IBM's Patent Income Slips as Companies Resist 'Godfather' Deals (spokesman.com) 114
"Even as IBM has sued an increasing number of companies, its IP income has shrunk," reports Bloomberg:
Intellectual property rights historically brought in more than $1 billion a year, on average, helping offset massive research and development costs and shrinking revenue. Last year, IBM's income from intellectual property was $626 million, its lowest point since 1996, and 2019 wasn't much higher. While it continues to secure license deals, they are fewer and harder-won, with companies like Airbnb Inc. and Chewy Inc. waging battles in court...
In February, online pet-food seller Chewy requested a court order to block a $36 million patent fee IBM is demanding. Chewy accused IBM of "seeking exorbitant licensing fees for early internet patents having no value." IBM's claims against Chewy include years-old inventions such as targeted advertising and content resizing based on cursor activity, both ubiquitous on the web. Chewy said IBM doesn't make or sell products covered by the vast majority of the thousands of patents it has received over the past 20 years, but instead just threatens to sue if companies don't agree to pay for licenses. IBM has not answered Chewy's complaint, and no trial date has been set.
Companies that use their IP licensing aggressively as a way to make money are often referred to as patent trolls. However, IBM's position as the largest aggregator of U.S. intellectual property is more akin to being a patent godfather, says Robin Feldman, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings. With more than 38,000 active patents in its portfolio, and thousands of license agreements bolstering its legitimacy, IBM's demands have traditionally gone unchallenged, Feldman said. Such patent godfathers, with large portfolios, are "able to make offers that can't be refused." Even some of the most innovative technology giants have licensed IBM patents over the years. Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and LinkedIn are among countless companies that have had to pony up.
IBM also has long served as a patent bank for young companies to jump-start their portfolios. Facebook Inc. was not yet public in 2012 when it bought 750 patents on software and networking from IBM. As Instacart Inc. prepares to go public, it purchased almost 300 IBM patents in January ranging from e-commerce to smart shopping bags.
Noting a series of Supreme Court verdicts making it easier to invalidate a patent, Feldman, the law professor, told Bloomberg that "Being the godfather isn't what it used to be. It's not that patent aggregation as a business is over. You just make less money."
In February, online pet-food seller Chewy requested a court order to block a $36 million patent fee IBM is demanding. Chewy accused IBM of "seeking exorbitant licensing fees for early internet patents having no value." IBM's claims against Chewy include years-old inventions such as targeted advertising and content resizing based on cursor activity, both ubiquitous on the web. Chewy said IBM doesn't make or sell products covered by the vast majority of the thousands of patents it has received over the past 20 years, but instead just threatens to sue if companies don't agree to pay for licenses. IBM has not answered Chewy's complaint, and no trial date has been set.
Companies that use their IP licensing aggressively as a way to make money are often referred to as patent trolls. However, IBM's position as the largest aggregator of U.S. intellectual property is more akin to being a patent godfather, says Robin Feldman, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings. With more than 38,000 active patents in its portfolio, and thousands of license agreements bolstering its legitimacy, IBM's demands have traditionally gone unchallenged, Feldman said. Such patent godfathers, with large portfolios, are "able to make offers that can't be refused." Even some of the most innovative technology giants have licensed IBM patents over the years. Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and LinkedIn are among countless companies that have had to pony up.
IBM also has long served as a patent bank for young companies to jump-start their portfolios. Facebook Inc. was not yet public in 2012 when it bought 750 patents on software and networking from IBM. As Instacart Inc. prepares to go public, it purchased almost 300 IBM patents in January ranging from e-commerce to smart shopping bags.
Noting a series of Supreme Court verdicts making it easier to invalidate a patent, Feldman, the law professor, told Bloomberg that "Being the godfather isn't what it used to be. It's not that patent aggregation as a business is over. You just make less money."
Time to rid them, pox on innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd be better off without software patents. Most of them are frivolous, obvious, or simply emulate every-day physical objects. The bullshit far outweighs real patents with real elbow grease behind them.
Re: Time to rid them, pox on innovation (Score:1)
Re: Time to rid them, pox on innovation (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention it takes hours out of a software developerâ(TM)s workday to file a patent while they could presumably be doing something more pressing. But it is nice seeing the $$$ and prestige
Its actually a valuable process in the sense it is like documentation and code review. You are forced to meaningfully describe how things work to your attorney. Yes meaningfully describe. Do not confuse what your attorney gives the Patent Office with what you give your attorney. The latter (what your wrote) is valuable as engineering documentation.
Re: Time to rid them, pox on innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
Its actually a valuable process in the sense it is like documentation and code review. You are forced to meaningfully describe how things work to your attorney. Yes meaningfully describe. Do not confuse what your attorney gives the Patent Office with what you give your attorney. The latter (what your wrote) is valuable as engineering documentation.
This is a waste of time and resources. If you want documentation write it yourself or talk to a technical writer.
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Its actually a valuable process in the sense it is like documentation and code review. You are forced to meaningfully describe how things work to your attorney. Yes meaningfully describe. Do not confuse what your attorney gives the Patent Office with what you give your attorney. The latter (what your wrote) is valuable as engineering documentation.
This is a waste of time and resources. If you want documentation write it yourself or talk to a technical writer.
You need to read more carefully, you are inadvertently saying the documentation you or your technical writer produced is a waste of time and resources. Note that I am referring to two documents being produced, one by you (or your technical writer) and it has two roles, internal documentation and a basis for your patent attorney. The second document is produced by your attorney and filed with the Patent Office. In short, your work product, that first document, is not a waste as claimed because what you prepa
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This is a waste of time and resources. If you want documentation write it yourself or talk to a technical writer.
You need to read more carefully, you are inadvertently saying the documentation you or your technical writer produced is a waste of time and resources.
The lawyer and associated interfacing to the lawyer is the waste of time and resources.
I'm sorry if it is not clear yet I am clueless as to how my remarks could be interpreted in any other context. Obviously I did not mean documentation is a waste of resources. That would be silly and such an interpretation would leave the sentence being contradictory and not making any sense.
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The lawyer and associated interfacing to the lawyer is the waste of time and resources.
Not if you want the patent to be worth anything. How the legal jargon and other details are represented in the patent application can make all the difference in the world when it's time to go to court over an infringement, and the lawyer is the one that understands *that* part of the process, not the engineer. Unless you're implicitly saying that patents themselves are a waste of time and resources.
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The lawyer and associated interfacing to the lawyer is the waste of time and resources ...
The point you are missing is the interface to the lawyer is an engineering document produced by an engineer with the goal of describing how the system works from an engineering perspective.
Technical documentation by attorneys is a joke. (Score:2)
Exactly. Technical documentation by attorneys, on a small but critical part of your project, taking care of legal loopholes.
What can go wrong ?
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"Its actually a valuable process in the sense it is like documentation and code review."
Software patents are spam for software developers. They are an insult to what developers can and cannot write on their keyboard. We don't need inventors to tell us what we can or cannot write.
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Why is "what you give a patent attorney" useful documentation? It's not designed to be clear to the other people who work on the project, or to users or customers, and it will never be released to the public. As you allude to in passing, the published information will be written to be practically impenetrable and as generic as possible.
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Why is "what you give a patent attorney" useful documentation? It's not designed to be clear to the other people who work on the project, ...
Actually it is. What you give the attorney is your best description of how the system works from your engineering perspective. You are not writing the legalese stuff the lawyer sends to the Patent Office. The lawyer translates your engineers description into the legalese. Your engineers description is valuable to other engineers.
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It's not half as valuable to other engineers as something written for them would be. Filling for my patent involved explaining a bunch of basic CPU pipeline design to the attorneys for background, and taking them several times how much of it was prior art, for example because it is thoroughly covered in college textbooks. It took ten or more hours to explain to the lawyers what could be conveyed to a competent (in-domain) engineer in less than one hour. The requirement for patent attorneys to have a tech
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It's not half as valuable to other engineers as something written for them would be. Filling for my patent involved explaining a bunch of basic CPU pipeline design to the attorneys for background, and taking them several times how much of it was prior art, for example because it is thoroughly covered in college textbooks. It took ten or more hours to explain to the lawyers what could be conveyed to a competent (in-domain) engineer in less than one hour. The requirement for patent attorneys to have a technical degree doesn't mean a given one is "a person of ordinary skill in the [relevant] art".
That was not my experience. The document I produced in a computer vision domain explained a little jargon and was mostly on the algorithms of a process. Much as one might do for a document designed for someone new to the project. There were a handful of followup emails asking for clarification regarding something in an algorithm. Upon reflection these often seemed like something good to point out to a newcomer as well.
Again, what I received back from the attorney to review before submission to the Patent
Patents are Poor Docs [Re: Time to rid them, pox (Score:2)
I agree. It's usually written to win lawsuits and sway judges, not explain technical aspects, at least not in a sufficiently compact way.
Re:Time to rid them, pox on innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright can handle the exact copying of code, but the idea that someone can patent a method of resizing object when the display size changes is fairly obvious. What's next; patenting scroll bars when the content exceeds the display size?
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Very reasonable idea - as I do not think it's possible to revert software patents in the US, limiting is a very good solution, as they do not require expensive research - either some algorithm works or not, and writing a basic test or generating proper large testing dataset is nowadays not a complicated task (vs e.g. bending metal and then testing it's properties like e.g. building a rocket is), and lastly time from idea to having a product is quite short in the software business.
Another thing I'd change is
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Without patents, no startup culture (Score:3)
We'd be better off without software patents.
Not really. You would would destroy startup culture. Its virtually impossible for a startup to get funding without some sort of patent.
"But I'll have first mover advantage" said almost no one who got funding beyond the friends, family and fools level.
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Not really. You would would destroy startup culture. Its virtually impossible for a startup to get funding without some sort of patent.
uh, if there are no software patents, they are removed from consideration.
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Not really. You would would destroy startup culture. Its virtually impossible for a startup to get funding without some sort of patent.
uh, if there are no software patents, they are removed from consideration.
Nope. Patents are essential to investors. You did NOT create a level playing field, you just heaped a whole lot more risk on potential investors. And what will their reaction be, it will be far less investing. Far fewer startups will get early funding. You will basically force startups into bootstrapping, force investors to only get involved at growth stages not startup stages.
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I just don't see VCs simply keeping their money under a mattress.
They wouldn't. Getting funding from a VC is like winning a competition against all the other proposals they are looking at. Software based system with no software patents would just be more risky, they would be less attractive, the VCs would simply choose to invest in other projects where there was IP protection since they seem less risky.
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Nope. Patents are essential to investors.
At least a number of actual venture capital firms disagree [archive.org] as far as software patents are concerned. Benchmark Capital was behind a large part of eBay's starting capital, so it's not like they are only investors in niche companies whose products are hard to replicate or so.
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Seriously, you are going to use the "just plan on being a unicorn" argument?
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You are conflating the errors made in the Patent Office with patents in general. Yes reform is needed. However throwing out patents entirely would be counterproductive.
The statement I quoted is much broader and diverse than just about patent quality.
Seriously, you are going to use the "just plan on being a unicorn" argument? :-)
No, and neither do those VC firms.
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I am sorry but that citation is "unicorn" oriented as it cites the "the most successful investments" as an example.
That's used as a counterpoint to life sciences rather than to suggest that these are the only investments in software companies they care about.
Furthermore its complaints are largely addressed by reforms not abolishing software patents.
That's an argument that has been used for at least 30 years now (and probably more), and not a single reform has actually achieved this. How about we first design and introduce those reforms that will solve everything and only then continue granting software patents?
It also grossly overstates the power of copyright.
It doesn't overstate it. Virtually all software companies get most if not all of their income thanks
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Furthermore its complaints are largely addressed by reforms not abolishing software patents.
That's an argument that has been used for at least 30 years now (and probably more), and not a single reform has actually achieved this.
You conflate people complaining and the patent office trying to meaningfully reform. Those are two different things.
How about we first design and introduce those reforms that will solve everything and only then continue granting software patents?
So we burn down the village to save it. Its OK though, we'll build something later, maybe.
It also grossly overstates the power of copyright.
It doesn't overstate it. Virtually all software companies get most if not all of their income thanks to the protections offered by copyright law.
Patents protect a design. Copyright protects only one implementation of that design. With only copyright protection a design can be copied with with a different implementation.
Patents undermine this, because even if you wrote everything yourself, patents may still apply and take away your income or reduce it
So your argument is that its OK to take income from the inventor but not the person that copies the invention?
The small companies that rely on patents are the actual unicorns in the software industry.
Not the small compan
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You conflate people complaining and the patent office trying to meaningfully reform. Those are two different things.
I'm looking at the situation we have been in for the past 30+ years, and the fact that there is no perspective of meaningful improvements any time soon. You are conflating wishful thinking and the reality actual software developers have to work in.
How about we first design and introduce those reforms that will solve everything and only then continue granting software patents?
So we burn down the village to save it. Its OK though, we'll build something later, maybe.
Emotional analogies that have no basis in reality are not helpful. The patent system is not a village. It's a societal construct with as purpose promoting progress in science and the useful arts. Temporarily stopping with granting (software) patents doesn't burn t
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You conflate people complaining and the patent office trying to meaningfully reform. Those are two different things.
I'm looking at the situation we have been in for the past 30+ years, and the fact that there is no perspective of meaningful improvements any time soon. You are conflating wishful thinking and the reality actual software developers have to work in.
LOL. A useless point as people have been calling for the abolishment (or non-acceptance) or software patents for an even longer time. I'm sorry, on the wishful thinking scale abolishment is even farther out there than reform.
It's a societal construct with as purpose promoting progress in science and the useful arts. Temporarily stopping with granting (software) patents doesn't burn that system to the ground either.
Other than you hand all the leverage to the wealthy and powerful. Patents promote science and art by rewarding the small inventor. Your removal of that reward completely undoes that promotion. So yes, you are actually burning it all down with respect to that promotion.
Patents protect a design. Copyright protects only one implementation of that design. With only copyright protection a design can be copied with with a different implementation.
I think it's important to use proper terminology in technical discussions, so: patents are supposed to cover inventions, not designs
Semantics. Replace
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That is not true. If the code is not based on some public reference material or is doing something that does not have a quite obvious implementation then there is actually a potential copyright issue. If you independently discovered some insight or trick that makes things work, but is the same trick or insight the original author had your implementation may be too similar and violate copyright.
Just one quick reply already: that is patently (hah!) wrong. This is not how copyright/author's right works in any jurisdiction I know of (US and EU). If you independently created your work without being exposed to their creation, both you and the other person will independently hold copyright on your own creation. That's case even if both creations would happen to be completely identical (although the proof of not being exposed to the other person's work will be much harder in that case, obviously).
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That is not true. If the code is not based on some public reference material or is doing something that does not have a quite obvious implementation then there is actually a potential copyright issue. If you independently discovered some insight or trick that makes things work, but is the same trick or insight the original author had your implementation may be too similar and violate copyright.
Just one quick reply already: that is patently (hah!) wrong. This is not how copyright/author's right works in any jurisdiction I know of (US and EU). If you independently created your work without being exposed to their creation, both you and the other person will independently hold copyright on your own creation. That's case even if both creations would happen to be completely identical (although the proof of not being exposed to the other person's work will be much harder in that case, obviously).
Ironically you are disproving your own point as copyright is being shown to be an inferior protection of IP compared to patents for the small inventor. The wealthy and powerful can just do a cleanroom implementation to copy you.
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Ironically you are disproving your own point as copyright is being shown to be an inferior protection of IP compared to patents for the small inventor. The wealthy and powerful can just do a cleanroom implementation to copy you.
You're incorrigible.
Yes, both patents and copyrights have upsides and downsides. I've acknowledged this before. My argument was that the main upside of copyright is its fundamental property that independent creation means you own your creation. You denied that this was true.
It's rather baffling to me how you've been posting tons of messages on this subject and did not even know that. You also never addressed my argument that the "wealthy and powerful" right now can just smack you down with their patents (or
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It's rather baffling to me how you've been posting tons of messages on this subject and did not even know that.
It was late, I misspoke, I am actually aware of the cleanroom design for replication of copyrighted material. Two teams with no contact. One studies the copyrighted material they wish to copy and creates a specification. Another implements that specification, while never having been exposed to the original copyrighted material.
You also never addressed my argument that the "wealthy and powerful" right now can just smack you down with their patents (or seek rent), like IBM has been doing since forever.
You ASSUME the startup is infringing. You ASSUME the infringing feature is critical and can't simply be dropped. You ASSUME the feature can't be implemented in an alternative non-infr
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You conflate people complaining and the patent office trying to meaningfully reform. Those are two different things.
I'm looking at the situation we have been in for the past 30+ years, and the fact that there is no perspective of meaningful improvements any time soon. You are conflating wishful thinking and the reality actual software developers have to work in.
LOL. A useless point as people have been calling for the abolishment (or non-acceptance) or software patents for an even longer time. I'm sorry, on the wishful thinking scale abolishment is even farther out there than reform.
First of all, complaints about patent quality and trivial patents long predate the introduction of software patents. The problem with trivial patents has existed for at least a 100 years, when the conscious decision was made to make small improvements patentable [researchgate.net]:
This step may be referred to as the killing of the flash of genius concept, and effectively kept the innovation threshold low. ... ...
The establishment and evolution of German patent law in the late nineteenth century was very much driven by interest groups, of which the German Chemical Association was an important one.
So we can see that the reforms that sought to protect corporate cumulative innovation were successful, but had built-in defects from the perspective of competitors seeking to enter the market either as imitators or innovators. The killing of the flash of genius concept served as an enabler to anti-competitive behaviour by allowing firms to raise the cost of follow-on innovation and raising barriers to market entry that could become excessive. And it still appears to do this.
It also shows that the problem is not necessarily limited to software. I can't say much about other fields, as I haven't researched them nor do I have much personal experience there. The fact that they were _still_ granting patents on what amounts
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Creating a barrier to imitators is the rightful and proper role of a patent, ie to protect
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Well, not being an investor, I can't comment. However you can't deny the incredible cost of patent enforcement to business. In the instant example, a company having to fight against a potential $34 million impost for banal website functions - I hope they aren't planning to use their emotive arguments in court, they will fail. IBM's business is not and has never been impacted by websites displaying targeted advertising or resizing content. Are you saying hundreds of thousands/millions of businesses should be
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Not really. You would would destroy startup culture. Its virtually impossible for a startup to get funding without some sort of patent.
No shortage of ways for startups to get funding that don't rely on VC.
"But I'll have first mover advantage" said almost no one who got funding beyond the friends, family and fools level.
If there were no patents and a startup had something of value to offer investors a different metric would be used in its place.
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Not really. You would would destroy startup culture. Its virtually impossible for a startup to get funding without some sort of patent.
No shortage of ways for startups to get funding that don't rely on VC.
"But I'll have first mover advantage" said almost no one who got funding beyond the friends, family and fools level.
If there were no patents and a startup had something of value to offer investors a different metric would be used in its place.
Not really. You would would destroy startup culture. Its virtually impossible for a startup to get funding without some sort of patent.
No shortage of ways for startups to get funding that don't rely on VC.
In theory, for example you could bootstrap. And then a larger wealthier company could just copy your product/service. Its what happened before patents. Patents evolved for a reason. I am all for reform, a better process and greater requirements for a non-trivial inventions and for prior art to be more of a consideration. But frankly people have not really thought through discarding the concept of a patent. It evolved into existence due to necessity. That Patent Office have become lazy and stupid does not ch
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I am all for reform, a better process and greater requirements for a non-trivial inventions and for prior art to be more of a consideration. But frankly people have not really thought through discarding the concept of a patent. It evolved into existence due to necessity. That Patent Office have become lazy and stupid does not change this fact.
The problem with value proposition of patents in the modern era in general is innovation itself is increasingly WORTHLESS. Technology trees are so expansive, global complexity of systems so massive that large volumes of necessary boring incremental work have become the primary drivers of progress. This creates an ugly reality in which due to global complexity literally everyone infringes something whether they know it or not or have enough money on hand to make it worthwhile for a patent holder to sue the
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That's odd. There are plenty of startups in countries with no software patents.
It's almost as though patents are a drain on productive innovation in software.
(Hint: They are.)
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That's odd. There are plenty of startups in countries with no software patents.
And they file patents in the US, EU, etc
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In that case the investors are paying for lock-in (oligopolies) instead of innovation itself. I find it hard to believe that investors would stop investing all-together if software patents went away.
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Addendum:
Here's an analogy: A new car company Gresla is granted a patent on light-green cars. It's frivolous, but Gresla gets the patent anyhow. Now only Gresla can sell light-green cars. Anyone who wants a light-green car MUST go to Gresla and only Gresla , and thus they can mark up the price of light-green cars because they have no competition. Investors like that.
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In that case the investors are paying for lock-in (oligopolies) instead of innovation itself. I find it hard to believe that investors would stop investing all-together if software patents went away.
Investors would invest, just not in software based products. Every investment decision is basically a competition between a dozen or more competing idea. The ones without IP protection would simply be too risky and the investor would drop them from the pool of ideas under consideration.
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But they are choosing the one with the patent because it has a govt-granted monopoly for a while, NOT necessarily because it's the best company. Without patents, investors will still invest, but spread it more evenly based on merit and execution instead of court power. In other words, patents don't increase total investments made. Investors invest because it's a better deal than letting cash sit in the bank.
Ridding patents may even increase total innovation and make average investments pay off more. It woul
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But they are choosing the one with the patent because it has a govt-granted monopoly for a while, NOT necessarily because it's the best company. Without patents, investors will still invest, but spread it more evenly based on merit and execution instead of court power.
No, they will invest in the least risky. Their decisions are strictly risk/reward. Make your domain inherently riskier due to the lack of patents and they will invest in other domains.
In other words, patents don't increase total investments made. Investors invest because it's a better deal than letting cash sit in the bank.
And investing in an area with patents is a better deal than investing in an area without patents.
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Patents are valuable to investors because they give them a temporary monopoly on a technology. But this "badge" is pretty arbitrary. You might as well toss dice to assign them to random startups if a magic monopoly is the only thing that motivates investors. It's very silly.
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Patents are valuable to investors because they give them a temporary monopoly on a technology. But this "badge" is pretty arbitrary. You might as well toss dice to assign them to random startups if a magic monopoly is the only thing that motivates investors. It's very silly.
First, patents are also valuable to inventors, especially small inventors, because they give them a temporary monopoly on a technology.
Second, its not that a patent motivates investors, its that a patent changes the risk/reward. The quality and applicability of the patent are also part of that risk/reward. A patent is not some sort of checkbox on a list.
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Perhaps in non-software areas, but it's rarely useful that way in software. I would guestimate for every 1 software patent that has this characteristic, at least 100 are BS and/or "in case" corporate filler.
We shouldn't prop up piles of corporate BS for the sake of a rare Norman Rockwell-esque "brave garage hero".
The vast majority of software entrepreneurs are automating an existing physical business or service.
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Perhaps in non-software areas, but it's rarely useful that way in software.
Again, that argues for reform not abolishment.
The vast majority of software entrepreneurs are automating an existing physical business or service.
Which is pretty much what many mechanical inventions have done, automating an existing manual process. See numerous mechanical inventions in agriculture that did so.
For software let's consider computer vision. The human visual system does things instantly that we have, at best, a very hard time describing how to do to a computer - thank you millions of years of evolution. Developing a computer based system that can do what an every day ordinary human can do c
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Nobody has figured out how to reform it in a way that can be written down in unambiguous language.
But it's roughly 50 times easier in software on average. It's protecting trivial happen-stance.
It's makes it les
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Nobody has figured out how to reform it in a way that can be written down in unambiguous language.
I think we both have enough common sense to tell the trivial and the BS from the worthy. I think Patent Examiners could do the same if given the authority, if they have some software background. I think part of the problem was that early on there were examiners with little to no knowledge of software making decisions and that set precedents. I think reform would involve admitting we screwed up, hire examiners with some understanding of software or train them for it, and then let them apply some common sense
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> I think we both have enough common sense to tell the trivial and the BS from the worthy. I think Patent Examiners could do the same if given the authority, if they have some software background.
The patent office prefers something more objective than a "feel" for obviousness. Otherwise it can get accused of bias or inconsistency. It's why prior art plays a big role. To improve such judgement, something like a mini-jury of relevant experts would probably be needed, and that would crank up the cost and pr
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> I think we both have enough common sense to tell the trivial and the BS from the worthy. I think Patent Examiners could do the same if given the authority, if they have some software background.
The patent office prefers something more objective than a "feel" for obviousness. Otherwise it can get accused of bias or inconsistency. It's why prior art plays a big role. To improve such judgement, something like a mini-jury of relevant experts would probably be needed, and that would crank up the cost and processing time of patents.
Patent officers used to have more discretion. Abuse was handled via the appeals process. It is this notion of making things less discretionary, more by the book, that opened the door to trivial software patents because the book did not consider them. The course you seem to prefer is part of the problem.
> Again, without the patent your invention can be replicated with no recourse.
If it's trivial or bullshit, nothing of value was lost.
If its trivial or BS it the patent should not be awarded. Your proposal destroys the non-trivial, mine preserves it.
> As someone who has done computer vision in academia and private settings I beg to differ.
Maybe you are the exception to the rule, I can't tell. I already agreed it may hurt a small portion of legitimate R&D, and you may just be that
Computer vision is not a unicorn, what I experience in computer vision occurs elsewhere too.
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If they cannot find a way to get their act together and separate the trivial from real ideas, then it would be net better to abandon software patents altogether.
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If they cannot find a way to get their act together and separate the trivial from real ideas, then it would be net better to abandon software patents altogether.
Fortunately we have centuries of experience doing that with non-software. As we have patent officers that are trained in and specialize in mechanical, pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc, we merely need patent officers that are trained in and specialize in software.
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Maybe it's just not practical to hire that many specialists. The world and technology got more complicated since the Patent Office was formed.
For example, I generally know CRUD software well (business automation), but not "machine vision". The sub-divisions of "software" keep growing over time. (And it may be the same with other specialists.)
Perhaps societal systems that worked in a simpler world are just not practical anymore. Sh
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Maybe what's trivial to one person is not trivial to another. If I reviewed machine vision patents, something may look innovative to me that for somebody in that specialty it's not. It's not realistic for the patent office to hire sub-specialists to cover ALL the possible sub-specialties.
The same can be said for electronics, for pharmaceuticals, and various other fields and yet the patent office manages. For what its worth computer vision code is not necessarily all that different. Whether the bits being "twiddled" represents pixels, edge elements, gradient magnitudes, gradient orientation its just algorithms and data like so many other things. Trivial code is still trivial code regardless of what the bits represent.
Also look at a lot of famous troublesome software patents. There is no m
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I don't that's a realistic approach, but I definitely agree that patent law is badly broken. Actually, your Subject is kind of broken, too. Why didn't you use something like "SW patents now a pox on innovation"? Pretty sure that would have fit, but if not there are tighter forms.
Unfortunately I don't see any simple solution approach to fixing patent law (including the software patents). I would like to see solution approaches that favor small companies over big ones, and also reforms that discourage buying
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Dear Citizen,
It appears that you do not "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Our patented AI system has automatically enrolled you in a free mandatory citizen training course on the value of intellectual property in our society.
Sincerely,
The Powers That Be
Make or sell products? Who cares? (Score:1)
Chewy said IBM doesn't make or sell products covered by the vast majority of the thousands of patents it has received over the past 20 years, but instead just threatens to sue if companies don't agree to pay for licenses.
What does making products have to do with having patents? If you have a patent, you're expected to defend it in court by pursuing legal action against infringers. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the way it is.
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What does making products have to do with having patents?
That was supposed to the modern purpose of patents, wasn't it? To protect people who do things from those who don't, not the other way around.
Owning and not manufacturing is critical (Score:3)
What does making products have to do with having patents?
That was supposed to the modern purpose of patents, wasn't it? To protect people who do things from those who don't, not the other way around.
Nope. Absolutely wrong. The old and continuing purpose of patents was to reward the inventor, who is not necessarily the person who makes and sells things. The patent system rightfully recognized that an inventor may not have the resources to take an invention to market, that they would be forced to partner with someone or something with much more money and resources than the inventor. The patent was something to give the inventor a little strength in the negotiations. That power being able to sue an infrin
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That was supposed to the modern purpose of patents, wasn't it? To protect people who do things from those who don't, not the other way around.
Nope. Absolutely wrong. The old and continuing purpose of patents was to reward the inventor, who is not necessarily the person who makes and sells things.
Why reward the inventor in the first place? What is the benefit to society? Simply giving someone a legal grant backed by the states monopoly on violence does not address the underlying issue of the justification for doing so in the first place which seems to be the gist of parents point.
I very much doubt members of society would accept the proposition the reason a patent is granted is simple enrichment of the inventor. There has to be something in it for society some shared benefit that is obtained in
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That was supposed to the modern purpose of patents, wasn't it? To protect people who do things from those who don't, not the other way around.
Nope. Absolutely wrong. The old and continuing purpose of patents was to reward the inventor, who is not necessarily the person who makes and sells things.
Why reward the inventor in the first place? What is the benefit to society? Simply giving someone a legal grant backed by the states monopoly on violence does not address the underlying issue of the justification for doing so in the first place which seems to be the gist of parents point.
I very much doubt members of society would accept the proposition the reason a patent is granted is simple enrichment of the inventor. There has to be something in it for society some shared benefit that is obtained in return for such a grant. You are after all infringing upon the freedoms of others by granting it.
In addition to enriching the inventor, the patent process requires that the invention be disclosed, so it can be practiced by anyone once the patent has expired. That is the benefit to society.
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Why reward the inventor in the first place? What is the benefit to society?
In addition to the societal benefit described by the other poster that answered, another benefit is gained by encouraging the inventor to keep inventing instead of sitting on his laurels. The idea is to allow the inventor to profit from his invention for a limited time, which encourages him to keep inventing during that time because that money train won't last forever and he'll need a new one. As a result society gets more cool in
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That was supposed to the modern purpose of patents, wasn't it? To protect people who do things from those who don't, not the other way around.
Nope. Absolutely wrong. The old and continuing purpose of patents was to reward the inventor, who is not necessarily the person who makes and sells things.
Why reward the inventor in the first place? What is the benefit to society?
(1) In encourages invention and investment. (2) As the other responder mentioned the monopoly is temporary.
Basically getting the invention in the public domain after 20 years is better than never having the invention at all. Well those inventions coming from small inventors. You will still have the employees of large powerful corporations inventing things to some degree.
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The old and continuing purpose of patents was to reward the inventor, who is not necessarily the person who makes and sells things
I'd argue that inventing counts as "doing things". Perhaps you wouldn't, but I would.
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The old and continuing purpose of patents was to reward the inventor, who is not necessarily the person who makes and sells things
I'd argue that inventing counts as "doing things". Perhaps you wouldn't, but I would.
We don't all have a billionaire daddy like yours to fund our pet projects. :-) Seriously, some invention are beyond the inventor's means to bring to market. It not a matter of desire, its literally a matter of can't no matter how much they would want to.
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What does making products have to do with having patents?
Yep. Take a look at ARM . . . do they earn any money baking chips, or building devices . . . ?
Or do they make money licensing the brilliant architectures that their folks come up with . . . ?
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Yep. Take a look at ARM . . . do they earn any money baking chips, or building devices . . . ?
Good point, but I vaguely remember something about being required to have any product based on ones patents, or was it just easier to enforce a patent this way, or my memory is not correct?
Re:Make or sell products? Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
that's incorrect. It is Trademarks you need to defend.
Actually:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com]
Lawyers will give you stirring and emotional speeches about how under the wonderful democratic system anybody, even the lowliest most destitute citizen, can obtain shining beautiful justice through the legal system. Unfortunately lawyers are completely full of shit. Suing costs shit-tons of money which most poor inventors cannot afford anymore than most regular citizens can afford it. The reason is that corporations can afford to drag a lawsuit through endless flaming legal hoops all the way to higher courts or even SCOTUS where the bill for a single case starts at $250000 and only goes up from there. This is why I continue to defend my long standing claim that the legal system, including patent law, is mainly just a weapon created by politicians for the wealthy to use as an instrument of coercion and blackmail against the regular citizenry. This is also why corporations and the wealthy are against regular citizens pooling their resources in unions and consumer associations in order to finance lawsuits they could not otherwise afford. That kind of organising by the citizenry allows them to beat their economic betters at their own game because a lot of lawsuit filed by their economic betters would be thrown out of court if the citizen could only afford to fight the suit. However, the moneyed classes are relying on that last point, for the citizen to lose heart at the sight of the ruinous legal costs. The exact same basically applies for small businesses, they too are vulnerable to being extorted via the legal system by bigger economic operators.
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I think you misunderstood the earlier comment. If you have a patent, you can enforce it against infringement that happens before it expires, even if you don't enforce it against most infringement. If you have a trademark, but you allow it to be used as a generic term, you lose the right to enforce trademark protections for it. You don't have to sue to protect either kind of grant, but you may need to; but once your trademark becomes a generic term, courts can disregard the trademark issued by the tradema
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I think you misunderstood the earlier comment. If you have a patent, you can enforce it against infringement that happens before it expires, even if you don't enforce it against most infringement. If you have a trademark, but you allow it to be used as a generic term, you lose the right to enforce trademark protections for it. You don't have to sue to protect either kind of grant, but you may need to; but once your trademark becomes a generic term, courts can disregard the trademark issued by the trademark office. Patents are not "perishable" in the same way. (On the other hand, trademarks do not expire as long as they continue to be used by the mark's owner.)
Allow a trademark to be used as a generic term?? ... you can always enforce patents?? .. Ok, If we for a moment assume that we live in a La-La-land where it is possible stop the entire English speaking world from using your trademark as a generic term by suing the pants off of every English speaker who takes your trade mark in vain then you get to keep your trademark as long as you defend it. In the real world, however, you can't sue the pants off of every English speaker on earth that uses your trade mark
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Christ you're a moron. Fucking hell man, it was explained to you. You don't get to define your own reality just because you can't understand a few simple principles. Fuck me, you're denser than creimer.
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Christ you're a moron. Fucking hell man, it was explained to you. You don't get to define your own reality just because you can't understand a few simple principles. Fuck me, you're denser than creimer.
Interesting comment. Next time you should not chicken out by going AC, you should put your name to your angry outbursts of profanity to demonstrate your debate winning arsenal of ad hominem insults and your copious and imaginative references to sexual intercourse so everybody knows what an Alpha you are. However, I'll give you another chance. Explain to me how you are going to prevent your trademark from becoming genericized like 'Kleenex' for example, the public took that trade mark and made it a generic w
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Re: Make or sell products? Who cares? (Score:2)
Patents are expiring, finally. (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM also used to have tons of purely hardware patents for all kinds of semiconductor manufacturing, but these days IBM is just a large software consultancy shop.
Re:Patents are expiring, finally. (Score:5, Informative)
The most obnoxious software patents granted in late 90-s and early 2000-s are by now expired. And newer patents have to be much more narrow and more technical, with lots more of prior art being recognized by the USPTO. So it's much harder to use them as a weapon.
Are you sure? I quickly browsed a few software patents from 2018 [freepatentsonline.com] (latest data available on that site regarding granted patents) and I don't really see an improvement. E.g.
* https://www.freepatentsonline.... [freepatentsonline.com] : present auto-complete options for text input, whereby the offered options include exactly what you typed until now, and at least one extra option
* https://www.freepatentsonline.... [freepatentsonline.com] : a tracking system whereby the tracked people have the option to say "I don't want to give my current location" when someone requests it
* https://www.freepatentsonline.... [freepatentsonline.com] : two-way communication with peripherals using the instant messaging infrastructure of a social network via translation by a third party server (e.g. you can IM to your printer to print something, and the service translates the error code of the printer into an IM back to you)
* https://www.freepatentsonline.... [freepatentsonline.com] : motion compensation if the motion estimator if it's coupled to a halo detector
* https://www.freepatentsonline.... [freepatentsonline.com] (a Red Hat patent): enable guest VM to host device memory mapping and access by making use of an IOMMU
Notes: ...). But they all were granted by the allegedly improved patent office.
* not all patents on that page are software patents (they're all granted patents though, which is why I used that list)
* the claims are the main thing that matters in a patent. Those describe the exclusivity you were granted by the patent office. I.e., if those claims don't say how something is done (which they almost never do), the exclusivity is on the activity rather than how it's achieved.
* I only described the first claim of each patent. Those are generally the broadest, and hence the most likely to be struck down in court (because they cover prior art, because they are too abstract,
IBM also used to have tons of purely hardware patents for all kinds of semiconductor manufacturing, but these days IBM is just a large software consultancy shop.
IBM has been behaving like this for a very long time [forbes.com]:
[in the 1980s, IBM lawyers visiting Sun]
After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.
An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
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But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference.
The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike.
That's exactly how any scammer would behave - they don't care about the technical merit of the patents. They only care that they have them, and they represent an income stream. They certainly weren't involved in the development of the technology, so they won't feel like they're attacked because they have no pride in them. Lawyers are trained to argue all sides of a case with equal belief in their correctness.
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It's basically a Lawsuit DDOS attack.
You don't get to choose (Score:1)
Every time a company is forced to pay for a silly "invention", it's not that the patent in question is "early" or
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An argument could *easily* be made that the basic principle of a patent is good, but the patent system has been too permissive. Companies are granted obvious patents that shouldn't meet the requirements of filing a patent. Or companies submarine a patent for 10 years if they think they happened to patent something ubiquitous and then go to town suing everyone, despite never having actually helped drive the market too success.
However if the patent system were working correctly, then a person or small group
It's time for an exploitation requirement (Score:4, Interesting)
We could fix this whole problem by automatically sunsetting any patent that is not realized as a developing product within five years of issue. No more "patent portfolios" or patent trolling. Watch innovation leap ahead as inventors compete to bring new products to market, rather than hiding their ideas in hopes that someone else will stumble over it and be suable.
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For a lot of companies for a lot of these patents, they have no ability whatsoever to even in theory make a related product.
A lot of the patent trolls make no products whatsoever and just buy patents from other companies. In cases where a company holding a patent actually makes product, they may face countersuit from a defendant because they are also violating patents. The trolls have no such challenge.
IBM is a bit different because they do make product. However a lot of their patents have nothing to do wi
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It's easy to hack something together in Python that's buggy but works enough under normal inputs just enough to claim "we implemented it". Outsource it at $2 an hour, quality doesn't matter.
Perhaps, but I'm skeptical it would make a big enough dent. Perhaps it could be one part of multiple reforms. However, comp
RIP IBM (Score:1)
IBM is a decaying whale that beached itself. Only so much blubber left to pillage.
there is a GNU way of doing things (Score:2)
A story about Microsoft and IBM (Score:2)
Microsoft arranged a meeting with IBM lawyers to discuss patent issues. At the meeting, Microsoft lawyers show IBM two Microsoft patents that Microsoft believes IBM is infringing. IBM lawyers reach under the table and pull out two banker's boxes full of patents that Microsoft has been infringing.
My idea on patent reform (Score:2)
However, big companies, like IBM (because they are the worst in the tech arena) have learned to abuse our current patent laws to their own gain (and, they are not a tiny inventor, in fact they arguably lack true inspired invention, that ship sailed).
Here's my idea. Patents are tied to overall net worth combined with size of the owner.
That is, the "bigger" you
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Go away you silly nasty racist idiot.