software is mathematics - that is all a computer can do.
computer -Noun
1. An electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.
2. A person who makes calculations, esp. with a calculating machine.
And an electronic device for storing and processing data is a calculating machine.
Winning move (Score:2)
It is stipulated? It is stipulated? (Score:1)
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This American Life is distributed by PRI. Yes it plays mostly on NPR affiliates, but NPR has nothing to do with making it.
Note, however that this week's episode was a co-production if This American Life and NPR's Planet Money [npr.org].
Normally, this statement would be correct, but not always.
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Is there anybody here that has a had a great idea, physical or software, but not brought it to fruition "because" of the patent system? Because of the headaches of the process or even just the thought of the slight chance of being sued in to oblivion?
Uh... yes! Millions! And I'm suing for damages.
Place blame where it belongs (Score:2)
We like to blame companies that do shit like this, or the lawyers and lobbyists that enable and push them on, but the real problem is the underlying system that makes the appearance of such entities necessary and inevitable. In a world where software patents exist, you will have patent trolls. In a world where the idea of "intellectual property" is taken seriously, you will have lawyers defending said property. Fix the system, and these sorts of behaviors will go away as they will no longer be economically
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>In a world where software patents exist, you will have patent trolls. In a world where the idea of "intellectual property" is taken seriously, you will have lawyers defending said property.
[Don La Fontaine voice]
In a world, where CEOs run their versions of the Mafia...In a world where Gordon Gecko is seen as a naive do-gooder...
In a world, where the true gangsters wear shiny suits and red power ties...there's... Malone.
"You wanna know how to get Intellectual Ventures? They pull a patent, you pull a lawy
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"You wanna know how to get Intellectual Ventures? They pull a patent, you pull a lawyer. They send a brief to the court, you send one of them to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way! And that's how you get Nathan Myhrvold. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I'm offering you a deal. Do you want this deal? "
Funny. But in the era of offshored cloud computing, this may come close to the truth. You send your data off to a cloud processor (located who knows where in the world) and get work product back. But then some troll claims that they hold patent rights to the implemented process and attempts to serve papers.
Serve papers where? Sure, some smart nerds could eventually crack Tor and find the country hosting the servers. But then what? Send a lawyer over to serve papers? There are enough countries that would lo
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The average person has virtually no knowledge or understanding of patent law, and has no interest in becoming informed. The minority of us who do care and are informed are easily ignored with no political consequences for our elected representatives.
So, indeed, the real problem is the political system. I also wonder why the discussions here on slashdot always get stuck at what's wrong with patents (we've heard all the arguments), instead of focusing on how the system could be changed.
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The fix is closely coupled to what's wrong. So arguing about what's wrong is a necessary step in formulating a solution. But we can't even get people to agree on the exact problem, so that's where we are stuck.
Actually, most people here can more or less agree on what the problem is. But the players in the system continue to throw out red herrings to distract the political system from the actual target. One thing I didn't hear in the NPR show was an analysis if Intellectual Ventures' lobbying efforts, poli
The Ninja-Pirate-Robot Version (Score:1)
As a somewhat regular (minus long hiatuses) player of kingdom of loathing, I couldn't help but read the title like this >.
Obviousness (Score:2)
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From the podcast it mentions a photo sharing site that got sued along with some 130 different companies. If 130 some odd companies came up with the same concept independently, doesn't that make the patent invalid as it would fail the obviousness requirement?
Not if they all came up with it after the first guy released his product to market. Essentially, claiming that something is obvious after its been on sale for months by someone else is more sour grapes than legal evidence.
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"Obvious" is a legal term, different from how you would interpret it - it only has a remote relationship with the English word "obvious".
I just had a chat tonight with a software friend of mine who's now going to become an IP lawyer about this topic, patents and other good stuff, where this came up as well. Basically, he told me that "obvious" for patents is defined as: "if you take everything that has been written in the relevant literature previous to the patent application, and you can combine that to di
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"Obvious" is a legal term, different from how you would interpret it - it only has a remote relationship with the English word "obvious".
I just had a chat tonight with a software friend of mine who's now going to become an IP lawyer about this topic, patents and other good stuff, where this came up as well. Basically, he told me that "obvious" for patents is defined as: "if you take everything that has been written in the relevant literature previous to the patent application, and you can combine that to directly derive the idea, then it is obvious". Not even indirect derivations are obvious, even when normal people *would* consider them obvious.
So even if 1000 companies come up with the idea, but don't write it up, or only come up with it *after* the patent application, then it's not defined as "obvious". It has to be published.
Close, but not quite... While patent examiners certainly look at publications, non-published prior art is still available (except during reexams). So, if 1000 companies come up with the idea, and use it, they don't need separate write-ups. I am a US patent practitioner, and I've had everything from sales brochures to help screens cited as prior art for various things.
Not quire sure what you mean though by "indirect derivations". Contrary to what your friend thinks, prima facie obviousness doesn't require
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Hi,
you're correct ofcourse - what was actually said was that there had to be a direct benefit for the combination, not a process whereby you have to combine known elements, and then combine *those* new elements in order to have the new invention (what I meant by indirect derivations). That would not be obvious, it had to be "one step" removed from known items, not two steps.
I didn't know about the prior art in unpublished help screens counting as well, which is good to know. I'm not sure if there is a diffe
Not NPR (Score:2)
They have done legitimate things (Score:1)
Um, how can the company be a troll if they don't sue anyone?
Someone who works at Intellectual Ventures had a feature in Make magazine recently about his project to zap mosquitoes with lasers in order to control malaria.
Also, they developed a plan to build a very cheap way to solve global warming by building a hose to spew sulphur into the upper reaches of the atmosphere just like a volcano does. This was described in the book "Super Freakonomics." I hadn't heard this idea before, and it is ingenious.
Not e
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IANAL, so I'm not familiar with the details, but I think it goes like this:
Excellent episode. (Score:2)
One of their best.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
Incentives (Score:2)
This is a problem of incentives. We could pass one three sentence law and clean up the patent mess within a couple decades:
1. For each claim of a patent later overturned in court each defendant shall be paid $5,000,000 out of the general budget of the PTO; adjusted for inflation each year.
2. Patent fees shall be be set by the PTO to be at minimum $1,000,000 per claim.
3. Fees shall be set so as to collect sufficient revenues to fund all spending by the PTO plus an additional 5,000% (t