Expect a Flood of Competitions As US Tries To Spur Public Inventions 75
coondoggie writes "When it comes to stirring the brains of genius, a good competition can bring forward some really great ideas. That's the driving notion behind myriad public competitions, or challenges, as they are often labeled, that will take place in the near future sponsored by the U.S. government. The competitions are increasing by design as part of the $45 billion America Competes Act renewed by Congress last year that gave every federal department and agency the authority to conduct prize competitions, according to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy."
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Well, okay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the government going to indemnify me if my invention happens to violate one of the fifty gazillion patents that are already out there?
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That's my main concern for something like this too.
You can't shake a stick out there without stepping on a dozen patents owned by corporations with armies of lawyers.
Re:Well, okay... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been that way for a long, long time. FM Radio was not released in the 1930s because RCA had secured the patents on broadcasting, and they desired to protect their existing AM service. They even petitioned the government to provide monoplistic protection.
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Uh..... no. I'm against patent and copy monopolies (except for very very short terms). Those government grants cause more harm than good.
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> They even petitioned the government to provide monoplistic protection.
That is *precisely* what a patent is: a government granted and enforced monopoly.
Boggles the mind how anyone thinks patents are a good way to encourage innovation, monopolies hate innovation. And patents have a very long track record of being used to keep whole industries from making any progress, from the steam engine to aircrafts.
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You hit the nail on the head, You can't create a product these days without a $50 Million dollar war chest of patents and lawyers. You can hold all of the competitions and provide capital for all of the small manufactures you want but if the patent system isn't reigned most are going to be ground under the heal of some international corporation looking to stifle the compilation or die the death of a thousand cuts from patent trolls looking to pillage every cent they can using the patent system as a pirate
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Patent Troll Heaven (Score:1)
I imagine a lot of note-taking at these things.
You're not thinking trollish enough. (Score:3)
You start patenting the ideas NOW. Just as the competition is announced. But you make them ambiguous enough that they can fit almost anything.
And don't forget to also patent the same thing with "on a computer" added.
Re:You're not thinking trollish enough. (Score:5, Funny)
you will owe me. I have already filed for the process of taking any currently used activity, process, or action and converting said activity to be in use "on a computer". I have also patented the next step of commiting these actions alone or in combination with other actions on linked devices, both using physical connectivity to a network , or wirelessly. Pay up, bitches!
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I think that's the idea, taxes pay for what ultimately will end up as private profit.
Patents Are The Problem (Score:5, Informative)
If the US government wants to spur innovation and competition, it needs to fix the broken patent system. To see how bad the problem is, one need look no further than the morass of patent litigation that has beset the cell phone industry.
Re:Patents Are The Problem (Score:5, Funny)
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Same thing, really. As a general rule, politicians are going to spend (1+x)*y where x > 0 and y is tax revenue. If you increase taxes by z, you're almost guaranteed to increase spending by somewhere close to (1+x)*z.
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If the US government wants to spur innovation and competition, it needs to fix the broken patent system. To see how bad the problem is, one need look no further than the morass of patent litigation that has beset the cell phone industry.
... as opposed to how the cell phone industry was innovating prior to patents, in the 1500s.
Are you sure you're not taking your already-existing animus towards the patent system and using it as a post hoc explanation for everything related to technology?
And the other flood of.... (Score:3)
Patent infringement lawsuits because the patent system is so out of control and most new items "invented" will violate 1 or more patents that should have never been issued.
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It's a trap, in this case the patent first legislation simply opens you up to a massive civil suit to regain your invention from favoured corporations who will get first peek at competition entries. Along the lines of, 'Shit that one looks good, don't publish it, pretend it was lost in the mail, while I patent it, let the schmuck spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars in court trying to get back 'MY' patented invention'.
Those competitions had better be pretty bloody public and inventions submitted ha
And In China... (Score:3, Funny)
Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
This kind of thing is a scam. Hold a contest for ideas, pay for only the best idea, and then you can use any of the losing ideas you want for free. It's not a "contest", it's an end run around labor laws.
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Generally it's the teams who spend over and above the prize money who win anyway ...
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Hmm, kind of reminds me of this:
http://www.atari.com/pongdeveloperchallenge [atari.com]
I read through the rules. It's nothing short of slave labor. They pay for only a few submissions and according to the rules every submission whether it wins or not is completely owned by Atari with all rights and copyrights included.
Oh and the "prizes" for the winners are only actually potential prizes. The actual amount paid is based on a percentage of the revenue from the game with the "prize" as the maximum.
What a f| |cking scam.
Doubt it (Score:3)
Expect innovation to dwindle until such time as a garage-shop inventor doesn't need to worry about getting sued for patent infringement.
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Competitons work, kinda. (Score:3)
The problem with competitions is that they tend to produce solutions optimized to win the competition - and that may or may not be a solution that's actually useful to solve the real-world problems the competition is notionally aimed at.
Competitons work, to increase investement... (Score:3)
It seems to me that competitions really focus the currently existing players in a field for publicity purposes. The solutions for contests are often already feasible, but the unclear rewards and the risk of failure deter the investment levels required for the attempts. Somehow the prize money tips the scale and forces the existing player to take on more risk (often even out of proportion to the reward). Maybe that's not particuarly useful to advance technology leading up to the prize, but it does help wi
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And it's a shining example of exactly what I was talking about. The Spirit of St. Louis was a point solution optimized to win the prize - technologically and evolutionarily it was a dead end.
Correlation does not imply causation. The rising demand (in general) for aviation, and the rising
Schizophrenic government is schizophrenic (Score:2)
We have already seen some of these (Score:3)
Darpa has had the Shredder document challenge (http://archive.darpa.mil/shredderchallenge/) , Nasa has had a roboic spheres challenge (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/jan/HQ_12-029_SPHERES_Challenge_Winner.html)
Darpa has been having the autonomous vehicle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge)
The Navy the underwater autonomous vehicle comp. (http://www.sdnews.com/view/full_story/302685/article-Navy-readies-to-host-autonomous-underwater-vehicle-competition)
it seems that these competitions have already been started, there is a track record for this producing results. I worked on the shredder challenge, I found it fun and had a good time creating what I did. It is a good way to focus many people on solutions.
But you are right, the patent/copyright laws are out of whack and are now an impediment to progress, which means an impediment to profit in general just not in specific. The patent time line should go back to 35 years or so.
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So you are against patents but want patent lengths to be more than doubled? Huh?
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Sorry I always confuse the copyright and patent times, it appears to be 20 years from earliest claimed filing date, and filed before 1995 17 years from issue or 20 years from earliest claimed domestic priority date, the longer term applying (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law)
So for more recent patents, its 20 years or 57% of what I said. I am not against patents or copyright. Copyright for up to 120 years for regurlar works
that is 70 years after the death of the author or 120 years afte
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But in terms of Patents, am I wrong that a patent can be renewed multiple times with minor changes to extend the protection of a patent?
Incorrect, rather than totally wrong. That is, a new patent can be issued to anyone making changes to a previously patented invention (how minor is left as an exercise for the new inventor, his examiner, and the courts). The changed patent cannot affect the term of the original patent, however. If the new patent is sufficiently better than the old one, no one would use the original design, but that does not mean that they *couldn't*.
Example: SFB Morse patents the original click-click telegraph (as oppose
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Great! (Score:2)
Can anyone participate?
- - Zhang Wei
All for competitions (Score:5, Interesting)
Having led the Shredder challenge for all of a week or so (the teams killed me :), I can attest that the cash prize offered was (for me) an incredible incentive to come up with a solution. Offering direct prizes for innovative solutions to specific, limited, problems is a great idea and one that can help foster a spirit of inventiveness. Patents are a non-issue unless you plan on commercializing a solution, and if that is the case, you (or the government) could license what is needed.
Take even a cursory look at the inventions produced (and commercialized) by citizens of the United States, and you quickly realize that we created most of the things used in the modern world. It is exactly that spirit of inventiveness that the government should be encouraging to help create new jobs, and a challenge program is a direct and productive way to go about it.
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Patents are a non-issue unless you plan on commercializing a solution, and if that is the case, you (or the government) could license what is needed.
How do you find out which patents you've touched upon without paying for lawyers? How do you find the money to license said patents before you've made any money from your product?
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Patents are a non-issue unless you plan on commercializing a solution, and if that is the case, you (or the government) could license what is needed.
How do you find out which patents you've touched upon without paying for lawyers? How do you find the money to license said patents before you've made any money from your product?
If you come up with a commercially viable (i.e. can make money) product or process, angel or VC money can help you get a jump start. In addition, those type of people have been through the process of helping to get patents on whatever unique stuff you bring to the table as well as providing management and negotiating experience should you find that your product or process requires licensing.
Or perhaps your new shiny thing has a very limited potential market (left-handed shrimp farmers, sane tea party membe
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There is no system like what you're asking for. You do your due diligence (maybe as simple as googling keywords) and call it good. Hopefully you're right. If anyone has a patent, they are the ones that have to find you and contact and/or sue you.
In the end it doesn't matter. If you make too much money and get noticed by the wrong folks, you can end up in court. It wouldn't matter if the patent bringing suit played a direct role in your invention, was a legitimate 'it was my innovative new idea before you ha
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Take even a cursory look at the inventions produced (and commercialized) by citizens of the United States, and you quickly realize that we created most of the things used in the modern world.
Bwahahaha. Seriously, you have been drinking the Kool-Aid too long. Ignorance is bliss I suppose. After moving out of the US, I soon discovered the white-washing that is American history as taught in US schools. With few exceptions, a lot of so-called American inventions were actually invented elsewhere first, and the ideas were stolen and "commercialized" in the US where credit was taken. Invention of the telephone? Not Bell. Airplane? Not the Wright brothers. I can go on and on...
Sure, the US was usually
not worth it (Score:2)
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I think the competition is because most of these will have little or no commercial potential, at least in the near term. If there was a potential for a marketable product the government wouldn't need to throw money at it. There's nothing wrong with funding pure research though.
Symptom of a broken system (Score:1)
The whole free market economy is already supposed to be a 'competition'.
1.) You come up with a new, cool solution to a problem.
2.) Sell it or start a business around it.
3.) "Win" your monetary prize
The fact that they need to sponsor a sub-system within the existing system just demonstrates that the parent system is broken. Many reasons already mentioned....
1.) broken patents
2.) too much govt regulation
3.) too much existing corporate power (yes you can have 2 & 3 at ths same time!)
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The whole free market economy is already supposed to be a 'competition'.
1.) You come up with a new, cool solution to a problem. 2.) Sell it or start a business around it. 3.) "Win" your monetary prize
The fact that they need to sponsor a sub-system within the existing system just demonstrates that the parent system is broken. Many reasons already mentioned....
1.) broken patents 2.) too much govt regulation 3.) too much existing corporate power (yes you can have 2 & 3 at ths same time!)
You might be right, but 2 is totally over publicized that 3 is not even allowed public discourse. 3 is the most important problem of our day. Period. Yes, even above female contraception and gay marriage! Gasp.
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Why Bother? (Score:2)
Nice Idea in Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a startup that is bootstrapping itself as we speak. It is difficult. Banks won't lend to you. VCs want to exploit you. Access to funds is non-existent. One of the ways that the government claims to help startups is with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. They are exceptionally restrictive and prone to cronyism at worst, and extreme risk aversion at best. Solyndra in particular has exacerbated the latter.
Bureaucrats are about the world's least able people to evaluate business ideas or technological innovation. Bureaucrats are the diametric opposite of the risk-takers that entrepreneurs are. They are the last people who ought to be sitting in judgement on the merits of innovative ideas.
So, holding competitions to award prize money to great ideas sounds like an excellent proposition in theory, but in practice it gets sucked down into the mire of why our country is failing badly: the wrong people are in charge.
Work for Free (Score:1)
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Yet another way for the government to get work done for nothing. They pay a trifle and get hordes of people working. Who sponsors the work of all those who do not win this lottery?
FOSS companies? Who pays programmers for improved Linux software (as opposed to paying programmers to try to improve it, in hopes that they get improvements where the company needs it, versus a new entry in /usr/games)?