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Comment by dragonbonheur | Hacker News Reader

Yet another broadly-worded patent designed mostly to kill competition. EVERYONE KNOWS that we must have wrist mounted screens at some point. EVERYONE KNOWS that having the display wrap around the wrist a desirable feature. EVERYONE KNOWS that there must be wireless connectivity. EVERYONE KNOWS that the screen MUST be flexible and MUST be a touchscreen. EVERYONE KNOWS that in the long term the devices themselves WILL include the necessary processing power and be completely independent.

It doesn't take a genius to see where tech is heading. Even 3M had the same ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCZz4jFok_o

Nowadays it's all patent the obvious and sue all competitors.

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If Apple were to introduce the device, they have two options. First, patent the design (and then possibly sue others). Second, do not patent the design and get sued by others. Which one would you choose? I would go for the first one (and not sue others without a proper cause, but that’s a different topic).

Patenting the design doesn't protect them from being sued except insofar as it gives them a club to wave at anyone who might try (and they already have plenty of such clubs). The main threat Apple would need to worry about would be patent trolls, and having a threatening portfolio is a useless defense against trolls.

"EVERYONE KNOWS that we must have wrist mounted screens at some point"

We passed that point: we already have Android watches. You could have purchased one last year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMM_One

And before that there were Palm-powered watches by Fossil, I know.

> EVERYONE KNOWS that the screen MUST be flexible

No. I don't even recall having ever see a flexible watch in real life. Curved or flat hard screens all the way.

I'm talking about future technology here, not the past. There was a kickstarted company demonstrating their own flexible screen wristband and the last CES too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbZI7bpqeTc

It is a problem with any patents, not with Apple in particular. Patent law was not a voluntary contract that Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google and others negotiated between each other up front. It was imposed by entirely different group of people who pay armed soldiers to enforce their decisions.

This is how patent system could have been done without violence: a group of tech companies willing to protect their IP come together and agree on a single protocol which will register their inventions. They will list what kinds of inventions are patentable and not patentable. If something in this protocol remains vague to anyone it won't be signed. Then, they agree to regularly elect a group of experts who would inspect all incoming submissions and decide which non-patented inventions are violating or not the existing patents. Every participant would have to follow the decision of the experts, or would have to appeal to other participants (in order to re-elect the experts, reexamine the protocol, or reexamine this particular decision).

If participant does not follow the decision of the experts, he is publicly defamed and economically ostracised, just like any other non-participant who violates existing patents. If any participant does not punish violators via ostracism (whether participants or not), he himself is ostracised by others.

If a large enough group of tech companies really values patents over costs of ostracism, they can do just that. (Like they agree not to hiring specialists from each other.) If they don't find the way to agree on patents, then they do not deserve them. And nobody should go to prison because of that. My gut feeling is that neither Google, nor Apple, nor Microsoft likes patents. They could agree about hiring top people, about very specific trademarks like logos, but they would never spend time fighting over rounded corners if they were not given a poisonous weapon which is a tax-funded patent office, police and prisons.

Resume: You do not need violent intervention with guns and prisons to protect yourself. Example: Apple's customers do not like working conditions of its partners' factories, so they can ostracise Apple. Apple in response asks factories to improve conditions, or Apple will ostracise them. There is no violence, but only negotiation.

All the incumbents have repeatedly lobbied to strengthen their advantage in the patent system so it is actually their fault. I don't know why you would presume Apple to be innocent. They have more power than most companies, they could lobby for change if they wanted to.

Apple is not innocent for using existing weapon. But do not forget that the patent system was created well before Apple even existed. If there was no patent system, tax-funded courts and police, Apple and others: 1) would have nowhere to go for a cheap and brutal protection. 2) would not worry that someone else will use cheap and brutal protection against them.

Why is it cheap? Because couple of millions of bucks spent on lawyers is nothing comparing to amount of tax money and propaganda that fuels police and courts.

No company that earns money from voluntary exchange would risk creating its own armed gang: it will quickly run out of customers well before raising enough funds for a small army.

And if you are afraid that in absence of tax-funded police, some private companies would not protect themselves and their customers, but instead become super-powerful mafia themselves, then it is yet another reason why you cannot have monopoly of violent power in the first place.

My suggestion: no reasoning and intellectual debate is possible if there is a gun in the room. Take away the gun first, then we could discuss different ways to protect intellectual and other property. Guns are needed only against other guns, but even then there's no discussion going on, but pure state of jungle.

You obviously have a hard on for guns. Yet the thing that does the most damage to our system is the biggest companies constantly lobbying with their weapon of choice, money, and lots of it. They continue to push for stronger patents, not weaker ones. They want longer time frames and more complicated bureaucracy's so that the massive amount of money they have for lawyers will make sure it's always easy for them to get patents instead of the people working from their garage that invent something and can't afford to get a lawyer and file a patent. All the groups you say your gut tells you want less patents consistently show us via their actions that they want stronger patents.

I'll be the first to advocate for a better understanding of non-violent means for negotiation, but the dynamics of violence and weapons and human psychology goes in a different area other then a patent discussion. Unless you're trying to derail the topic into a flame war or something.

Human psychology, to my understanding, is flexible. If you have patent threat for 100 years, people adapt to it. You have to accept existence of patents because someone may buy one and shut you down. You also surrounded by massive propaganda that whatever government does is generally good (bad stuff is exceptional). As a result, if not you, but many people around you see patents as a morally correct tool that can be abused, but if not abused, it's all right. And even if you don't think it's such a great idea, you still have to play along because someone else will use patents against you. Is it surprising then, that in 2013 (223 years since the first patent issued in 1790) you have big budgets to file as many patents as they can? Is that a proof that you would have similar situation with no patent office?

I admit, it is useless to debate too much about what would happen if. It's more pragmatic to talk about how would you design non-violent scheme of negotiation where people are protected and insured against violence.

The gun issue is not offtopic. It is the primary reason why you have all of the drama around government. Because people are ultimately threatened with murder if they do not comply. If you have no possibility to hurt person for non-complience, then there is no drama. You both can perfectly avoid each other and use peaceful means to find justice as much as you want.

So my approach to any question about abuse of (or use of) state-provided violence is this:

1. Identify the violence. 2. Think how to avoid it completely.

Patent law is a system of brutal violence not based on any hard core moral proof. You require proofs from a mathematician, and still do not kill him if he's wrong. Why don't you require even stronger proof from anybody with a gun? It is not a solution to limit patents. And not even to call for their abolishment. You cannot come to mafia and ask them to stop doing what they are doing. The solution is to simply avoid patents as much as you can while finding other ways to protect yourself.

How to do that practically (not by persuasion, but by building some sort of mechanism for people) - is another complex topic. I myself investigate how you can build an anonymous dispute resolution network on top of Bitcoin blockchain (to use it as a secure storage of agreements). Anonymity will provide safety from violence, while conforming to the network rules will allow to make deals with other people. This way you can grow a community of people who respect each other's choices without threatening each other using legal or illegal methods.

This just does not work well unless there is overarching enforcer, because the majority can decide to steal from the minority, or those not in the group. And there are some patents so valuable that no social penalty can keep a company from violating them; it's either violate or go out of business.

Another voluntary group like this is the UN; it is completely ineffective in matters of security.

If majority can decide to steal from the minority, you cannot have democracy. Do you propose a self-proclaimed minority that will have guns to enforce peace and morality to protect you against majority?

Seriously, though. Patents are valuable only because there is a small amount of people with guns and prisons. Everyone else despises guns. Neither you, nor Apple lawyers would want to enforce IP using their bare hands or paying for killers out of their pocket. Same for funding soldiers killing people around the world. The existing threat of murder ("obey the patent or give your money, or go to jail, or be shot down") is here because it is already being paid for by taxpayers. And since nobody is upset about it, it feels clean and easy to use it. But in free society it will not be clean and easy to use violence. You would have to pay for it yourself. And people would pay for guns only in extreme cases for personal protection in some weird dangerous areas. Otherwise it's too damn risky. But when it's regularly paid from taxes, any enforced regulation becomes possible, any crazy PATRIOT act or SOPA becomes readily available to society without much discussion.

I never said it was only a problem with Apple. There is no need to apologize for them. It is a problem in technology patents and as I've written everyone knows where it is going.

It's time to limit the effectiveness of technology patents to 1 year, maybe 2 years maximum or maybe get rid of tech patents altogether.

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