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The Patent, Used as a Sword

nytimes.com

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Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#51

Post by femto »

jacques_chester wrote: post #26

I am currently applying for a software patent. And I am of two minds. The system sucks. It shouldn't be patentable. In fact, even if I get a patent, it won't be the determinant of success or failure; it's mostly there to make the company more attractive to investors. On the other hand, is/ought problem. There's what I'd like the world to be. And there's what the world is. (And yes: my lawyer is pushing me to come up…

A question for you and anyone else:

In terms of making a company attractive to investors, is a block of resources better spent in obtaining a patent or advancing product development? Is the answer different between a start-up and not a start-up?

I'm genuinely interested in the answer, as it strikes me that the answer is not clear cut.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#52

Post by loup-vaillant »

> Patents are vitally important to protecting intellectual property.

More accurately, patents are vitally important to enforcing intellectual monopoly.

Terms such as "protection" and "property" are so heavily biased in favour of patents that they nearly block any useful discussion. As long as mainstream journals use those terms, the only way forward will be nearly complete lock-down. Now, "monopoly" is also biased. But at least it is technically correct.

Patents are supposed to foster innovation by granting monopolies. I can accept the argument that while monopolies are mean, they're a lesser evil compared to the technical innovation they enable. But replace "monopoly" by "property", and soon we're saying that patents are unilaterally good (and not just a net good). Which is obviously false given the huge legal costs they incur.

But even if patents are a net good, we rarely ask ourselves: can't we do even better? Isn't there any other form of government intervention that would be even more efficient? Could the money that currently goes to patent lawyers be better spent? My current answer is "most probably". Of the top of my head, we could fund another Manhattan project, set up more competitions and prizes like the DARPA challenge for autonomous cars, or allocate more research grants.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#53

Post by rhizome »

pgeorgi wrote: post #48
krichman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete with arcane mutterings. I know that law has a lot of very specific terms, but is encoding them in Latin necessary?

It's not like they sat together in 1960 and decided to agree upon a set of latin terms for everyday occurrences - these are mostly inherited. The idea is to keep the language reasonably stable that we can still confidently interpret legalese from 1812, and that in 2412 the legal body of 2012 can still be of some use without having historians fight over how we might have meant things. This is particularly true in lett…

At this rate, any of these laws remaining relevant in 2412 is highly optimistic.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#54

Post by dctoedt »

A couple of interesting quotes:

" “When I get an application, I basically have two days to research and write a 10- to 20-page term paper on why I think it should be approved or rejected,” said Robert Budens, a 22-year patent examiner and president of the examiners’ labor union. “I’m not going to pretend like we get it right every time.” "

"... In an interview, Mr. Kappos said the lengthy back-and-forth between examiners and Apple was evidence that the system worked. ... “It’s called the patent office,” he said, noting that issuing patents is the agency’s job. In a statement, the agency said it had spent the last three years strengthening policies to improve patent quality. Besides, Mr. Kappos said, “we realize that only a handful of these patents will be really important.” "

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#55

Post by TeMPOraL »

cageface wrote: post #24
htf wrote: post #2

I understand that allowing patents for algorithms is bad for innovation. What I don't understand is that people say that and then in the same breath claim that allowing patents for chemical formulas is good for innovation. In both cases, the patent holder gets a monopoly and everyone else is stuck with them as their supplier. I feel a terrible cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile these two positions.

A patent on a molecular structure is a very specific and easily interpreted patent. Most software patents are extremely vague and open to overly broad interpretations. The potential for abuse is far, far greater.

A friend working with polymers told me recently that their patents tend to be vague as well, in order to block as many variations and modifications to given formula as possible, while not revealing the exact chemical process used to obtain the polymer (e.g. saying that the temperature used is between XX and YY, instead of providing the exact value).

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#56

Post by cageface »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #55
cageface wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patent on a molecular structure is a very specific and easily interpreted patent. Most software patents are extremely vague and open to overly broad interpretations. The potential for abuse is far, far greater.

A friend working with polymers told me recently that their patents tend to be vague as well, in order to block as many variations and modifications to given formula as possible, while not revealing the exact chemical process used to obtain the polymer (e.g. saying that the temperature used is between XX and YY, instead of providing the exact value).

I'm not as familiar with polymer chemistry but I worked as a lab chemist in medicinal research and there there's really not much room for vagueness.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#57

Post by law »

femto wrote: post #51
jacques_chester wrote: post #26

I am currently applying for a software patent. And I am of two minds. The system sucks. It shouldn't be patentable. In fact, even if I get a patent, it won't be the determinant of success or failure; it's mostly there to make the company more attractive to investors. On the other hand, is/ought problem. There's what I'd like the world to be. And there's what the world is. (And yes: my lawyer is pushing me to come up…

A question for you and anyone else: In terms of making a company attractive to investors, is a block of resources better spent in obtaining a patent or advancing product development? Is the answer different between a start-up and not a start-up? I'm genuinely interested in the answer, as it strikes me that the answer is not clear cut.

Don't take this as legal advice (it's not), but my personal belief is that money is better spent patenting novel/non-obvious subject matter. Execution is very, very hard; if you waste all of your money on a poorly-executed idea, you're basically out of luck.

While many people on here like to tout the idea that investors invest in teams, there are many more investors who don't trust people that much--they want to invest in something other than charisma. If all your company has is an idea on which you're feverishly working, it's all but worthless in the absence of patent protection.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#58

Post by jacques_chester »

femto wrote: post #51
jacques_chester wrote: post #26

I am currently applying for a software patent. And I am of two minds. The system sucks. It shouldn't be patentable. In fact, even if I get a patent, it won't be the determinant of success or failure; it's mostly there to make the company more attractive to investors. On the other hand, is/ought problem. There's what I'd like the world to be. And there's what the world is. (And yes: my lawyer is pushing me to come up…

A question for you and anyone else: In terms of making a company attractive to investors, is a block of resources better spent in obtaining a patent or advancing product development? Is the answer different between a start-up and not a start-up? I'm genuinely interested in the answer, as it strikes me that the answer is not clear cut.

In my case, the patent application is a gamble.

It's based on work I did for my Honours project. I wrote a bunch of prototype code and a pretty detailed description of its design and operation.

But in actual fact the invention is a miniscule part of the work that has to be done to bring it to market.

If spending a few thousand dollars now can help me raise hundreds of thousands of dollars later, I view that as a smart gamble to take.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#59

Post by mtgx »

Yeah, patents protect small businesses and the innovators. Except they don't, and they're simply used by big companies to destroy the small ones. Too bad Obama won't change the direction for this all, since he already has his mind made up that what helps innovation is stronger IP enforcement, and more not less of this.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#60

Post by femto »

jacques_chester wrote: post #58
femto wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A question for you and anyone else: In terms of making a company attractive to investors, is a block of resources better spent in obtaining a patent or advancing product development? Is the answer different between a start-up and not a start-up? I'm genuinely interested in the answer, as it strikes me that the answer is not clear cut.

In my case, the patent application is a gamble. It's based on work I did for my Honours project. I wrote a bunch of prototype code and a pretty detailed description of its design and operation. But in actual fact the invention is a miniscule part of the work that has to be done to bring it to market. If spending a few thousand dollars now can help me raise hundreds of thousands of dollars later, I view that as a smar…

I'm actually torn on the issue. I can see that a patent has the advantage of conferring exclusivity, but time and money consumed might increase time to market and the "sunk cost" of a patent and might deter a much needed change of direction or technology.

I've been touched by patents twice. The first time was as an employee of a start-up based on a patent by a PhD student. In that case I think the company got blinkered by need to "implement the patent" and got overtaken by others who were more flexible.

The other was commercialisation of WiFi. CSIRO owned the patent. Radiata the company did not own any patents (not sure if they licensed the CSIRO one). Within 3 years, Radiata got acquired by Cisco for AUD 560 million. I was later told by one of the founders that Cisco had decided to acquire whoever was first to market, and Radiata got lucky and beat Atheros by 2 weeks. Investing 2 weeks into taking out patents could have been very costly!

CSIRO eventually made about AUD 1 billion off their patent, but it took 20 years, involving a 10 year legal battle that cost them AUD 15 million per year.

Since then, my feelings have been that patents are fine if you are well established with deep pockets, but a potential liability otherwise. I'm always interested in data that challenges that view as I could well be wrong!

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