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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

#91

Post by hasmanean »

denton-scratch wrote: post #88
cycomanic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first patents were not about innovation at all but essentially government guaranteed monopolies similar to guilds. > 1. Patents usually involve a lot of research — and existed as a way to ensure that competition couldn't imitate your product without also making that investment, licensing it from you, etc. If there was no protection, they would immediately undercut you since they don't have investment costs to cov…

> Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them My father used to work for Pilkington's Glass. Pilkington invented the float-glass process, which made better, flatter glass than the plate-glass process. Yes, it was patented; but the main protection was control of know-how. When you licensed the process, you got several engineers onsite to make it work. This is similar…

Assassins are a step too far, but maybe advertising…let the public choose whether to buy the real deal instead of the parasitical imitators.

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

#92

Post by fauigerzigerk »

marcinzm wrote: post #82
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. Patents usually involve a lot of research — and existed as a way to ensure that competition couldn't imitate your product without also making that investment, licensing it from you, etc. I agree with the gist of your comment, but a fundamental issue with patents is that your investment in research can be destroyed if someone else independently did overlapping research and filed first.

Which you mitigate by keeping an eye on competitors and avoiding overly saturated market spaces. This in turn incentives a broader research focus and also incentives publishing paper in saturated areas to make sure there's documented prior art. There's also an incentive for multiple smaller inventions spread over time. This all seems like a positive and not a negative for society as a whole.

I think it can be a positive as long as the threshold for what counts as an invention is high enough. If the threshold is too low then patents become an instrument for harassment and rent seeking, slowing down industrial progress.

We have to find the right balance. If a large number of patents sound like a sad joke to most professionals in a field, then something has gone very wrong.

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

#93

Post by throw0101a »

cycomanic wrote: post #72
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…

The first patents were not about innovation at all but essentially government guaranteed monopolies similar to guilds. > 1. Patents usually involve a lot of research — and existed as a way to ensure that competition couldn't imitate your product without also making that investment, licensing it from you, etc. If there was no protection, they would immediately undercut you since they don't have investment costs to cov…

> Citation needed.

* OECD: http://fs2.american.edu/wgp/www/park_lippoldt08.pdf

* Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallphelps/2015/09/16/do-pa...

A review of the literature:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664960/

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

#94

Post by denton-scratch »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #14

Im still very undecided on software patents and have been since they were first awarded software patents in general are a bad idea imho, go trade secret and never let the ideas enter the public domain. otoh society benefits a lot from good ideas entering the public domain, and the patent system is fairly effective at stopping everyone keeping their secret sauce a secret. Since the US has them, and this decision seems…

> go trade secret and never let the ideas enter the public domain.

If you rely on trade secrets, then you can't sell your software without protecting it using a dongle or whatever; your "customer" might in fact be your competitor. It's not that hard to figure out how a piece of software works, and to write your own code that works the same way.

It's not hard to figure out how some novel machine works either; but how to fabricate it is often a tougher challenge. It's easy enough to explain how a transistor works; fabricating reliable transistors at scale is another question.

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

#95

Post by jampekka »

matwood wrote: post #89
jampekka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grant money is not profit.

Yes, it's more like VC. But, the point is university research is not some magically altruistic thing. It is driven by grants either from the government or someone who made a lot of money.

University research is labor. Researchers get salary or stipend, usually relatively modest on the ridiculous white collar standards. Nobody gets rich from grants. Typical best case scenario for grant researchers is to stay employed. Tenured faculty don't get any money from the grants.

(Very) few do get rich by leeching publicly funded research for spin-off companies. High level admins can get relatively rich from obscene salaries, but they aren't the ones applying for the grants or doing the research.

Probably not altruistic, but not usually primarily for money either. If money is what you want, university is a very bad place for trying to get it. People do do things for other reasons than economic gain regardless of what the prevailing economics dogma and ideology claims.

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

#96

Post by kajumix »

nness wrote: post #38
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.

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…

The idea of "intellectual property" is anti-productive as well as immoral. Open source software is a very good evidence of the utilitarian benefits of doing away with software patents. And IP is immoral because it's impossible to grant and secure "intellectual property" rights without violating physical property rights. Please read Stephen Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property" for a good treatment of both the utilitarian and the moral dimensions:

https://cdn.mises.org/15_2_1.pdf

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

#97

Post by marcinzm »

cycomanic wrote: post #72
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…

The first patents were not about innovation at all but essentially government guaranteed monopolies similar to guilds. > 1. Patents usually involve a lot of research — and existed as a way to ensure that competition couldn't imitate your product without also making that investment, licensing it from you, etc. If there was no protection, they would immediately undercut you since they don't have investment costs to cov…

> Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them (in fact many companies will purposefully not patent those things they consider central to their business, to keep them secret) and are instead written so broad as to just create a moat to prevent any newcomers from entering.

That's pretty false. The requirement for a patent in the US is that it is detailed enough that an expert in the domain can reproduce the invention from the patent. Doing so efficiently and at scale is a different issues. Having dealt with patents personally, lawyers very much stress this point as a requirement for a patent that is not easy to overturn.

You're confusing a patent being broad with it not being detailed. They are both. A patent is a detailed reproducible description that includes a ton of language to also cover other similar things. For example, "in one embodiment of this invention a silver coated aluminum substrate is used for part N." This is very specific in that it says what was used to make the invention (a silver coated aluminum substrate) but also broad enough to cover other substrates (one embodiment).

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

#98

Post by jampekka »

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.

Military costs crazy amounts of money. Education and healthcare cost crazy amounts. And roads, public transport, water and sewage, social security, basic research, space programs, police, governance, firefighting etc.

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

#99

Post by bradjohnson »

hasmanean wrote: post #91
denton-scratch wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them My father used to work for Pilkington's Glass. Pilkington invented the float-glass process, which made better, flatter glass than the plate-glass process. Yes, it was patented; but the main protection was control of know-how. When you licensed the process, you got several engineers onsite to make it work. This is similar…

Assassins are a step too far, but maybe advertising…let the public choose whether to buy the real deal instead of the parasitical imitators.

And what exactly would stop an imitator from advertising that they're the "real deal"? Or maybe just that they're an "improved version"? There's extremely little regulation in advertising even now.

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

#100

Post by Cheer2171 »

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.

The concept of human rights is also antithetical to how humans have progressed socially and technologically for millenia.
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