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The Patent Pledge

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Patent Pledge

#81

Post by metajack »

veyron wrote: post #29
beagle3 wrote: post #21

I disagree that this will help, because the established companies the pledge would apply to are a secondary problem and mostly seem to fight each other (has Microsoft asserted patents against a startup? has IBM? has AT&T? when they asserted patents it was against multi-million dollar businesses!). The primary problem is patent trolls (see e.g. lodsys / intellectual ventures) for whom this pledge could be considered s…

Everyone will game the IP tax by valuing it at pennies -- after all, they may not directly be using it may not have a fair market value before they take someone to court. As a real-life example of people gaming these types of taxes, people buy expensive (>100K USD) cars in europe directly (i.e. taking delivery in stuttgart) to save on the sales tax: driving it around for a bit ensures that the car is technically "use…

I think that the idea is that if you declare the taxable value, then later try to sue someone for a much higher value, then you've now committed fraud against the IRS.

Of course, the easy work around to this is the claim that it's value increased suddenly when the patent became more useful; you start paying more tax when you start suing others.

Considering that low maintenance costs don't prevent domain squatting, I'm not sure this would be an effective tactic to prevent lots of silly patents.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#82

Post by mparr4 »

ansy wrote: post #50

PG, was this pledge created in response to litigation you have experienced with YC companies? There doesn't seem to be much evidence companies with fewer than 25 employees are getting sued unless there's something left unspoken here. I think it would be more constructive to begin the discussion of what patent reform should resemble so that companies and individuals can show support for it. Some kind of software paten…

>I think it would be more constructive to begin the discussion of what patent reform should resemble so that companies and individuals can show support for it.

Here's a (possibly already proposed) idea: Why not have much shorter terms for software patents? With software advancing at an ever increasing rate we could reward developers who hold patents by granting them exclusive rights for a year--an eternity in today's world.

Perhaps this timeframe would make patents difficult to enforce (which has its pros and cons) and it doesn't fix the problem of frivolous patents, but a year-long term would (in principle) protect your "invention" long enough for you to get a head start on the market.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#84

Post by TrevorBurnham »

justinsb wrote: post #35
TrevorBurnham wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent This American Life ep "When Patents Attack" ( http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w... ) started with a segment on a startup called Fototime, which was very small (certainly under 25 people) and had to settle a patent suit at great expense. (As part of the settlement agreement, they aren't allowed to say how much; only that it was just short of what would have caused them to file for…

Fototime was threatened by a NPE (aka troll); I can't imagine this pledge could have helped them.

True.

Incidentally, for those who are curious, the three patents used against Fototime (as well as more established companies like Flickr) can be found at http://www.google.com/patents?id=uiAPAAAAEBAJ, http://www.google.com/patents?id=0J8DAAAAEBAJ, and http://www.google.com/patents?id=-QEWAAAAEBAJ. The first two actually feel substantial and specific (probably too specific for Fototime to have been infringing); the third one is just a simple database schema and a flowchart, which is madness (though it, too, is so specific that it's unlikely that anyone was actually infringing).

Re: The Patent Pledge

#85

Post by mparr4 »

>Technology companies win by attracting the most productive people, and the most productive people are attracted to employers who hold themselves to a higher standard than the law requires.

The problem is, the ones doing the suing (like blackboard which PG mentioned in a comment elsewhere) are the weaker companies with a lot to lose (as mentioned in "Are Software Patents Evil") who probably aren't attracting the best people to work for them anyway.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#86

Post by mparr4 »

>Technology companies win by attracting the most productive people, and the most productive people are attracted to employers who hold themselves to a higher standard than the law requires.

The problem is, the ones doing the suing (like blackboard which PG mentioned in a comment elsewhere) are the weaker companies already with a lot to lose (a situation described in "Are Software Patents Evil" http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html) who probably aren't attracting the best people to work for them anyway.

I think the pledge itself is, at best, a way to keep the "good guys" from crossing over to the dark side, which is certainly worth something.

In my eyes, the most significant thing about this announcement is that we've got PG bringing attention to the issue. We need more of the major players in our community to step forward and make some noise about this. That, in my eyes, is the only way we will be able to right this ship.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#87

Post by billswift »

SoftwarePatent wrote: post #46

This pledge boils down to "shine light on bad actors", but I doubt it will change any behavior. Only rent-seekers [1] want software patents to exist, and you can't decrease their reputation any more, it's already 0. The S. Ct. already had their big chance in Bilski to dial back software patentability, and they blew it. Our only hope is Congress. (/me shudders hopelessly) And to anyone suggesting we abolish patents co…

There is a problem with patent thickets in pharmaceuticals and biotech interfering with innovation, see Carlson's book Biology Is Technology for a good discussion of the problems there. A better alternative for pharmaceuticals may be for whoever puts it through trials to get a patent or license since that is by far the most expensive part for drugs. To an extent that is what has been happening with biotech startups inventing possible pharmaceuticals then their being purchased by large companies that develop them further and run the trials. If you are interested in drug development, http://pipeline.corante.com/ is an interesting blog to follow.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#88

Post by tgriesser »

pg wrote: post #68
ansy wrote: post #50

PG, was this pledge created in response to litigation you have experienced with YC companies? There doesn't seem to be much evidence companies with fewer than 25 employees are getting sued unless there's something left unspoken here. I think it would be more constructive to begin the discussion of what patent reform should resemble so that companies and individuals can show support for it. Some kind of software paten…

IIRC none have actually been sued, but one has been sent a letter saying they're violating a competitor's patent. What made me start thinking about this idea was a combination of that letter, this story: http://k9ventures.com/blog/2011/04/27/modista/ and the fear that YC applicants working on education software have of the notoriously litigious Blackboard.

Interesting, it looks like Blackboard has their own interpretation of a "patent pledge," but it only covers open-source and non-commercial software.

http://www.blackboard.com/About-Bb/Patents/Patent-Pledge.asp...

Re: The Patent Pledge

#89

Post by ScottBurson »

Here's another proposal that doesn't rest on social pressure, the effectiveness of which I fear Paul overestimates.

Start a non-profit coalition with the following rules:

(1) All patent disputes between members will be resolved by binding arbitration. The arbiters are a panel of domain experts (not lawyers!). There is no presumption that an issued patent is valid.

(2) If a member of the coalition is sued by a non-member, the other members of the coalition make their entire portfolios available for a defensive countersuit. When a member's patent is used to defend another member, the former is compensated by the latter on terms set by arbitration.

(3) There is no restriction on using one's own patents to sue non-members.

It would also be stated policy, at least in the areas of software and business model patents, that the arbiters would be directed to apply a very high standard of obviousness, so that most issued patents would be of little use in an arbitrated dispute.

Could such a thing work? No voluntary system can address the patent troll problem, as trolls have nothing to gain by joining it. But for practicing entities, it seems to me that membership in such a coalition could be beneficial, by reducing the likely number and expense of patent disputes.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#90

Post by bengebre »

Having just listened to the "When Patents Attack!" podcast today (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-pat...), I question how this addresses what I saw as the fundamental challenge with patent trolls -- shell corporations. These companies are spawned as needed to sue the alleged patent infringers. Since the shell companies are just a bunch of lawyers and the ownership of a patent, there's little in the way of assets to counter sue for (i.e. there's not much for the suing entity to lose). I don't think these guys will be swayed by a moral or ethical argument either. And since these shell companies don't employ coders, well, I don't expect it will impact who coders decide to work for.
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