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Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

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Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#71

Post by rayiner »

logfromblammo wrote: post #63
rayiner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many, many people create businesses out of open source technologies. Many people use open source technologies to sell some other product. That's different from being in the business of building and selling an open source product. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You open source it, and don't patent it. You start selling the chips, and some Korean company immediately copies it and undercuts you on price…

That could happen even if you did patent it. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You spend 3 years securing a patent and bringing the product to market. You discover that some Korean company copied the reference implementation found in your patent application. You also discover that the Chinese manufacturer you licensed to produce your product has been running ghost shifts to make low-quality knockoffs. Bun…

People don't buy ARM cores because of the trademark or support services. They do it because key implementation techniques for the ARM instruction set are patented, and the high-performance softcores are protected by copyright: http://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look-at-how-arm-li.... Yes, they support it just like any company supports their products, but it's not a "free product, pay for support" play like RedHat.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#72

Post by logfromblammo »

rayiner wrote: post #71
logfromblammo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could happen even if you did patent it. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You spend 3 years securing a patent and bringing the product to market. You discover that some Korean company copied the reference implementation found in your patent application. You also discover that the Chinese manufacturer you licensed to produce your product has been running ghost shifts to make low-quality knockoffs. Bun…

People don't buy ARM cores because of the trademark or support services. They do it because key implementation techniques for the ARM instruction set are patented, and the high-performance softcores are protected by copyright: http://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look-at-how-arm-li... . Yes, they support it just like any company supports their products, but it's not a "free product, pay for support" play like Re…

People don't buy iPads because of the ARM chips. But if the alternative is a Xiangdi Industries "10 Tablet" with a zhMIPS CPU and a not-entirely-unlike-Android OS, the lack of any familiar brand names may influence the consumer to just pay more for the sure thing (to them).

(I made those names up. Any similarity to actual brands is entirely coincidental.)

In any case, I was not trying to say that ARM cores are free to use. I was comparing their business to open hardware, and pointing out that people often prefer to pay for the ability to not delve too deeply into the details of what they are buying.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#73

Post by nicklaf »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #70
nicklaf wrote: post #22

Eolas, one of the more notorious patent trolls to hit the web, began as a UCSF spinoff, founded by a UCSF employee in 1994. Eolas claimed to have invented the first interactive web browsing experience, and patented[1] the concept of interactive web browser plugins (applets). Doyle (founder of Eolas) first targeted Microsoft in what would turn into a long streak of litigation; he initially approached Microsoft with an…

Just a nit: IIRC their patent didn't cover the idea of "interactivity", but something more along the line of "plugins", which is what the "external programs" refer to. Active-X is why they targeted Microsoft.

Thank you, you are correct--I should have been more careful.

Just claiming the idea of plugins (and not interactive browsing in general) is less ridiculous, but still dangerous.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#74

Post by comex »

rayiner wrote: post #71
logfromblammo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could happen even if you did patent it. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You spend 3 years securing a patent and bringing the product to market. You discover that some Korean company copied the reference implementation found in your patent application. You also discover that the Chinese manufacturer you licensed to produce your product has been running ghost shifts to make low-quality knockoffs. Bun…

People don't buy ARM cores because of the trademark or support services. They do it because key implementation techniques for the ARM instruction set are patented, and the high-performance softcores are protected by copyright: http://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look-at-how-arm-li... . Yes, they support it just like any company supports their products, but it's not a "free product, pay for support" play like Re…

The ARM case does seem to be working out fairly well for most involved. On the other hand, look at x86. While of course competing with Intel would be hard under any circumstances, I bet the market for x86 processors (compatible with x86 software) would be more competitive if ISA patent licenses weren't limited to a certain few grandfathered-in companies.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#75

Post by themartorana »

rayiner wrote: post #64
themartorana wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether that investment is public or private is irrelevant. It's not at all irrelevant. With Kickstarter, the private transaction is between two parties that are fully aware of the terms of the transaction, and explicitly agree to them. In the case of taxpayer money paying for university R&D that is then privatized and locked away, I find that repugnant. I am a party to the transaction that does not at all agree with…

You're mixing up two issues here. Say someone holds a gun to your head and forces you to sell your house for $500,000. Your neighbor's almost identical house sold for $490,000 just a few weeks ago. Do you agree that both points can be true at the same time: 1) It's wrong to hold a gun to someone's head to force them to sell a house. 2) $500,000 is a reasonable price for the house. Now, realize that the two issues are…

> But it's also true that it's unreasonable to demand that the technology be released freely.

I disagree entirely with this blanket statement. In fact, somewhere in this thread you'll find a university researcher speaking to how me eventually got everything open sources, and how certain funding is coming with open-source requirements.

We can debate whether or not it's in the public interest for the tech to be released, but it's never unreasonable to consider whether it should be released freely.

> Now, realize that the two issues are independent.

No they're not. #2 is entirely irrelevant. This is why eminent domain laws are so hotly debated - because fair compensation is often not fair compensation.

> Practically, the government is just another investor.

There is no investor that invests money in to private enterprise and gets no return when that private enterprise profits.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#76

Post by PythonicAlpha »

tmarthal wrote: post #36
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #29

It is worth to note here, that the universities don't speak against patent reform as such, but against special parts of the current reform. I am not familiar with the current reform, but problem is the fixation of so called "patent trolls". Many legitimate patent holders can be easily hurt by a reform that just is pleasing for the big corporations. When (for example) patent trolls are identified by the notion "don't…

Right. The one thing that (tangentially related) is the quote "The prospect of substantially increased financial risk would discourage universities and other patent holders lacking extensive litigation resources from legitimately defending their patents". Do universities really see themselves as the ones "lacking extensive litigation resources"? I think they don't understand the nature of 'small inventors'.

I also can not see universities as big heroes here, but I think the whole patent discussion is so twisted and biased with factions that cover their real intentions, that one must be very careful what to support or judge what is a good development.

Also in our country, we have a long list of "reforms" in different areas -- and "reform" sounds always positive, but in very few areas the so called "reforms" where directed in the right direction. I thus really got tired of "reforms". Oftentimes the word "reform" is used by factions that cover their real agenda ...

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#77

Post by rhino369 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #63
rayiner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many, many people create businesses out of open source technologies. Many people use open source technologies to sell some other product. That's different from being in the business of building and selling an open source product. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You open source it, and don't patent it. You start selling the chips, and some Korean company immediately copies it and undercuts you on price…

That could happen even if you did patent it. Say you invent a new kind of power amplifier. You spend 3 years securing a patent and bringing the product to market. You discover that some Korean company copied the reference implementation found in your patent application. You also discover that the Chinese manufacturer you licensed to produce your product has been running ghost shifts to make low-quality knockoffs. Bun…

You can also sue anyone using the power amplifier in any product sold in the USA.

I don't know why you use ARM as an example. I don't see how ARM would survive in a patent free country. In fact it's probably example 1A of why patents are useful device.

Why would Apple pay ARM if they were totally free to use it.

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#78

Post by abalone »

refurb wrote: post #66
abalone wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the room is that taxpayers are subsidizing private tech industry that gets to keep all the profits from commercializations of public research, save for the pittance they sometimes pay for tech transfer licenses. There is a bit a selective outrage going on here. How dare those universities try to profit from taxpayer research! The nerve! Meanwhile tech companies make billions of profits on these invent…

The elephant in the room is that taxpayers are subsidizing private tech industry that gets to keep all the profits from commercializations of public research, save for the pittance they sometimes pay for tech transfer licenses. I work in the biotech industry and from my perspective, I don't see a problem at all with private companies getting rich off of the development of public research. Keep in mind that the compan…

> Shouldn't they profit off it?

Not saying they shouldn't profit at all. The question is whether they should pay something back to the government for doing all the early stage investment.

Consider: Seed Investor A puts 70% of the funding in at the earliest most risky stage. Venture Capitalist B puts in 30% of the funding to take it to market. Yet all of the profits go to VC B, save for a small percentage of sales/payroll. Would you call that a fair deal?

Except it's not an analogy. Taxpayers are the seed investor. They are massively subsidizing the tech industry.

Which is made even more ironic by how "Libertarian" and "anti big government" Silicon Valley likes to fashion itself. Silicon Valley! A kind of psychological overcompensation, if you ask me. Silicon Valley is a product of DARPA and government spending.[1] Not entirely of course... just the earliest, most risky, most sustained stage of investment over the decade plus it takes to produce fruit, which is then plucked and brought to market. The question is not whether private industry has a role to play or should profit, but rather should private industry keep all of the profits? I think this makes people very uncomfortable, to admit that the state plays a huge role in our allegedly "free market capitalist" economy.

[1] The High Return on Investment for Publicly Funded Research https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/technology/report/20...

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#79

Post by ganeumann »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #65
ganeumann wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a taxpayer I'm certainly entitled to think that the work I am paying for, I own. Just as in almost any other business relationship. As far as I can see, if a professor runs a lab, he or she gets grants to fund it. If they can not get grants, they don't run a lab. The profits from university patents and tech transfer feed the general fund, they don't generally all go back to academic work. That general fund subsidi…

How much of the total government budget did your taxes contribute to? And how much of that budget was assigned to fund research? How many people share your sentiment that your tax money should benefit corporations (domestic and foreign) that don't pay their fare share of taxes? And how many of these even would have agreed to fund this research due to their political biases (think anti-vaxxers and vaccine research)? W…

Your entire first paragraph is straw men. It doesn't matter how much any individual pays, it doesn't matter what any individual's sentiment is. If Google pays a researcher to do some research, they own it, regardless of how much any individual shareholder paid of that amount or what any individual's sentiment about that research is. Those things are irrelevant.

It's not as easy as "publicly funded research should be free", I agree. As I said, it's that funded research should benefit the funders.

Startups don't benefit from patents. There is plenty of (probably publicly funded) research to show that. Here's a recent paper on patents and innovation: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.27.1.3, or read Joel Mokyr's "The Enlightened Economy" or "The Lever of Riches" and see how James Watt held up the widespread commercialization of the steam engine by refusing to allow his patents to be used downstream (or read the NBER financed study on the impact of patents on downstream innovation: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20269). This paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2029098) is probably the most targeted towards whether patents help startups or not. The conclusion they came to was "the patent system was working 'neither well nor poorly for [startups]' and tended to favor larger companies."

And last, if it benefits "society", that is, all people, how can there be free riders? If you mean it benefits non-taxpayers as well as taxpayers, well, that is one of the points of taxes (as opposed to fees.)

Re: Universities warn Congress that patent reform would harm US innovation

#80

Post by rayiner »

themartorana wrote: post #75
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up two issues here. Say someone holds a gun to your head and forces you to sell your house for $500,000. Your neighbor's almost identical house sold for $490,000 just a few weeks ago. Do you agree that both points can be true at the same time: 1) It's wrong to hold a gun to someone's head to force them to sell a house. 2) $500,000 is a reasonable price for the house. Now, realize that the two issues are…

> But it's also true that it's unreasonable to demand that the technology be released freely. I disagree entirely with this blanket statement. In fact, somewhere in this thread you'll find a university researcher speaking to how me eventually got everything open sources, and how certain funding is coming with open-source requirements. We can debate whether or not it's in the public interest for the tech to be release…

> I disagree entirely with this blanket statement. In fact, somewhere in this thread you'll find a university researcher speaking to how me eventually got everything open sources, and how certain funding is coming with open-source requirements.

When I say "reasonable" I mean commercially reasonable. There's a certain idealism about academia, which I don't subscribe to, but I'm not interested in arguing about it because it's subjective. What I'm talking about is how an investor or company seeking investment would view an offer in the market.

> There is no investor that invests money in to private enterprise and gets no return when that private enterprise profits.

At the same time, no sensible private enterprise takes investment for part of the cost of developing a product, then agrees to give up all rights in the product in return.

I agree the public should get some return when public funding results in patentable technology. But to say that such technology should be released free-and-clear is to say that the public, as investor, should get all the rights to a product just by paying for part of the development cost.

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