Defend Innovation: How to Fix Our Broken Patent System (2015)
eff.org
eff.org
These companies thrive on mind share. As is evident with MS shipping Linux subsystems with Windows 10, they have to court developers or their influence will wane. The loss of developer community happened over many years, and it should continue until these companies change their approach. Get projects you have influence over to try open alternatives. Spread the word in forums and meetups. Make their platforms uncool.
Being Open Source friendly isn't about releasing code under liberal licenses. It is about the commitment to software freedom. Not differentiating these two is ignoring history.
Patents go both ways. Studies that while patent thickets may discourage entry [1], this effect is limited, and smaller companies are more likely to enter the same markets (and succeed) if they have patents themselves [1, 2, 3, 4].
> Oracle gets to claim $9B for 37 methods in the Android code.
This has nothing to do patents and everything to do with copyright licenses like the GPL. And just to be pedantic, it's 37 whole packages. And without this, Google would have been rip off Sun's hard work of building a developer base for Java. "Free software" should not mean "freeloading".
> Apple gets to sue Samsung over icons, among other things.
And without those, as ridiculous as they are, Samsung would have gotten away with ripping off Apple wholesale.
> Being Open Source friendly isn't about releasing code under liberal licenses. It is about the commitment to software freedom.
False dichotomy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583749
1. http://people.bu.edu/cockburn/cockburn_macgarvie_entry_and_p...
2. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=510103
3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=989592
4. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926204
Unless a software patent can be described in actual, working code they should reject it, and if it is granted, it should cover that specific implementation and not all possible forms such code might take.
You have property tax; You have (so called) intellectual property. Why don't you have "intellectual property tax"?
Similar to e.g. how property tax works in the US, you would pay something like 1% of the value of your "property" in taxes each year -- and when you sue, you can only sue for how much of that "value" was taken away from you (with perhaps treble damages or something). Then, all of a sudden, it's not enough to claim that your copyrights are worth $18B to sue Google for $9B - you have to have actually paid $180M/year or so in taxes in the last few years to make that claim.
Devil is in the details, of course, but if "intellectual property" is property, it should be taxed like one.
So poor small time developer can't sue any large company for a substantial payout because they can't afford the $N x 1% fee? I don't think that'll work.
The real solution to this is time. We'll eventually get a new set of judges and legislators that understand technology. The former is all that's really needed though their extended terms make change very slow
Once you've got level headed judges willing to throw out bullshit cases and impose punitive fees on trolls, this entire problem goes away. Until then, it makes financial sense for trolls to operate and even legitimate companies have to play that game to survive.
Do you think a small developer can sue a large company for substantial payout today? They cannot - litigation costs start at $100K and go north from there (Not to mention, filing and maintaining a patent costs a minimum of $20K-$30K). Today, when these lawsuits actually go to court, you have investors in the lawsuit - either someone financing it, or the lawfirm itself ("contingency") is the investor. So things might change a little, but not by much.
If your invention is really worth $100M, and you can't find a way to get $10M out of it -- then it's not worth $100M. The problem with the current system is that it lets you claim (and believe) that it is worth that much.
> The real solution to this is time. We'll eventually get a new set of judges and legislators that understand technology. The former is all that's really needed though their extended terms make change very slow
Every generation believes that things will change for the better once the older generation steps down. That has been wrong every single time, and I bet it will be wrong with respect to patent judges as well.
> Once you've got level headed judges willing to throw out bullshit cases and impose punitive fees on trolls, this entire problem goes away. Until then, it makes financial sense for trolls to operate and even legitimate companies have to play that game to survive.
The problem is not trolls. Trolls are a (relatively) recent phenomenon banking on the brokenness of the patent system. They might go away with minor changes or a change of the guard -- I don't disagree.
But what I argue is that the problem is much deeper - the patent system is broken by virtue of allowing the patenting of software, business patents, and other intangible processes -- as it is (even if all trolls disappeared tomorrow), it lets the incumbents (IBM, Intel, AT&T, Microsoft, Google) kill any new competitor easily and cheaply, by virtue of holding a 100,000 strong portfolio of patents that shouldn't have been awarded in the first place.
The fact no company has yet done this is not proof that the system is fine. See e.g. Shkreli & drug pricing - the broken market structure was there all along, but the incumbent players raise prices slowly (albeit at 5x inflation) so it's not noticed. But then Shkreli came along and did a fast-forward, exposing the system, which got everyone mad, and Shkreli retaliated against. The other players are not more fair - they are just more patient. And similar brokenness exists with respect to patents.
The purpose of patents and copyright is to promote innovation and reward creators, and there are plenty of alternative possibilities for doing that. If patents and copyright laws are stifling innovation, for example in drug development, we should scrap them and look for a new model.
Dean Baker has written a lot about this and has proposed a public bounty purse for useful innovations. He would reward an organization that developed a cure for malaria with several billion dollars, and there would be another reward system for creative work, for unexpected innovations that benefited society, etc.
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/more-thoughts-on-patent...
http://cepr.net/publications/reports/financing-drug-research...
Wages may be sufficient payment but if they leave the company, the people who do the inventing are the ones who should continue to be rewarded in continued payment for succesful invention giving companies advantage in the form of patents.
this would kill off trolls and exploitation of inventive people.
We're talking about abolishing (a piece of) corporate capitalism. Expect some resistance.
The EFF's own data on demand letters exposes their false claims about "patent trolls". [1] Only six patent holders on their list have sent more than two demand letters. There was one big patent troll who sent out hundreds of demand letters, and he lost in court years ago. With that one lawyer out of the picture, the "troll" problem went away.
Their legislative proposals are terrible. Allowing "independent invention" as a defense encourages companies to lie. A five year patent term is so short as to be useless; it takes about 3 years to get a patent issued.
Stop the EFF before they kill invention.
The point is that monopolies on ideas are fundamentally unfair, and can only be justified if they provide substantial value over the norm. That might be true in some industries like Pharma, but it is provably false in Software.
When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?
Hah! That's a great way to put it. Patents are supposed to be an exchange of (1) opening the idea to the public for (2) protection. Software patents, to my knowledge, do not do (1).
Arguably, other industries suffer the same trouble. Patent filers these days go to great lengths to disguise their meaning so that they are ambiguous enough to cover many things, and presumably, difficult to actually understand and borrow ideas.
I could just as easily say "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is fundamentally unfair".
> ... but it is provably false in Software.
Citation needed? Many of the sources cited in OP have flaws and/or have been refuted elsewhere, especially studies by Bessen & co. Many of their other sources are from people who don't know the first thing about patents. They cite that "This American Life" episode where the clueless dude from M-CAM suggested there's a patent on toast, something that you'd know is BS with a glance at the actual claim and 5 minutes of research on Google.
On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding and successful exits by a factor of four. How much innovation happens without funding? Even the majority of open source is financed by various industry sources.
> When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?
And how often is something in software not been built by simply copying somebody else's ideas? Some ideas are harder to generate (e.g. RSA) than others (e.g. online pet store) and deserve protection.
You could, but it would be ludicrous. The very existence of human civilisation is due to "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity".
> And how often is something in software not been built by simply copying somebody else's ideas?
Who cares. Not copying ideas is not the purpose of patents, it's the exact opposite.
> On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding
Again, irrelevant. Getting startup funding is not the purpose of patents.
If you want the role of patents to be to help startups then that should be their stated role. In which case, you'd probably only allow companies <5 years old to hold a patent, they'd only be valid for 5 years, and ownership could not be transferred. Of course then you have something very different from our current system, but frankly it sounds a lot better.
Ideas are not a rival good. When you share an idea with someone, you don't lose half of it. You both get the whole idea. So it's not a zero-sum game.
As long as the genius gets rewarded, free riding is fair.
> How much innovation happens without funding? […] Some ideas are harder to generate (e.g. RSA)
Well, the best and hardest ideas tend to be state-funded anyway. RSA for instance was funded by MIT salaries¹ (Rivest, Shadir, and Abelman worked there). ARPANET (now the internet) was basically a DOD project.
You're right, inventions need funding. Patent just aren't the only way —nor, I would argue, the most efficient.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_%28cryptosystem%29#History
You seem to imply that patent trolls don't exist and are not a problem. Sure, there aren't many letters on that tiny web site you've cited. Why does this mean there aren't many patent letters going out in general? It's completely irrelevant.
As for the EFF's legislative proposals, you've seemingly cherrypicked one of the less interesting ones, and then argued that it won't work because the current patent system is so broken that it takes 3 years to get a patent.
How did you reach that conclusion? As far as I can see, all that the data you cite shows is that only six patent holders on their list have had more than one recipient submit a copy of their letter to trollingeffects.org.
Lodsys, for instance, is only represented 3 times on trollingeffects.org, but they are known to have asserted those patents against dozens of defendants.
Most people who receive a demand letter do not submit it to trollingeffects.org. What most do is contact their lawyer, and their lawyer tells them not to make any public statements about the matter.
Intellectual Ventures alone has pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of its investors... pro-patent, mostly-software firms... through a high volume of threats to other companies and lawsuits done with shell companies. They've contributed nothing to the market of value but sucked lots of money out of innovators. There's IPNav that sued at least 1,638 companies on behalf of its clients that largely aren't a blip on anyone's radar in market or straight-up failed in it. There's a number that are publicly traded specializing in nothing but patent collection and lawsuits to generate revenue w/ returns ranging from 8.59% to 71.41%. They're listed under RMBS, VRNG, PRKR, ASUR, NTIP, and UPIP.
These companies are collectively raking in billions off of firms making actual software and hardware. They often rip off the patent inventors, too, by given them pittances for these patents they later make big bucks off of. So, EFF is defending our liberties by saying something (patent law) designed to get actual inventions to the public while benefiting the little guy is being used as an extortion racket by one set of predators and to suppress competition from little guys by another set of predators. Most evidence is in our favor, esp with companies I listed.
Now, given Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, and the large public firms, are you still on the position that no threat exists to innovators from patent system and no reform is necessary to limit that?
http://www.businessinsider.com/revealed-how-giant-patent-tro...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/business/has-patent-will-s...
http://patentvue.com/2014/05/02/stock-performance-publicly-t...