51–60 of 240 posts
It would be great if more companies handled patents like Tesla. They obtain patents and then let others use them royalty free
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> where most new technology is just software Is this really true?
Yep. Just look at the top 10 companies by market cap: 1. Microsoft – mostly software 2. Apple – software and hardware 3. Amazon – mostly software 4. Alphabet – mostly software 5. Berkshire Hathaway – not tech 6. Facebook – mostly software 7. Alibaba – mostly software 8. Tencent – mostly software 9. Johnson & Johnson – not tech 10. Visa – not tech, but mostly software
Microsoft produces a lot of value from software, but how much new technology are they producing? Some for sure, but how much?
I don't think your metrics prove the claim...
Facebook has developed a software product, and earned a lot of value from advertising. They've also developed several new technologies along the way, but I'm not sure their advertising revenue or market cap are good trackers of their R&D output.
Software products obviously scale very well, which makes them very valuable. But are you counting new technologies in terms of dollars earned? That's very different than just the number of innovations, because it depends on the size of the market for them, your capacity to exploit it, etc.
I recall an article a while back about how IBM is so innovative because it had the most patents filed per year on tech or something. I think we can see now that their patenting is less about innovation and more about patent trolling. Quote from the FT article on this below does not seem to show to me that this is the sort of patent that promotes real innovation - "improved navigation using bookmarks" does not seem li…
They'd make plaques about the patents and hang them on walls around the company rotating them as they were filed.
I'd read them... like 90% of them I'd look at and they were straight up just a basic network design. Some I'm not even sure you could NOT do if you did any basic business process / built a computer network.
It was bonkers.
famous fat line patent ! https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html >>> The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents IBM claimed were infringed, the most prominent of which was IBM's notorious "fat lines" patent: To turn a thin line on a computer screen into a broad line, you go up and down an equal distance from the ends of the thin line and then connect the four points. You probably le…
IBM has so many generic patents. I wonder why they don't sue more companies? I guess maybe they settle under the radar.
Yeah, they would rather license. 2018 was $1.2B+ in revenue just for the patents they already have. Our patent system really needs fixed.
Shocking: some people believe they should rule the world forever. What a novel play by entitled aristocrats.
You made these chips with sand
And I own the land!
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At the same time AirBNB has history, that is to say, a business model, based on ignoring laws they don't care for.
As a former employee, I don't agree with that. I know it's the prevailing sentiment on HN, but it's not the truth.
Unless you explain why, you're doing nothing to persuade anyone of anything other than employees at AirBnB disagree with the prevailing sentiment of HN. Having met the founders of AirBnB, I am incredibly skeptical of your claim, but I am willing to listen to what you have to say.
The whole US patent system needs to either be scrapped or rebuilt. The purpose it was originally intended to be used for doesn't make sense in a world where most new technology is just software, and software is incredibly easy to copy and duplicate. Getting a software patent is mostly a matter of sneaking past the people at the USPTO, and making sure you're the first to file. These patent factories could just write c…
> The purpose it was originally intended to be used for doesn't make sense in a world where most new technology is just software, and software is incredibly easy to copy and duplicate. The very first patent was to duplicate an existing process (the loom) and have a monopoly to produce it. I keep hearing this argument from patent proponents, but patents have never in their history been ostensibly for good.
A company may invent a mechanism or process which is better for its intended use than what came before. Sometimes it takes a lot of money and time and it doesn't always work. In the case of a mechanism, once it is sold, competitors could take it apart and reap the benefits without having expended the money and effort to create something new. If patents were killed off, it would discourage people and companies from making those investments. It has varied over the centuries, but currently a patent gives a 20 year time limited "monopoly" on the thing invented.
In the case of a process (vs a mechanism), without patents, a company is highly motivated to keep the process a trade secret. Even with patents a company may prefer to take that route. What do patents offer here? In exchange for disclosing the process, the company is granted that monopoly. In theory disclosing the process will spur the next round of improvements and help the system.
The problem isn't necessarily patents, but the process. Patent examiners are not paid all that well and literally have minutes to research and approve or deny a patent. They need to crank through multiple patent applications a day. And companies abuse the system. Secondly, the practice in patent law is to write the patents in such a way as to disclose as little as possible and claim as much as possible using obtuse language. If you read really old patents an ordinary person could understand most of them. Today I can read a patent in a domain I'm expert in and it is very hard to follow.
There should be some penalty for filing obvious patents, and part of the penalty would be to pay for for more patent examiners, and to pay the legal costs of the challenging party.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the same time AirBNB has history, that is to say, a business model, based on ignoring laws they don't care for.
As a former employee, I don't agree with that. I know it's the prevailing sentiment on HN, but it's not the truth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> where most new technology is just software Is this really true?
It depends on your definition of "new technology", but I would say it's almost certainly not true. In a world where electric coffee grinders exist, and batteries exist, is a battery powered electric coffee grinder a new technology? Or just a new product. I'd say the latter. There's certainly new software technology being produced every day, but much less than there are new software products being launched every day.…
Assuming that patents were actually useful as method of sharing useful designs with the world wouldn't you want to know how to overcome the engineering challenges?