FT article: http://archive.md/ESune
IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
91–100 of 240 posts
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is working exactly as intended. The point of the USPTO is to provide a mechanism for carving up the universe of ideas into plots of land where ownership is clear and backed up by the force of the state. You can charge rent on it, you can develop it yourself, you can leave it idle, it’s yours. Software innovators are a bit like wholesome farmers who just want to labor in the fields, beat the elements and gr…
Your analogy makes no sense. Land is a scarce and finite resource. Land ownership is a zero sum game. Patents are arbitrary and there can be an infinite number of them. You don't need patents to build software but you need land for crops.
It's not a "perfect" analogy, but what ever are?
The patent is the land, not the crop. The products that can be produced with the patent are the crops, with which it is impossible to have without the patent. Think of it this way, you spend years cracking a new invention. You bring it to market. You immediately go out of business because a larger company takes your invention and sells it at half the price you can because they don't need to recoup your R&D costs. Without patents you cannot protect against this circumstance.
Trade secrets don't protect against this because trade secrets don't protect against reverse-engineering whereas patents do. Patents are a temporary monopoly. Trade secrets can last indefinitely. Patents have a relatively short lifetime, though people do argue one still too-long for software.
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
IBM files a lot of patent because (at least when I was there many years ago), employees and their management chain have strong economic incentives to file anything. Even interns were encouraged to file patents, and as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume. Ironically, even between technology professionals, the patents one files at IBM are great marketing material on the resume. IBM marketing itself as 'th…
> as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume Really? I wouldn't view that as a positive unless we're talking about law students I guess.
You do understand that lawyers just write the patents that reflect what the INVENTOR invented, right?
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the same time AirBNB has history, that is to say, a business model, based on ignoring laws they don't care for.
As a former employee, I don't agree with that. I know it's the prevailing sentiment on HN, but it's not the truth.
Why don't you counter the narrative by explaining why not?
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Just look at the top 10 companies by market cap: 1. Microsoft – mostly software 2. Apple – software and hardware 3. Amazon – mostly software 4. Alphabet – mostly software 5. Berkshire Hathaway – not tech 6. Facebook – mostly software 7. Alibaba – mostly software 8. Tencent – mostly software 9. Johnson & Johnson – not tech 10. Visa – not tech, but mostly software
Can you justify the claim that Amazon is mostly software? Is it because they hire a lot of well-paid software developers? Microsoft produces a lot of value from software, but how much new technology are they producing? Some for sure, but how much? I don't think your metrics prove the claim... Facebook has developed a software product, and earned a lot of value from advertising. They've also developed several new tech…
Not OP but, it is my understanding Amazon Web Services is their biggest money maker, that's where I think that claim comes from.
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#96The whole US patent system needs to either be scrapped or rebuilt. The purpose it was originally intended to be used for doesn't make sense in a world where most new technology is just software, and software is incredibly easy to copy and duplicate. Getting a software patent is mostly a matter of sneaking past the people at the USPTO, and making sure you're the first to file. These patent factories could just write c…
I think it is working exactly as intended. The point of the USPTO is to provide a mechanism for carving up the universe of ideas into plots of land where ownership is clear and backed up by the force of the state. You can charge rent on it, you can develop it yourself, you can leave it idle, it’s yours. Software innovators are a bit like wholesome farmers who just want to labor in the fields, beat the elements and gr…
> in a country without property law big mean farming operations with security staff will just come and park themselves where you were farming.
That's exactly what is happening in a country that does have the corresponding IP law and the IP law is enabling the practice rather than fighting it. In other news: war is peace, ignorance is strength, and freedom is slavery. Carry on!
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#97I remember when I worked at IBM Hursley research labs 20 years ago. The lab director told us all "patents are very important to IBM". I expected him to tell us that IBM made billions from licensing them. He didn't say that though. I don't think he even _mentioned_ that. Instead he stated: "It raises the entry barrier for the competition".
Patents were (narrowly) created to _encourage_ the spread of knowledge. Instead of risky "trade secrets" a company would make the knowledge public for a short monopoly. Most patents these days are not worthy of protection (certainly not as long as they are granted for). We need different lengths for different patents - we shouldn't treat how rectangular a phone is the same way as a life saving drug.
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Just look at the top 10 companies by market cap: 1. Microsoft – mostly software 2. Apple – software and hardware 3. Amazon – mostly software 4. Alphabet – mostly software 5. Berkshire Hathaway – not tech 6. Facebook – mostly software 7. Alibaba – mostly software 8. Tencent – mostly software 9. Johnson & Johnson – not tech 10. Visa – not tech, but mostly software
Can you justify the claim that Amazon is mostly software? Is it because they hire a lot of well-paid software developers? Microsoft produces a lot of value from software, but how much new technology are they producing? Some for sure, but how much? I don't think your metrics prove the claim... Facebook has developed a software product, and earned a lot of value from advertising. They've also developed several new tech…
> Can you justify the claim that Amazon is mostly software?
For starters, Amazon derives most of its profits from AWS.
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#99IBM made a large investment in Prodigy the bbs/internet service of the 90's and came out of it with a lot of patents.
Wouldn’t those patents have expired? The 90s is now more than 20 years ago.
Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is so many software patents just cover "do a thing on a computer," which becomes so broad nobody else can ever do that thing without infringing on the patent. Even if I have an objectively different, even better, way of doing it, software patents are used far too broadly because they tend to protect the act of doing a thing as opposed to specifically how to do the thing. This is in contrast to something l…
The software patents you described are consistently knocked-out on §101 eligibility grounds for being an "abstract concept". IMO people who advocate scrapping software patents are disingenuous - look at what Google is trying to do software copyright at the same time. Essentially, if you take Google up on software patents and copyright, there will be no protection left for software.
> Essentially, if you take Google up on software patents and copyright, there will be no protection left for software.
... and this is a bad thing?