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Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#121

Post by boplicity »

Jochim wrote: post #35

The concept of intellectual property is antithetical to how humans have progressed socially and technologically for millenia. It's a wasteful aberration that strangles innovation with red tape and hands control of our culture over to those with the financial mean to claim to own it. The day we wrest back that control will be a good day.

> It's a wasteful aberration that strangles innovation with red tape

This is a strong claim, without any evidence to support it.

In fact, a look at the historical record, as others have pointed out, very much shows an extremely strong correlation between intellectual property rights and technological development. Sure, this is merely correlation, but that's certainly better than a strong claim without any evidence.

I'm curious though, if intellectual property was no longer a thing, which industries would need to be completely restructured. Some rather important ones, I would say. Journalism, in my mind, being at the top of the list. Not that it would be impossible, but the implications would very much be profound. I'm not sure what such a world would look like, but the transition would likely be rather difficult. Maybe it would work out better in the end? Who knows!?

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#122

Post by Draiken »

shuvuvt5 wrote: post #32
nulbyte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped after claim 9 on the first patent linked. It had, up until that point, described: peer-to-peer routing, downloading data and programs, running downloaded programs using downloaded data, redirection, and variable length strings. The next of claims seemed to begin to regurgitate the previous ones with some indiscerbable minute difference. None of this sounds novel. I read another of their patents where they i…

Why do we cling to this idea of patent trolls? The patent system is the problem. None of this should have been granted but when you really try to define what software patents are novel it becomes incredibly difficult. Just because you think this is trivial does not mean a layperson does. Is an encryption algo novel? What's novel about it, it's just a hashing function with some new parameters. The reality is, software…

While I agree with you, I can't see how we could ever fix the issue.

The same patent holders are the biggest backers of our politicians and will absolutely never allow any reasonable fix to the system itself.

All I read is how we should vote and yell at our representatives, completely ignoring the fact they were only elected because of donations from those benefiting from this system in the first place.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#123

Post by zupa-hu »

highwaylights wrote: post #34
shuvuvt5 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we cling to this idea of patent trolls? The patent system is the problem. None of this should have been granted but when you really try to define what software patents are novel it becomes incredibly difficult. Just because you think this is trivial does not mean a layperson does. Is an encryption algo novel? What's novel about it, it's just a hashing function with some new parameters. The reality is, software…

IANAL but the route to resolve this seems to be to challenge the patent on the grounds it should never have been granted and have it overturned, which it looks very much like it would be an easy argument to make, if not easy to achieve in practice.

The problem is the cost of doing this. If it gets overturned, the defendant shouldn’t be the one to bear the cost. I’d be happy with either 1) the patent owner or 2) the patent office, who didn’t do its job properly.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#124

Post by jampekka »

kloop wrote: post #117
yareal wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't put aside, say, 3% of your taxes to fund research into medicine? Especially if that research focused not on "what's the most profitable medicine" but rather "what medicine would increase well being the most"? You really can't imagine that decoupling the profit motive from drug research is possible?

> You wouldn't put aside, say, 3% of your taxes to fund research into medicine? Not if it goes through the traditional grant process. I've fundamentally soured on that. Maybe an open bounty system? First one to develop an effective drug for X gets their costs paid for + 1 billion or something (number pulled straight out of my ass, feel free to adjust)

Nobody should get or have 1 billion dollars. Not even close. I've fundamentally soured on that.

But even that would be better than the current system where people that have nothing to do with the research get obscene amounts of money solely on the merit of having obscene amounts of money.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#125

Post by jandrewrogers »

yareal wrote: post #107
melagonster wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, drug designing is special condition here. the experiment of drugs spend cray amounts of money.

You wouldn't put aside, say, 3% of your taxes to fund research into medicine? Especially if that research focused not on "what's the most profitable medicine" but rather "what medicine would increase well being the most"? You really can't imagine that decoupling the profit motive from drug research is possible?

Government investment in biomedical research has a history of following political fashion rather than optimizing for the best outcomes. Diseases that a politician cannot talk about in a press conference don’t get funded. The rise of private foundations funding a large percentage of all biomedical research was a response to government, and sometimes companies, reliably ignoring major medical research areas.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#126

Post by lelanthran »

TrackerFF wrote: post #48
Jochim wrote: post #35

The concept of intellectual property is antithetical to how humans have progressed socially and technologically for millenia. It's a wasteful aberration that strangles innovation with red tape and hands control of our culture over to those with the financial mean to claim to own it. The day we wrest back that control will be a good day.

It would be an interesting experiment - a world where no patents exist, only production (though corporate espionage / theft is still illegal). Some argue that this will effectively kill R&D, because the second you've created something - others would start reverse engineering, and copy the product. In some areas, like pharma, R&D is notoriously expensive, and the pharma companies have only that many years to recoup al…

> Some argue that this will effectively kill R&D, because the second you've created something - others would start reverse engineering,

Reverse engineering is not needed - it's time-consuming, expensive and error-prone.

The large incumbents would simply poach away key people and have that R&D in a month!

As much as some people hate to admit it, intellectual property laws have their place. Are they perfect? Not in my opinion! But, things would be worse without enforced intellectual property laws.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#127

Post by lordnacho »

melagonster wrote: post #76
jampekka wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R&D can be done without profit motive. Most R is done in universities without profit motive. Some argue that nothing gets done if somebody doesn't get capital gains for it. This is of course empirically flat out false.

unfortunately, drug designing is special condition here. the experiment of drugs spend cray amounts of money.

The drugs business is hard to use an an example, because it's precisely because things are covered by patents that it is worth spending a lot of money on. Not only that, regulation by the FDA and similar entities can be expensive because there are large businesses that can pay for the expense, because they were awarded a monopoly in the past for other drugs.

It's the snake that eats itself.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#128

Post by LordKeren »

_fat_santa wrote: post #120
nness wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first patent was issued in the 1400's — it is exactly how humans have progressed technologically and sociality. Let's stop being so absolutist about these topics. The problem here isn't that patents exist, intellectual property protection is critical to investment and research. The issue here is two fold: 1. Patents usually involve a lot of research — and existed as a way to ensure that competition couldn't imita…

IMHO patents are useful for things where you spend a ton of money researching something, but the implementation is rather straightforward. Think of the secret Coke or Pepsi recipes, I would imagine very hard and expensive to develop but easy to produce once you know what to do. Compare that to something like AWS and the equation is basically flipped. Figuring out what to do is not that difficult compared to actually…

Coke’s recipe is protected by Trade Secret, not patents. If you can figure out how to reverse engineer Coke 1:1 on your own, you can sell the resulting product. Coke is only protected from people selling their recipe to competitors.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#129

Post by SkyBelow »

yareal wrote: post #108
McBun wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds ridiculous to me... By the same logic, I could patent a car that is charged by USB (not very efficient, but eh, it's new !) and then nobody could build a car charged via USB ?

You've correctly identified how patents work, at least in the U.S.

You missed the part where I filed the patent first, so I am now the one in charge of USB charged cars.

Yes, it is even more complicated than that; I'm just trying to toss out a joke while also pointing out the system is even worse than implied.

Re: Amazon owes $525M in cloud-storage patent fight, US jury says

#130

Post by LordKeren »

McBun wrote: post #101
maratc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but there was a patent describing a USB-powered vibrator. While the idea of a vibrator is not new, and the idea of powering devices via USB isn't new either, the combination of these two non-new ideas was new. The patent was granted, and when someone (not the patent holder) produced a USB-powered vibrator, they were found in a violation of the patent in question. Similarly, if someone made a patent about "build…

That sounds ridiculous to me... By the same logic, I could patent a car that is charged by USB (not very efficient, but eh, it's new !) and then nobody could build a car charged via USB ?

One of the strangest aspects of patents is that it is much easier to get a patent than it is to defend that patent in court.

Many patents are granted by the patent office then revoked by judges.

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