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$4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

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Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#41

Post by Produce »

cube13 wrote: post #16
Produce wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if these patents were say, automotive in nature, and a coalition of automotive companies bought them for 4.5 billion, would we immediately jump to the conclusion that automotive patents are bad? Without going too deep into a philosophical discussion, I think that the competitive nature of our society is hindering progress more than anything else. When people learn to build social structures based on cooperation (I c…

>In concrete terms, imagine if, just as individuals in a company cooperate, companies cooperated with each other. Everyone would be better off. At it's root, this is the difference between seeing life as a non-zero-sum game as opposed to a zero-sum one. So... it's exactly what MS, Apple, RIM, etc. did. They cooperated, combined their resources, and outbid Google for the pool. There's no indication that these patents…

Imagine if MS, Apple, RIM AND Google all cooperated and said "this is silly, let's get rid of all our nukes (patents) and live in peace". Collectively, they would be $4.5 billion better off and could use it to build something instead of stocking up on weapons.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#42

Post by Produce »

monochromatic wrote: post #11
Produce wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if these patents were say, automotive in nature, and a coalition of automotive companies bought them for 4.5 billion, would we immediately jump to the conclusion that automotive patents are bad? Without going too deep into a philosophical discussion, I think that the competitive nature of our society is hindering progress more than anything else. When people learn to build social structures based on cooperation (I c…

Exactly. Look at all the productivity increases that the USSR saw. No bread lines there. Nope.

Again, you are missing the point. Imagine if the USSR and the US cooperated and spent all that money they used to make their dicks look bigger on, for example, flying to mars.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#43

Post by shadowfox »

kjksf wrote: post #36
Steko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of the coin that no one has pointed out yet: The innovation represented by these patents just made $4.5 billion. That's the definition of rewarding innovation. "Instead of spending billions on new R&D" If it was legal for every KIRF to come in and use every other companies innovations there would be much less incentive to invest in R&D to begin with.

This money goes to pay the debts of a bankrupt company. If the patents ("innovation") were so valuable, Nortel wouldn't have gone out of business. Successful companies can (and have been) successful without patents (or without enforcing patents). Nortel was unable to be successful despite having lots of patents. Given those facts, the case for patents as a way to "reward" innovation is thin. There's only a weak corre…

> If the patents ("innovation") were so valuable, Nortel wouldn't have gone out of business.

I am no supporter of software patents. But I don't think this follows directly. Producing innovations is different from having the business acumen to make money out of it.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#44

Post by Steko »

kjksf wrote: post #36
Steko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of the coin that no one has pointed out yet: The innovation represented by these patents just made $4.5 billion. That's the definition of rewarding innovation. "Instead of spending billions on new R&D" If it was legal for every KIRF to come in and use every other companies innovations there would be much less incentive to invest in R&D to begin with.

This money goes to pay the debts of a bankrupt company. If the patents ("innovation") were so valuable, Nortel wouldn't have gone out of business. Successful companies can (and have been) successful without patents (or without enforcing patents). Nortel was unable to be successful despite having lots of patents. Given those facts, the case for patents as a way to "reward" innovation is thin. There's only a weak corre…

"This money goes to pay the debts of a bankrupt company."

Not disputed. Nortel was mismanaged into oblivion. That does not show that the fundamental incentive in the patent system is broken.

"If the patents ("innovation") were so valuable, Nortel wouldn't have gone out of business."

That's a total non sequitur. Any business can be driven off a cliff. The patents are that valuable and that's been clearly shown at auction.

"Given those facts, the case for patents as a way to "reward" innovation is thin."

Your "facts" are better termed anecdotes and only disprove the straw men that "you can't be successful without patents" and "patents guarantee success" neither of which is being claimed by anyone.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#45

Post by nate_meurer »

monochromatic wrote: post #28
sorbus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way you can make money off of a good idea is by suing other people who are using it, then it's not a good idea.

My point is that patents give inventors a way to cash out early without having to go to litigation. It's this property right that they can sell to someone else who wants the use of the idea. Maybe the buyer wants to make money off lawsuits, maybe he wants to produce the product. Doesn't matter. The patent lets the inventor sell his idea to someone who can make better (more economically efficient) use of it.

You're still missing the point though. If these patents are valued so highly because of their potential as weapons (as opposed to their production potential), then this is a distortion of the market that patents are supposed to foster.

This cannot be stressed enough: our patent regime is intended to foster the progress of technology. Where the market for these patents acts efficiently as as intended, the value of a patent is based strictly on its ability to allow a company to generate revenue. This is a specific condition and the threshold of quality tends to be high for patents that can genuinely enable production.

The threshold needed for patents to be merely wielded as weapons is much lower. However, as you can plainly see, this does not diminish their value in the patent marketplace. Thus, the patent system in its current form encourages the misallocation of resources toward patents that do less to promote progress.

Software patents encourage the worse kind of abuse, in part because the patent office is utterly incapable of properly evaluating them; you can patent nearly anything.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#46

Post by dean »

Steko wrote: post #34
inkaudio wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is simple, not thin. Instead of spending billions on new R&D, new innovation, these companies have to spend money on the shenanigans of the current software patent system.

The other side of the coin that no one has pointed out yet: The innovation represented by these patents just made $4.5 billion. That's the definition of rewarding innovation. "Instead of spending billions on new R&D" If it was legal for every KIRF to come in and use every other companies innovations there would be much less incentive to invest in R&D to begin with.

My take from the article is that the patents fetched so much money because they would be a good defense against being sued. In Google's case, 'the search giant's interest was primarily defensive, “to create a disincentive for others to sue Google."'

So the patents don't represent innovation to the bidders, the patents represent a legal defense fund.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#47

Post by anamax »

kjksf wrote: post #38
anamax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the only way you can make money off of a good idea is by suing other people who are using it, then it's not a good idea. Huh? It's clearly a valuable idea, otherwise said other people wouldn't be making money by using it. (We can argue about how much of that money is due to other things how much is due to the idea, but let's assume that the idea is somehow essential to to implementation.) So, what makes it a bad…

The basis of patent system is a desire to further innovation and not, as you seem to believe, on recognizing inherent value of being paid for having ideas. If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off. If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the…

I note that you're ducking the question of why something that is clearly relevant to a useful product is not a good idea simply because the wrong person has a patent.

> If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off.

Define nothing. If I write a textbook that other folks use to do something, most people would claim that my textbook made society better off. Do you disagree? Note that patents are disclosure....

> The scenario you described is an unintended consequence, or a perversion, of how patent system is supposed to work.

Oh really? The patent literature says that patents are a trade - a limited term monopoly for disclosure of an idea. You seem to think that patents are protection for folks making stuff.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#48

Post by anamax »

kjksf wrote: post #38
anamax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the only way you can make money off of a good idea is by suing other people who are using it, then it's not a good idea. Huh? It's clearly a valuable idea, otherwise said other people wouldn't be making money by using it. (We can argue about how much of that money is due to other things how much is due to the idea, but let's assume that the idea is somehow essential to to implementation.) So, what makes it a bad…

The basis of patent system is a desire to further innovation and not, as you seem to believe, on recognizing inherent value of being paid for having ideas. If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off. If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the…

> If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the first one to come to them with it, then the society is worse off.

So? Every law has cases where it comes to the "wrong" result.

More to the point, the overwhelming number of "non-practicing" inventors just want to get paid. You seem to think that they shouldn't get paid.

Note that inventors sell to trolls because trolls are better able to get paid. If you weren't so opposed to inventors getting paid, we could look at ways for inventors to get paid without getting trolls involved.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#49

Post by jbooth »

anamax wrote: post #48
kjksf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basis of patent system is a desire to further innovation and not, as you seem to believe, on recognizing inherent value of being paid for having ideas. If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off. If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the…

> If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the first one to come to them with it, then the society is worse off. So? Every law has cases where it comes to the "wrong" result. More to the point, the overwhelming number of "non-practicing" inventors just want to get paid. Y…

Kind of late here, but I think the point with software patents is that the majority of cases tend towards the "wrong" result, basically every case except for maybe novel encryption/compression algorithms.

Re: $4.5 B. Nortel Bid Shows the Disastrous State of Software Patents

#50

Post by anamax »

jbooth wrote: post #49
anamax wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the first one to come to them with it, then the society is worse off. So? Every law has cases where it comes to the "wrong" result. More to the point, the overwhelming number of "non-practicing" inventors just want to get paid. Y…

Kind of late here, but I think the point with software patents is that the majority of cases tend towards the "wrong" result, basically every case except for maybe novel encryption/compression algorithms.

> I think the point with software patents is that the majority of cases tend towards the "wrong" result

That's the claim, but there hasn't been much supporting evidence other than "that doesn't deserve a patent". The vast majoritiy of the "that was obvious" claims are pure hindsight. (Yes, some software patents have been overturned because of prior art, just as happens in other fields.)

I particularly like the "that's just math" (which is often claimed wrt RSA). You never hear someone says "that's just chemistry" wrt chemical application patents. (You can't patent chemistry any more than you can patent math.)

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