Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Calls For Governments To End Patent Wars 135
concealment writes with news that Amazon's Jeff Bezos has called for new legislation from governments to end abuse of the patent system. He said, 'Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system and see if those laws need to be modified because I don't think some of these battles are healthy for society.' His comments are from an interview with the UK's Metro. Bezos was also optimistic about the future of the private space industry: "If private companies can start to generate profits from this kind of activity then you’ll start to see the flywheel spin more rapidly and we’ll make more progress, because I really do think we want to live in a civilization where millions of people are living and working in space."
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Funny)
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I would get it, but I don't believe it.
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Really? He's licensed it to Apple, and sued Barnes and Noble over it. Definitely working as he intended.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
He could show he means business by putting the "One-click" patent in the public domain and refunding everybody he's sued over it.
Yes, and no. (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with him on patent reform.
However, I suspect that it's impossible to write a set of laws that leeches can't find a way to exploit, for their own benefit at the detriment of the greater good.
Re:Yes, and no. (Score:5, Funny)
I may agree with Bezos, but I still feel a little like it's Satan complaining about forest fires in Hell.
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More like a snake at a dinner party who acts surprised when a guest is missing and there's that suspicious lump slowing sliding down its snake belly.
We need a patent system based on freedom (Score:3, Interesting)
The current patent system is harmful to society because it tramples on freedom and gives unfair powers to patent holders. The purpose of patents is to provide an incentive for innovation and compensate inventors for their hard work. However, it should not infringe on the freedom of others. That would be counter to its purpose. Above all, the system must never serve as a carte blanche for a few to bully others out of the market. What we need is something like this:
1. A special independent fund must be set as
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The current patent system is harmful to society because it tramples on freedom and gives unfair powers to patent holders.
Almost.
It gives power to the people with the most attorneys (and the people who interact least with those attorneys, they just order the attorneys to get on with it then go and play golf).
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Of course, we still need a Patent bureau and a system to manage claims and the proper registrations of inventions. The system should be able to determine the usefulness and popularity of an invention and how much work went into researching and creating the invention. It should also be as automated as possible.
It seems to me that this system would have exactly the same problem we have today: that is, to determine whether if a particular device uses a particular invention. Except that, in your proposal, this information would be used to determine how much compensation the inventor receives. So, it doesn't solve the problem of patent trolls at all, it just changes who feeds the patent trolls (in your system, it would be whoever gives money to the independent fund, i.e., everyone).
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So, it doesn't solve the problem of patent trolls at all, it just changes who feeds the patent trolls (in your system, it would be whoever gives money to the independent fund, i.e., everyone).
No. It removes the power of the troll to prevent others from using the invention and force them out of the market. So it prevents them from forming monopolies which have no place in a free market. The troll needs to prove that a lot of work and research went into the invention. For example, Jeff Bezos would get diddly
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If these are the only changes you want, then it's sufficient to change the current system so that:
1) an infringement can never prevent anyone from offering any products or services; and
2) licensing and punitive damages are set by designated experts (e.g. the USPTO).
These things are completely orthogonal to deciding who gets to pay for inventions -- i.e., the people who buy the products originating from inventions (the current system) versus the people who pay for the independent fund that finances inventors
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MS-DOS was never patented.
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You can start by making sure the law applies to everybody, equally.
This guy only wants an end to the bad PR that is coming out of these wars. He wants the 'five families' to make peace before their political support abandons them.
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You can start by making sure the law applies to everybody, equally.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
--- Anatole France
It's nearly impossible to make a law that applies equally to everyone, because we're all different, in different situations. Companies, even more so. There's no way the same law can apply to a 100,000 person corporation and a mom/pop shop. (Mostly mom&pop are exempt, but not always)
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You say this, but you provide zero evidence that it is so. I'm not sure if you're making a distinction between the law or the corrupt system under which it is implemented, because those are two different problems.
On the topic of could we stop patent abuse, sure we could. Hire more and better patent clerks, pay them a proper wage and encourage them to spend time
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You say this, but you provide zero evidence that it is so. ...and the expense of making a bogus patent claim uncompromisingly huge.
You inadvertently touched upon the GP's point.
What is uncompromisingly huge? How do you make your "uncompromisingly huge" law equally apply to Apple versus Jim Bob's Software? How do you make it apply equally between Apple and Exxon? How about Apple versus Bank of America?
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Easy.
If a jury decides you were pursuing a patent claim in bad faith, the defendant gets your company and you go to jail.
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More likely the 100,000 person corporation buys exemptions to rules that are applied to mom & pop. And the bailouts have proven that the rich have license to steal. So, let's at least a apply a facsimile of equality here.
Re:Yes, and no. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because laws are fixed. In any scenario, if you stare at fixed defenses long enough, you can find some way to get around them. What you need is a vigilant and trustworthy justice system that punishes attempts to get around the law.
It can happen, it's just that it comes closer to fascism than most people are comfortable with. If you want to punish abuses of the law, you have to say, "Even if the law would let you get away with it, I won't." That's not how most people view a free and open society, although arguably it is necessary to maintain one.
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The way to game that is to get to be the man making those decisions. Sometimes, there's just no way to win. You pick the least bad route.
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Sometimes, there's just no way to win. You pick the least bad route.
Quite so. There's no ideal world, and putting more people in prison won't achieve one.
The physicians have a good saying: "first, do no harm."
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"Even if the law would let you get away with it, I won't." That's not how most people view a free and open society, although arguably it is necessary to maintain one.
That society would be neither free nor open.
Free and open societies may allow some injustices to occur. But the notion that totalitarian (not fascist [econlib.org]) societies don't is just totalitarian propaganda. So, the actual choices available are freedom or (soft) slavery.
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Free and open societies may allow some injustices to occur. But the notion that totalitarian (not fascist [econlib.org]) societies don't is just totalitarian propaganda.
Propaganda for a type of government is silly; the people actually in charge can and will make all the difference. The larger problem is that forms of government last across generations, and what might be right for one generation (a dictatorship with a benevolent king) can be terrible the next (the benevolent king's evil son). This is equally true with democracies, republics, federations, and all other forms of government; even anarchy might do alright for a generation or two before devolving into depravit
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Given the complexity of the system, I wonder how it could possibly be fixed without someone using nearly dictatorial powers to overcome it.
It'll be OK. We'll have some rough patches to get through, but really a Constitutional Republic was itself a reflection of the technology of the time. As our race progresses, we discard old systems and move on to ones that make more sense - big thinkers categorize "the State" as such an artifact. Granted, the in-between periods are the ugliest.
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Unfortunately, his One Click (tm) model does not work for patent reform.
Re:Yes, and no. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I suspect that it's impossible to write a set of laws that leeches can't find a way to exploit, for their own benefit at the detriment of the greater good.
Well, you can, it just requires putting more faith in juries and the judiciary than we are currently comfortable with. For example, a good legal code can be summed up in the four words "Do Not Harm Others" if you trust your police, judges, and juries to apply that code fairly (but we don't, and we shouldn't).
Think about it from a software testing perspective, where do you encounter the most errors when testing software? The edge cases right? But with law, every time you try to close a loopholes you create more edge cases. Only with a wholesale re-write can those edges be removed, and there are very, very few laws that have gone through such a re-write in recent history. I would argue that any complex law code is going to have loopholes that the unethical will take advantage of, the more complex the code the more loopholes there will be to abuse.
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While it may be difficult to create a system without leeches attempting to exploit it, it's possible to create systems where the various forces balance eachother.
The fundamental problem with all IPR systems is that all the parties involved in the system gain from having it extended. The government offices managing them, lawyers, holders, they all gain. The paying party, consumers and the aggregate economy, has no representation. The total cost to the economy isn't even calculated and certainly not accounted
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Make patents more expensive (Score:1)
We need to make it much harder for big companies to just mass patent everything they can.
It should cost much more for Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, etc to file a patent vs an individual tinkerer in his home.
Base each patent cost on the entities' current revenue, heavily penalize them after a certain threshold.
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So a subsidiary company with next to zero revenue will own the patents and license them to the real company (for cheap to keep that revenue down). They might even pay the real company to represent them in patent enforcement actions.
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So a subsidiary company with next to zero revenue will own the patents and license them to the real company (for cheap to keep that revenue down). They might even pay the real company to represent them in patent enforcement actions.
Come on, if that were to happen then Microsoft would base all its IP in Ireland and ...
oh.
wait.
never mind.
Re:Make patents more expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually they'll do what Hollywood and the others, such as patent trolling firms and that new entity created to house NorTel's patents, just spin off a LLC or LLP which has no real assets to speak of, houses just one, or a few, patent[s], and which can sue everyone in sight. Whatever you can think of, the lawyers and those politicians beholden to the corporate interests will circumvent either using loopholes embodied in the new law or via court cases that gut the new law on point. We have the best politicians money can buy. And honest because they generally stay bought.
Hell, you can't even limit patents just to individuals or small groups of individuals since corporations are people too, in the eyes of the law. I used to be both a realist about "the system" since I grew up knowing the warts as well as the good and the good kept me somewhat optimistic. Now I can't see much good, if any, left. Thank Bastet that I don't have any kids.
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I don't like the idea of increaseing the price of the patent. You want joe schmuk to be able to patent things as well. What about setting the price of the patent as an exponential of the number of patent you already hold?
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yeah, hence:
Base each patent cost on the entities' current revenue, heavily penalize them after a certain threshold.
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It should cost much more for Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, etc to file a patent vs an individual tinkerer in his home.
Bad idea. The deep pocketed corps will just buy the tinkerer and nothing will change. The cleanest, fastest, most effective fix is simply banning software patents. In other words, just put things back the way they were before this sorry chapter in American business history.
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Let me suggest a different idea. Let's change the incentives.
File a patent. If patent is rejected, it costs the filer a lot*. If patent is granted, it costs you very little.
Overnight, the patent office now has incentive to do real prior art research and reject patents for prior art, or for obviousness. Only if the patent withstands real scrutiny is it granted.
Ov
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This is trivially circumvented:
Lets say it costs $10K to patent something successfully, and there is a $1M penalty for failure.
Company A wishes to patent something, but they know they probably can't get away with it.
They set up a new Company B, worth exactly $10K, and have that company file the patent.
If the filing succeeds, they merge with company B, and acquire their patent portfolio.
If the filing fails, Company B is sued for everything they're worth by the government and goes bankrupt.
Meanwhile, Company
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Well when they transfer the patent, tax the fuck out of the transaction (to match what it would have cost if they'd just patented it outright).
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Yeah so it kills off patent trolls.
Win win.
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Which would stifle innovation coming from individual tinkerers, since companies would not licence patents from them because it would be cheaper to patent something similar and use lawyers to fend off complainers (with the added bonus of controlling the patent)...
No - licensing and transferring ownership are 2 completely different animals.
MIGHT???? (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:MIGHT???? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or isn't Mr. Bezos keeping up with events in the courthouses of the Eastern District of Texas?
What about Amazon's One click patent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon has been licensing their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click [wikipedia.org] to various companies like Apple. I guess Bezos just wants to use other people's patents for free but expects everyone to pay to use their patents.
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Don't hate the player, hate the game.
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When the player helped write the rules for the game I damn well WILL hate the player.
Or have you forgotten a little process known as lobbying?
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No one in the tech industry wrote the rules for the patent game.
You can look to pharma if you want someone to blame.
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Amazon has been licensing their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click [wikipedia.org] to various companies like Apple. I guess Bezos just wants to use other people's patents for free but expects everyone to pay to use their patents.
Not necessarily. He's playing the game the way it has to be played now, according to the law. He'd like the law changed. That doesn't make him a hypocrite unless he honestly doesn't think the new law would apply to him. For patient laws to be changed some of the big players are going to have to make the move to change them, and it's hard to see how that's going to happen since it would invalidate patient chests that have cost, in some cases, billions of dollars to acquire. So if Bezos is serious about this
Re:What about Amazon's One click patent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, so he's part of the problem.
If you're looking for moral perfection before people can have an opinion, you're going to have to wait for a world full martyrs and saints. It's not going to happen.
Like it or not, if you're a tech company to say, you have to participate in the patent wars... or you won't be in business at all. This doesn't mean you don't want the whole system reformed.
I have many disagreements with the banking industry... but you know... I'd like to buy a house... and I'm probably going to get a mortgage from a bank and participate in the silly scheme. I have to live my life too.
Systemic change requires just that... systemic change. All the players operate in the current system under the current rules and you can't fault them for it.
Because that's how capitalism works (Score:2)
Amazon might not like the rules but they still have to accept them as they are today and play like all the others if they don't want to get sued to oblivion. Even Google had to learn that after they got hit by Microsoft pretty hard.
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Amazon has been licensing their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click [wikipedia.org] to various companies like Apple. I guess Bezos just wants to use other people's patents for free but expects everyone to pay to use their patents.
Not necessarily. A system in which patents still exist but must be licensed for a reasonable fee, like a compulsory FRAND, would both end the patent wars as well as keep things like the 1-Click patent intact.
Monopoly versus Licensing (Score:1)
I think you've hit the nail on the head.
Patents are supposed to be licensed, especially if the patent holder has not widely distributed the invention. They are supposed to be licensed after the base patent period, not held as crown jewels and hoarded.
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So you're saying licensing should be compulsory. Maybe a review board available if there is a terms dispute.
Sounds good to me.
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We do that at the UW with tech patents. The inventor assigns the patent to the University, and then has a First Right of Use. If they don't bring it to production in a set period, the license reverts and it can then be licensed from anyone.
Last time I checked there were more than 40 tech patents for solar, biofuel, wind, and other energy techs. Lots of other things like medical tech and so on.
The point of patenting is to encourage the development and advancement of science and the arts.
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meant licensed to anyone, not from anyone. my bad.
One Click (Score:2)
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So he can't change his mind?
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As long as the system is in place that will squash him if he lets his guard down, he'd be a fool to go this route alone. Leaving your company exposed to frivolous litigation is not going to change anything but your position with the company. Amazon is not a sole proprietorship. Bezos has a responsiblity to his shareholders not to expose their investment to this kind of risk.
A timid way to express disagreement (Score:3)
...we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system...
Why has it become "good" writing to hedge everything you ever say? Out with it, man!
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Why has it become "good" writing to hedge everything you ever say?
Because doing that makes the writer seem like less of an idiot when somebody demonstrates that the prediction or argument is flat wrong.
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...we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system...
Why has it become "good" writing to hedge everything you ever say? Out with it, man!
And it's not even "good English." This is what you get when the CEO-speak is run through legal first. The one "nice" thing about Larry Ellison is that not everything he says get screened first. It's pretty refreshing in a bull in a China shop kind of way.
Started to be? (Score:2)
Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation.
Maybe we have always been in a world where patents do the opposite of what they are supposed to do.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
'Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation.
"Might" start to stifle innovation? Has this person not been alive in the same country as the rest of us for the last two decades? From the Shopping Cart on web servers to Nest, the examples of innovation being stifled are extremely obvious and simple to find. I personally would not start up a business in this environment, and most of my friends are the same way. Think tanks dumping patents in to the system without an invention have ensured that even if you have a brilliant idea, someone has a patent already.
While I agree with his point that we must have patent reform, I wonder what planet he is coming from to have just noticed that it "might" be a problem. Most of us in technical jobs have been screaming for reform going on 20 years now. yeah, I'm also in a bit of a sarcastic mood...
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+1 .. I literally fell off my chair when I read "starting to be" and "might start to". What are you smoking Jeff .. can he really be that blind, or does the world just look that different from up in the ivory towers? Smaller tech companies have been veritably being bulldozed by the patent system for at least 15, 20 years.
Amazon One Click Anyone? (Score:2)
Bezos? Seriously? It seems his company's patents helped take the patent war to its current extremes. I hate the patent war, but I smile a little when I think that it could come 'round to bite Amazon in the ass.
How did One Click get approved? The rage (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How did One Click get approved? The rage (Score:5, Funny)
This could get exciting! Everyone would go to zero-click buying.
All storefronts would be rendered in flash and as soon as the page loads items would start crawling their way towards your shopping cart!
Your "shopping" experience would consist of *preventing* items from getting into your cart.
Just realized, this would work really well as a tower defense game.
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Too late, I already filed the patent for zero click buying.
I use remote brain imaging sensors to read your thoughts.
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I would say that no, one-click isn't obvious. What is obvious is a click, followed by some kimd of confirmation of what you are about to buy, maybe needing to re-enter a password for good measure, maybe some additional confirmation of shipping address, and shipping options, or at the very least, "your credit card is about to be charged. Are you sure you want to make this purchase?"... Multiple clicks required. One-click is truly one click: once you've identified the item you want, you click the buy but
Easy fix (Score:5, Informative)
all we need is for the Supreme Court to take up any one of the zillion patent suits and declare,
"Software, business methods, and computer algorithms are not patentable."
Patent laws date back hundreds of years and do not say whether software is patentable or not. It was the interpretation of one judge in the 1980's who said "Yes software is patentable" to open the floodgates and lead us to where we are now. Which the SCOTUS can easily reverse.
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Supporters contrast the US with developing nations which have poor enforcement of property rights and cite the difference as proof of their thesis.
Property rights are important to wealth cr
Just return to the original system (Score:4, Insightful)
Outlaw and expire Business Process and Software patents.
Return to a basic 13 year and 17 year patent and copyright issuance.
And only allow the Person (not fictional Person such as a Corporation) to renew copyrights for a similar period until they die.
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But this doesn't work if a large group works together for a patent, when you have a lab with dozens of people developing and testing different setups and finally settle down to the design that makes the most sense.
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So, who owns the copyright on Office? A Hollywood feature? Even an album produced by a 4-person band in their garage is going to have problems with the whole "copyrights not registered to entities" thing.
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And only allow the Person (not fictional Person such as a Corporation) to renew copyrights for a similar period until they die.
I don't understand what this is supposed to prevent. And what does it mean for "the Person" for well anything that has more than one person involved?
I had a sight where you can donate to support him (Score:5, Funny)
But I used a one-click payment button so I had to take it down.
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what stifles innovation is the common practice (Score:1)
Furthermore, due to the inherent flexibility of the (software) medium, patents used validly are largely inapplicable, because there is always many ways something can be done. I think software companies need to find ways to try to live with that, rather than perverting the legal protection of patenting.
Oh, and this article looks like mainly a hook to hawk more gizmos.
Not unless we have a revolution (Score:2, Insightful)
The USPTO generates the most income for the government, outside of the IRS. There is absolutely no incentive to Congress to get rid of a patent that requires absolutely no materiel, don't exist, but worth a lot of money. For congress, software patents and the like are cash cows.
The only way this will change is we have a revolution and write a new constitution. Technically, we need to get the right people into office; but in this case, we need to get 51% of people into office. And once they are in office
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The USPTO generates the most income for the government, outside of the IRS
- no, that would be the Federal reserve. Of-course we can argue on the definition of 'income', but whatever the Congress gets its hands on is used as if it was 'income', so that's a technicality (and they never failed to raise the so called 'debt ceiling', so they clearly think this can go on forever).
You are right, the Constitution needs to be fixed but you are wrong, there is no such thing as 'right people', not in the long run. In the long run you will not have 'right people' (and I doubt that America
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The only way this will change is we have a revolution and write a new constitution.
Okay, let's have a revolution and rewrite the Constitution; what would we change that would prevent the current political problems from naturally evolving under a new constitution?
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People voted you in, they didn't like when you did, they're sending you to life in prison. Better be careful what you do.
As I've said previously... (Score:2)
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Yeah, invalidating the R&D dollars of old patents is sure to spur innovation. Right. Nothing like having the football pulled from under you when you run up to kick it, right Charlie Brown?
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Yeah, invalidating the R&D dollars of old patents is sure to spur innovation. Right. Nothing like having the football pulled from under you when you run up to kick it, right Charlie Brown?
I specifically stated software & business process patents, most of which are rubbish. 1-Click buying isn't obvious? I'm sure Amazon did a ton of R & D coming up with that one...
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Patents must not prevent people from thinking about them. When the first sentient machine intelligence is granted human rights, all software patents will be invalid.
This is why we must either completely abolish software patents, or start preparing for the machine wars.
Time for some poetic justice. (Score:1)
I expect this is all about how hard it would be for Amazon to launch a smartphone though.
"It's Obvious" Trifecta (Score:2)
First the CEO of Exxon admits AGW is happening, now one of the first software patent trolls admits software patents are causing harm. If we can get Karl Rove to admit that manipulating public perception is anathema to representative democracy, we'll have hit the "it's obvious to everyone but you" trifecta.
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One-Click Hypocrisy (Score:2)
****Now 3rd parties can help invalidate patents*** (Score:2)
My thread that i started [stackexchange.com]got some great feedback. It involves the patents revolves around Worlds Inc suing Blizzard. I was advised that I might want to focus on one of t
I must be from a world in an alternate dimension (Score:1)
"We're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation?"
On my planet -- which coincidentally we also call "Earth" -- patents have long since been stifling innovation, at least in software development. A small company opens its doors, finds a modicum of success, and suddenly a Non-Practicing Entity (what I believe you people call a "patent troll") shows up to claim infringement on an intentionally vague, clearly obvious patent that it managed to purchase. The small company may find
hypocrite (Score:2)
Bezos should back up his words with some action - like renouncing his company's bogus patents.
I'm still boycotting Amazon over the one-click patent. Haven't bought a single item from them since the late 90s.
Hmm: when someone looks to end a war (Score:2)
one word (Score:2)
Everybody knows the dice are loaded (Score:1)
The patient system is broken but that's only a symptom. The real problem is that the people who write laws are in the pockets of the those who benefit from the system being broken.
If the patient system were to be completely re-written from scratch tomorrow, in your country or in mine, does anyone really think the politicians would create a better one than what we currently have?
I don't know how to fix it, but right there is the underlying problem.