I think dogpiling Intellectual Ventures is striking at the branches, and not at the root. The problem isn’t “patent trolls.” The problem is patents:
> Even if patents actually accomplished their advertised purpose — “securing for limited Times to … Inventors the exclusive Right to their … Discoveries,” as the US Constitution puts it — they’d be a very bad idea. The claim that one can own an idea is silly on its face, and not a claim that anyone would pay the slightest mind to were it not enforced at gunpoint by the state.
> But the advertised purpose of patents is not their actual purpose.
> Their actual purpose is to restrain competition and limit innovation so as to provide economic advantage — monopoly pricing power, in fact — to established firms who, by virtue of their ability to pay off (pardon my indelicate language; I believe the word I’m looking for is “lobby”) politicians, bureaucrats and judges, can thereby indulge their desire avoid market competition on price or quality. [1]
No, patents are fine. The problem is that current patent laws enable patent trolls. If we could find a way to eradicate patent trolls while preserving patents, their intent would be served much better.
For example, you should only be able to acquire patents if you can prove you have a business pertinent to those patents. This kind of measure would instantly kill all patent trolls.
This kind of measure would instantly kill all patent trolls.
And anyone else who files for a patent but is unable to bring their idea to market in the form of a product or service. This includes (but is not limited to) private inventors, universities, research institutions and even large companies such as ARM Holdings plc.
Couldn't agree more. The focus on non-practicing entities is misplaced. There's no reason we shouldn't incentivize inventors who come up with great ideas so they can sell them to others who have the skills to bring them to market.
I think the more appropriate distinctions between good patents and bad are in the subject matter of the claims themselves (e.g. the novelty and non-obviousness requirements). Thankfully, the Supreme Court is tightening this up lately.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court is tightening this up lately.
I'm not so sure about this. The Supreme Court is attempting to define and apply standards that some experts consider arbitrary and highly subjective. One example is the attempt to make a distinction between a mathematical function and a novel software algorithm. It almost seems like the distinction is made based upon whether or not the particular justice writing the opinion is able to understand it. Some might even go so far as to say that only magic is patentable (recalling the oft-repeated Arthur C. Clarke quote).
Patents were made to protect against an injustice, but they are causing a greater injustice. The injustice they sought to protect against, is the cheating of the inventor of the fruits of his labor, by some Capitalist exploiter, who takes the invention without compensating the inventor.
Unfortunately, in order to protect against that injustice, we have created a framework that perpetuates a greater injustice. The "inventors" have become the wolves in this system, because the bar for invention is so low. And arguably there is no practical and economic system we could use to properly raise this bar. The expertise required to properly remove "trivial" patents is too expensive for the state to deploy, and is in too short supply. We need that expertise to be used to make things, not sit at the Patent Office to sort through patent applications.
Analogously, what if we were greatly troubled by bullies in American schools, and decided to deploy a system whereby highly trained monitors would follow each child around to make sure they were not bullied. The system might result in zero bullying, but the costs might be prohibitive, not only in terms of salaries for all of these monitors, but in invasion of privacy, and perhaps even persecution of innocent children that are mistakenly identified as bullies by under-skilled monitors.
If we sought to remove this system of anti-bully monitors, I'm sure we would here a giant ruckus from all the anti-bullying activists who would demand that the system be kept in place ... to stop bullying. And since bullying is such a terrible thing, we would have a hard time repealing the anti-bullying law in Congress.
And no doubt, the union of anti-bullying monitors would raise the money to lobby against us in congress, as their jobs and benefits would be under threat.
Patents were the worst "good" idea that the founding fathers had. They really fucked up bad. And I don't think we will ever be able to get out from under this shit system. The patent lawyers make too much money. The trolls make too much money. The shit-stains who file the bullshit patents and don't know how to make real products, make too much money.
And the American people don't care, because, so far, the system has just acted as a tax on engineers ... and engineers make enough money to eat. It doesn't matter to the American people that an entry level Patent associate at a big law firm makes $160,000 per year (standard and without much variation) while a software engineer that produces the patented technology makes only about $80,000. Nobody thinks there is any irony in that.
Well if you assume the judicial system is corrupt - then the real problem lies in the courts - not necessarily in patents.
>The claim that one can own an idea is silly on its face
You do realize that the la-la land you want to live in doesn't preclude the ownership of ideas. Trade secrets will always exist and there is no practical way to prevent their existence.
Not only do patents allow innovations to be shared - but it also opens up the limited-time monopolistic advantage to other industries. It's easy for Google to have a secret algorithm on their servers, or for KFC to have a secret recipe - but it's harder to have a secret algo in a DLL, or a secret engine in a car.
In your world, hilariously, in-house server side software development would be significantly more profitable than client side software development.
> Not only do patents allow innovations to be shared
No one learn from patents anymore. Thats the core argument against patents as a tool for knowledge.
If patents are a tool for knowledge, lets maximize that then. Lets require a working model. Lets require source code.
It used to be that this was how the patent system worked, but then the lobby removed it from the system. Now its just a legal document, written by lawyers for lawyers.
> Even if patents actually accomplished their advertised purpose — “securing for limited Times to … Inventors the exclusive Right to their … Discoveries,” as the US Constitution puts it — they’d be a very bad idea. The claim that one can own an idea is silly on its face, and not a claim that anyone would pay the slightest mind to were it not enforced at gunpoint by the state.
> But the advertised purpose of patents is not their actual purpose.
> Their actual purpose is to restrain competition and limit innovation so as to provide economic advantage — monopoly pricing power, in fact — to established firms who, by virtue of their ability to pay off (pardon my indelicate language; I believe the word I’m looking for is “lobby”) politicians, bureaucrats and judges, can thereby indulge their desire avoid market competition on price or quality. [1]
[1] http://c4ss.org/content/24371