The Dark Side of the Tech Patent Wars 196
GMGruman writes "Bill Snyder warns that the tech patent wars are going nuclear, and could vaporize tech jobs in the process. He likens the situation to medicine, where so much money now goes to pay for insurance and 'defensive medicine,' rather than for actual care. In the tech world, he fears that the same will occur with patents, forcing companies to spend ever more money on patents and lawyers — and less on innovation and staff."
positive feedback increasing number of lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
From a systems perspective the system is designed to requrie a lawyer. And the lawyers are in control of that requirement.
Until negative feedback can be applied somehow this system is just going to keep on requireing more lawyers.
This is what happens. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when businesses and government consider "intellectual property" to be a great base for an economy.
Surprisee surpriseee (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents are no different than intellectual feudalism. Claim a piece of land, and you can just suck blood off of anyone who enters on it to do anything on it by extorting money.
patent holders are the lords, and lawyers are their enforcers. all hail new intellectual feudal overlords.
Re:Dark side? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bright side is that the people who innovated to make the patents are being compensated for their efforts.
Are they, now? Please show me a list of wealthy inventors, and not just wealthy patent holders.
Re:Dark side? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you prefer if Google could use other people's innovations without compensating them?
Yes. I am an innovator. To build something truly useful, I must build upon the work of at least twelve others. If I have to pay royalties to them all, there's no way the royalties I collect will ever cover it. But I don't do it for the money. I do it because I am an innovator. I will innovate if I am compensate. I will innovate if I am not compensated. I will innovate even if I have to pay for the privilege of using my own brain. Google has demonstrated that they are (to some extent) of the same stock as me, and I think we'd all make more progress if we could pursue our passion to innovate without fear. If those who only innovate for money abandoned the game, that's okay with me--they are lousy innovators anyway.
Re:Dark side? (Score:4, Insightful)
GP said "the people who innovated to make the patents". That's the clever patent attorneys who made new and clever arguments as to why the invention was worthy of a patent, right? So he should be pointing you to a list of wealthy patent attorneys, not wealthy inventors.
Re:positive feedback increasing number of lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the .357 magnum a metaphor for?
Justice? :)
Look, we're tarring with a single brush, but it really isn't that broad. Fact is, your industry is doing serious damage to our society, and profiting from the damage. That is reasonable cause for some pretty serious backlash.
You may be innocent, you may be one of the good guys. Maybe you are working to fix the problem. Maybe you are not, but you have convinced yourself that being a part of the system does not mean you condone it. Maybe you work in a corner of law that is not quite so seriously screwed up by your kin. If one of those things is the case, and that is enough for you, then relax, we're not talking about you.
If you want us to believe that lawyers, in general, are not worthy of society's scorn, well, simple fact is you are wrong, and it is not going to happen.
If you want us to express fondness for you, despite your profession, then you've got to tell us why you are not part of the problem. Same treatment you would get if you were a congressman or an Abu Ghraib guard.
This is how cultures deal with internal threats that cannot be easily handled through official channels. We ostracize them. You can get special dispensation, but you have to ask for it, and explain why you deserve it.
Re:Dark side? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you spend 100s of millions of dollars on research to formulate new ideas and then bring them to market? Would you be able to afford to do that in a world where everyone freely copied your ideas and took them to market preventing you from ever recovering investment.
Your message sounds nice, how about some concrete examples. Show off some of the inovations you are talking about. Your post is interesting philosophy. It doesn't actually say anything.
Give us 3 examples of the significant contribution to life , technology or even pure research that has come from your innovation. Show us how the 36 people you borrowed from all benefited as well. Note, for your model to work, you may not have any business relationship to an of he people you are working.
Re:Dark side? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats BS
It did not cost taht much 10 years ago and no they do not do 5x as much R&D. Celebrex is as powerful as an asprin yet costs $$$$. Yet people seeing these commercials on TV want it and you and I both pay for it by our premiums. Fuck them.
They are price gouging and using patents to abuse their power. Their margins are well in the thousands of percents.
Re:Dark side? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be great if most patents actually reflected 100's of millions of dollars of research?
In the industry where I work (video games) there are patents on
1. Playing 2 sounds at once when the player hits one button.
2. A big arrow pointing to where the player needs to go (the "Crazy Taxi" patent).
3. The entire idea of haptic feedback when applied to game controllers.
4. Changing the strength of an attack based upon how many enemies are clumped in an area.
5. Cloud-based gaming. All of it.
And there are literally thousands more, that cover every aspect of gaming from how you can score players to how you can monitor their inputs. Most of them are good ideas. All of them are obvious (Big Arrow pointing where you need to go). None of them took any actual money to develop whatsoever. And taken as a whole, they're grossly stifling.
If the patent system is to reach the original goal of protecting major investments in research, we need to get back to that. Because at the moment, the patent system just rewards people who file patents for anything, then sue everyone else.